Matchmaking

[YoEdward]

Does match making ever give you players at your ELO or do you always have to play people above you, sometimes double your ELO?

[Jellby]

If you're talking about Arena, elo has no influence in Arena, and you can't filter on it.

Otherwise, the obvious answer is no. When you are paired with someone with higher elo, it's evident the other player wasn't

[Notello]

I had opponents by match-making of all three kinds (their ELO was 150+ higher, their ELO was 150+ lower, their ELO was +/-150 to mine).

Always matched to players above oneself is theoretically impossible, because normally the ELOs are different. In that case the player with the highest ELO would never get an opponent, consequently the player with the 2nd highest ELO as well, and so on. This is a contradiction to the fact that players are matched many hundreds times.

In tournaments the match-table is done with regards to the ELO (knock-out or groups in the first round) so that the highest ELO-players will meet as late as possible (quarter- or semi-final). They are seeded in the same way as it is usual in all sport events (example: tennis), so they will get unseeded players with low ELO in the first rounds - then the ELO-difference will be quite high.

In arena games the match-making depends on the arena-score and league. When there are few players with ELO below 200 who have signed for an arena game, then they automatically get players with 300+. From my experience this is a reasonable assumption because most players who have just made the 100 don´t sign for arena, so they are a minority in this competition.

[ArtEntre]

Matchmaking does not use ELO by default, it just fills you in to the first eligible table.

In non-Arena games, when creating the table, you can filter by ELO ranges. I forget the exact levels, but it's something like...
Beginner = 0
Apprentice = 1-99
Average Player = 100-???
Good Player = ???-???
and so on

You must always include whatever ELO range you yourself are in, so if you only select that one, you will get players somewhat close to you. You just have to consider that you might end up waiting a very long time if there aren't enough players in the range you're looking for, particularly if you're trying to make it more than a 2 player game.

[Meeplelowda]

Otherwise, the obvious answer is no. When you are paired with someone with higher elo, it's evident the other player wasn't

Should be obvious. Should be self-evident. Yet....

[Meeplelowda]

Matchmaking does not use ELO by default, it just fills you in to the first eligible table.

In non-Arena games, when creating the table, you can filter by ELO ranges. I forget the exact levels, but it's something like...
Beginner = 0
Apprentice = 1-99
Average Player = 100-???
Good Player = ???-???
and so on

You must always include whatever ELO range you yourself are in, so if you only select that one, you will get players somewhat close to you. You just have to consider that you might end up waiting a very long time if there aren't enough players in the range you're looking for, particularly if you're trying to make it more than a 2 player game.

Here's how to do what's above:

If you manually create a game (i.e., starting a game from the Play Now page with the rightmost option set to "Manual"), you can adjust settings so that only beginners and apprentices are able to join by clicking the link labeled "Restrict table access." But it may seriously increase the time it takes for the game to fill.

Alternatively, under Automatic matching you can leave "I'm okay playing with: My level" set to the default (under Opponent's Level in Show Advanced Options) and set everything else to "I never want to play with." The filter options are found by clicking on the gear icon next to the game thumbnail image.

Those first two options are found on the Play Now page. From the single-game lobby, under the Start button to the right of the number of players you will see a green icon with people coming out of (or going into?) a door. Click on that to filter by opponent's level.

There are also filters for karma when setting up a game. You can filter karma by >50%, 65%, 75%, or 85%.