Playing for second

[LoveBooks]

To answer one part of your question, I don’t feel that targeting the loser is unsportsmanlike. When it happens to me I do feel sad! Lol. I feel like it’s just a strategy to ensure you don’t lose too many elo points. People do see elo as part of the game and winning. Unsportsmanlike to me is someone cursing at another player. Good question to think on.

[twiceshy]

Like it or not, we have ELO so it IS a part of the game. Up to you if you choose to ignore it. Personally, I keep an eye on it (not that it helps much!).

[Sa angreal]

I think I agree with the sentiment of your post - it seems very wrong to play for ELO rather than the win. Maybe its justifiable in a longer game where coming back from a long way off the lead is more difficult, but I think that in a game like this, where you can get 50 points in a single round easily, and if you're lucky, over 100, then playing for second rather than trying to win is silly.
Because its such a short game, it hardly makes sense to worry about losing if your last-ditch effort doesn't pay off - just load up a new game.

[Thoshy76]

I agree for a single game going onto the ELO is crazy, but for Arena, where it is hard to climb up into the Elite, if you have to ( re) start after some pause, see me starting now bronze after I made it twice into Elite at Flip7.... instead of loosing minimum 2 steps/ stars becoming third, I am more than lucky ,when just a x2 round may give the smallest chance to win, that I freeze out the other one nearby for 2 nd place by just one card more flipped to overtake that guy and let the other one do the 200 to close the game with this safe 2nd place then. And by this normally no lost steps at the arena system...

[Thoshy76]

In addition I love this kind of strategic play a lot more than this pure take the next card ,and another one.. oh after a 10 ,11 and 12 in my cards ,i still try to get it with this single shot to win maybe the 1 to 93? Chance for the x2 helps me out... it is way more of interest to catch up after a bad start to get this 2nd place still done... so you more often stop already still only having around 20 p...doing it at the table in the real world, just for this short run isn t much fun for me, but here it is my most played game at BGA at all