Hearts #1 Player Play's With ELO Off

[SantaBanta]

Hi folks,

So the number one player of Hearts only plays games with the ELO switched off. He does this specifically to prevent other players from catching up and claiming the top spot.

Shouldn't there be some sort of penalty for that? He is a very good player, but such a move is anti-competitive and unfair.

[Shaq Jenkins]

I agree that this is anti-competitive and unfair. However, this is what many Top 20 players do. They play with ELO off; they also play an ELO on game with lower ranked players every 60 days in order to keep their ranking. This is extremely unfair, however, it isn't technically against the rules because BGA allows this to happen. This won't change until BGA fixes its ranking system. The current one rewards players who game the system.

[Liallan]

Every ranking system I have ever seen rewards players who game the system. I strongly believe there is no way to stop everything that players can do, and that the best you can do is have a system that makes it more difficult to cheat and addresses the things that are the most likely to happen, while not hurting other people. I think it's also good not to make assumptions about why people are doing what they are, unless you know for sure or have some kind of proof.

I don't really know how ELO works, but I know with the TrueSkill system that Yucata uses, it does not require someone to play a specific person in order to get ranked higher than them. You just have to play some people ranked high up in order to increase your score, which can go higher than scores of people you didn't play, because the results are not dependent on anyone but who just played that game.