Board Game Arena

yah sounds like someone who is higher elo trying to sandbag to grief higher ranked players

FrankJones wrote: ↑25 March 2026, 20:31 It might be against the rules to create a second account to play as an expert with 0 Elo. But I'm not sure. And if it is against the rules, it's likely difficult to enforce.

It's against the rules to play ranked games with more than one account, no matter if you do it with 0 elo or 1000 elo.

Seallv wrote: ↑26 March 2026, 00:37 he is high level player, who is trying to keep his elo low (i would estimate around 400-500 elo.) i was only barely 300. After that loss i dropped below 300. He was not low elo player. He was over 300 at the time of game, higher rated then me.

I thought you started this thread because the other player conceded while being significantly ahead. Now you’re describing it as a loss and saying your Elo dropped. I’m confused.

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑27 March 2026, 21:35

Seallv wrote: ↑26 March 2026, 00:37 he is high level player, who is trying to keep his elo low (i would estimate around 400-500 elo.) i was only barely 300. After that loss i dropped below 300. He was not low elo player. He was over 300 at the time of game, higher rated then me.

I thought you started this thread because the other player conceded while being significantly ahead. Now you’re describing it as a loss and saying your Elo dropped. I’m confused.

I'm getting mixed up also, but I think the OP was saying the player lost intentionally (or conceded what would have been a win) just to lose Elo, so that his Elo stays low (perhaps attracting more games from players rated in the lower range) just to smash them, for kicks and fun.

Which would be a really weird thing to do, but probably not against the rules, as long as it's just a single account. As Jellby noted, the rule is that a [player cannot play ranked games with more than one account. For whatever reason.

Additional context.

The OP was not exaggerating. The game was over, terraforming was done, and the OP had passed. Opponent was ahead by 40, and conceded when the game would have ended with a win in less than one minute.

That's a very odd thing to do, and according to the chat log, was done intentionally to lose Elo intentionally, with the intent of being able to more easily find games against players who the opponent apparently believes are less willing to play players with higher ratings. (I've never had a problem getting games with a 500+ Elo, but maybe this person's experience has been different.

Either way, I see nothing in the BGA rules that prohibits what the opponent did. Odd as it is.

Even weirder - that person's last SEVENTEEN games all ended with one player conceding - but only half the time was it this player conceding.

In the games in which the other player conceded, it was a variety of different players.

THAT iso really weird, since in my experience, more than 95% of games are played to completion without anyone conceding.

Shrug. One of life's oddities.

Interesting to see this as now I have hit 400 to 500 elo in Terraforming Mars I notice I often play against people in the low 200s who are crazy good. Sometimes they admit to being an offline expert who plays ‘now and then’ online but it does seem likely there’s a lot of surfing in this game.

I’m not overly surprised, I play a few online games with an elo rating and there are always many people that want to play vs worse players. I do think it’s something BGA should be a bit more robust on though.

Jellby wrote: ↑27 March 2026, 21:23

FrankJones wrote: ↑25 March 2026, 20:31 It might be against the rules to create a second account to play as an expert with 0 Elo. But I'm not sure. And if it is against the rules, it's likely difficult to enforce.

It's against the rules to play ranked games with more than one account, no matter if you do it with 0 elo or 1000 elo.

Really? I have an alt account I sometimes play on (even in arena) because I want to play more but not mess with my main standing. Is this really against the rules? I don't see how this hurts anyone..

It's only forbidden to play one account against the other in order to push one account's ELO.

CapitalDecay wrote: ↑01 April 2026, 01:17 Really? I have an alt account I sometimes play on (even in arena) because I want to play more but not mess with my main standing. Is this really against the rules? I don't see how this hurts anyone..

So you potentially take two places in the rankings? Imagine the top player playing with 10 different alt accounts because they don't want to mess with their standing... Since they're the top player, the alt accounts will probably also have a top performance, and the 10 first places will be occupied by the 10 accounts of the same player. Do you think that's fair?

If you want to not mess with your standing, just play in friendly mode.

xspuipuke wrote: ↑01 April 2026, 07:06 It's only forbidden to play one account against the other in order to push one account's ELO.

It was stated by an admin that it is forbidden to use more than one account to play ranked games, against each other or not.