It was not my intent to misquote you, and I do not recall doing so. The one instance you called me on misquoting you, I had repeated exactly what you said.ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑07 February 2026, 17:42You've misquoted me numerous times as well as stated things that have nothing to do with my position so I will attempt again to make my position to you clear. I believe the probabilities currently used shouldn't be applied universally amongst all games because that is faulty. I believe that just because the ceiling is lower for maximum player strength in a game due to its luck factor that that doesn't mean having a rating system that will gravitate players towards the same rank rather easily is acceptable. There may be a smaller gap in between what is considered a great player in a luck base game (10% better win rate over another player vs same field) but what they are accomplishing is great for what they do. Just like a basketball player shooting 90% free throws doesn't mean they are a superior athlete to a baseball player that bats .350. I think that the rating system should still properly reflect the difference amongst players in luck games. If one player is able to use methods to win 5% 0r 10% more games within the same parameters than another player in a game that is inherently closer to 50/50 that is a huge margin.
Im taking the time because I think you may actually want to have a conversation. Lets start here. Currently the way probabilities are calculated for team games is faulty. Can we agree on that? It uses head to head matchups and doesn't consider your partner. Meaning if I have a higher elo than both my opponents I may be ranked 70% over one and 80% over another. It doesn't count them as a team and doesn't consider who my partner is (who could be by far the worst player at the table). I play a few team games. I will use spades in this example. I had a spades community at one time and have partnered or played against a lot of players. I know who is great, good, and average skill wise. But because they are playing in a faulty system with false probabilities their ratings seesaw all the time. Their skills never change. It is the system being used to rank them that is inaccurate. It constantly takes elo from stronger players and gives it to weaker players keeping the field closer than it really is. Even more so for a game like bang but I will fast forward.
Based on what I've witnessed in team games these false probabilities lead to inaccurate rankings. Elo was designed for chess. A non luck game. How can the same probabilities be applied to a game with no luck and a game with 4 luck rating? If a player is projected to win 60% of the time if they have +60 elo over player b with no luck factor than how can it also be 60% in a game that has 4 luck factor and so many variables? So as an example with 20 k factor a player would lose 12 elo if win probability is 60% but considering the luck factor of the game should reduce it to different rates like 11, 10.5, 10.25.
I have played a lot of spades here. The system isn't perfect, but I don't think it's all that bad. Doesn't it just take the average Elo for each player on the team, and use that when calculating the Elo change after a win or loss?
Elo was designed a long time ago for Chess, yes. But that doesn't mean we should expect its function to remain exactly that. Board game sites use it for rankings, leaderboards, game-matching, and to some extent, prediction of outcome, but with luck a factor, how can we really predict what would happen anyway?
What exactly is it you wish for Elo (here on BGA) to accomplish? It seems that you want Elo to perfectly predict the outcome of a game. How would that ever happen? Even in Chess, a player could be temporarily 100 points lower than his or her true ability, and another could be 100 points higher. In which case, maybe two 2200 players are playing, but one of them is actually at skill level 2100 and the other at 2300. Thus, Elo would incorrectly predict a 50% win probability for both players.
How is that to be avoided? We cannot even avoid it in chess.
So, we do the best we can. We use an Elo system that acts as a leaderboard, helps people find relatively comparable matchups (this mostly works), and acts as a record of how players have actually performed. Maybe it falls short in terms of predicting the specific outcome of one game or a small sample size of games, but why is that necessarily a flaw? No system is going to be able to predict the outcomes of luck-based games.
If people at BGA wrote in their FAQ that "Elo is intended to predict the outcome of games", then that was a mistake to write that, because that's not the primary function of Elo on this website.
. You keep making up a lot of things.
I'm confused
