ELO, and possible fixing/abuse?.

[KronosBlade]

Hey BGA community,

While searching around for games to play today, I jumped into a room for Stone Age and I had chosen this room because it was restricted to average level and below players (meaning beginners) and that's around the level i'm ranked ( as I cant enter Good and above games ). The first thing i notice is that the GameAdmin is ranked 73rd in the world at Stone Age and has a score of nearly 2k. Elo rating for the game was turned on so the win/lose would count.

My questions are :
Does this happen alot, people intentionally playing weaker/less-experienced opponents to "ramp up " their ELO, or is this just an individual case that i dont know the full details of.

Does this have greater connotations to the ELO statistics, as its kinda the reason i became a member so I could see my Opponents ratings and try to play opponents around my level, to get a challenging yet fun game not a cake walk or get steamrollered by someone vastly outclassing me.

Thanks in advance

*First post on any forum ever*

[Jest Phulin]

Does this happen alot, people intentionally playing weaker/less-experienced opponents to "ramp up " their ELO, or is this just an individual case that i dont know the full details of.

Unfortunately, yes, this does happen, and by the amount of whining it generates it happens a fair amount. However.... it tends to only happen by those that are treating BGA itself as a game, and using ELO as the scoring system.

Does this have greater connotations to the ELO statistics, as its kinda the reason i became a member so I could see my Opponents ratings and try to play opponents around my level, to get a challenging yet fun game not a cake walk or get steamrollered by someone vastly outclassing me.

Tables restricted to average and above tend to satisfy being able to find equally-matched opponents. That also includes Good and above, Expert+, Average to good, etc. Even Beginner to Good should fall into this category.

There are several other posts and threads about how the ELO system is "flawed," so I won't go into details here. The main feeling I get from them though is that, out of 50 players, people ranked 4,and 5 are all complaining about how people 2, 3, and 4 are abusing the system.

The situation you found, with an expert playing average and below, is an exploit of a rounding bug. While they are risking a large amount of ELO, they stand to gain a full point, instead of a fractional point that the math indicates. So, rather than play 10 games against an equal opponent and possibly gain or lose 30 points, they are more willing to play 30 games against less talented opponents, possibly lose 100 points, but more likely gain 30.

But, as I said, this situation is restricted to people who treat ELO as a scoring system for winning the game of life. If you are treating it as a system to find opponents at your skill level, the system seems to work fine.

As a side note: Beginner does not mean that the player is below that of an average player. It simply means they have not won a game on BGA yet. They may have great skill at the game in other places. It would be interesting if some of the great players on this site started creating several dummy accounts and then targeting these players that create the beginner/average only tables.