Board Game Arena

I have a question: would you consider it cheating if a player tried to play only against players in the top 10 (I don't think it can be done with current filters, but let's imagine) and as a result managed to climb to the top 10 themselves thanks to managing a consistent 50% winrate against those players?

Of course, the question also supposes that the player is not capable of climbing to the top 10 when they play against random players, because their winrate against lower rated players is just not good enough for them to get all the way there.

It's a tricky question and I'm not sure how people feel about it. Generally when I see people complaining about filtering players in Arena, they are talking about filtering players who are stronger. But if the filtering is the other way around, do you feel it's more okay or is it still the same issue?

Someone who red-thumbed everyone except the top 10, and still managed to win enough against the top 10 to become a member of the top 10? Sounds to me like that player would deserve to play in the top 10.

Winning consistently against the top 10 is not easy.

On the other hand, I have had two different arena seasons in which I have battled for one of the top spots against a player who, with near 100% likelihood, had red thumbed the top 20 to top 25 Elo players.

Which, though not against site rules, is a weak move in my opinion.

FrankJones wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 00:28 Winning consistently against the top 10 is not easy.

Sure, but it might be easier to hold a 50% winrate against top players, than to hold a 90%+ winrate against the general pool of players. So even though you can hold your own against them, you took a shortcut to get there and you might have deficiencies when playing against lower rated players that those top players don't have, so can you really say you are one of them? It depends on how you look at it, I guess.

tbhp wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 00:24 I have a question: would you consider it cheating if a player tried to play only against players in the top 10 (I don't think it can be done with current filters, but let's imagine) and as a result managed to climb to the top 10 themselves thanks to managing a consistent 50% winrate against those players?

Of course, the question also supposes that the player is not capable of climbing to the top 10 when they play against random players, because their winrate against lower rated players is just not good enough for them to get all the way there.

It's a tricky question and I'm not sure how people feel about it. Generally when I see people complaining about filtering players in Arena, they are talking about filtering players who are stronger. But if the filtering is the other way around, do you feel it's more okay or is it still the same issue?

I'd frown on someone exclusively using the top 10 to get to their proper rating due to the rigged set-up new accounts have, creating an unfair situation for their opponents. Those should ideally be randomly spread out to minimize the impact.

Aside from that, once the account has stabilized their rating, or close to it, I guess the only thing I'd look at is how extreme the gap is and if they're trying to abuse oversight rating tends to have with vast enough gaps. Since we're talking 50% vs top players, it's not likely to be a battle of the extremes. So if someone was trying to get to the 700s (the top 10 being 700 in this hypothetical)) as a 600, or maybe even a 500, by exclusively battling it out vs 700s, I'm less likely to be as concerned.

Ultimately, it's about abuse. Trying to use pairings to intentionally manipulate your rating is going to be an issue, as is actually using pairings to do so as well.

tbhp wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 00:35

FrankJones wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 00:28 Winning consistently against the top 10 is not easy.

Sure, but it might be easier to hold a 50% winrate against top players, than to hold a 90%+ winrate against the general pool of players. So even though you can hold your own against them, you took a shortcut to get there and you might have deficiencies when playing against lower rated players that those top players don't have, so can you really say you are one of them? It depends on how you look at it, I guess.

If a 700 doesn't want to deal with going 90%+ vs 200s, fine by me. That both looks tedious and screams potential abuse from a small accuracy issue with high gaps that can mess with ratings. A 700 unable to handle proper games with a 500 or 600 would raise some questions though.

Ceaseless wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 01:00 If a 700 doesn't want to deal with going 90%+ vs 200s, fine by me.

It's fine in almost any context. Like, in a tournament setting, no one cares about that sort of thing, they only care about is the player good enough to win the tournament.

It feels different for Arena though, because it is set up in such a way that in order to climb, you have to play and win against lower ranked players for the vast majority of your games. So it seems this particular competition is judging you on your ability to do well against those players. I mean, if it weren't the case, they would have made Arena very different. Like a system of leagues, instead of a system where everyone has to play everyone.

Everyone else who got to the top 10 has to go through this constant hassle of performing against players lower ranked than them. If you can't do the same, can you really say you deserve a spot there?

Personally, I don't care if a top player wins against lower rated players 90% or 95% of the time. This difference is huge for someone's resulting placement in Arena, but for me personally, I mainly care about how top players do against other top players. The problem is that Arena seems to disagree with you and me, as the system that has been decided for it places a high value on your ability to perform against random players. So we have to take that into account when we discuss whether someone deserves a top spot in Arena specifically.

tbhp wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 01:23

Ceaseless wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 01:00 If a 700 doesn't want to deal with going 90%+ vs 200s, fine by me.

It's fine in almost any context. Like, in a tournament setting, no one cares about that sort of thing, they only care about is the player good enough to win the tournament.

It feels different for Arena though, because it is set up in such a way that in order to climb, you have to play and win against lower ranked players for the vast majority of your games. So it seems this particular competition is judging you on your ability to do well against those players. I mean, if it weren't the case, they would have made Arena very different. Like a system of leagues, instead of a system where everyone has to play everyone.

Everyone else who got to the top 10 has to go through this constant hassle of performing against players lower ranked than them. If you can't do the same, can you really say you deserve a spot there?

Personally, I don't care if a top player wins against lower rated players 90% or 95% of the time. This difference is huge for someone's resulting placement in Arena, but for me personally, I mainly care about how top players do against other top players. The problem is that Arena seems to disagree with you and me, as the system that has been decided for it places a high value on your ability to perform against random players. So we have to take that into account when we discuss whether someone deserves a top spot in Arena specifically.

There is a league system, in theory everyone doesn't have to face everyone, just set your league filter so that you only face people within your league, or a number of leagues range of it. The problem is that BGA's league system is terrible, one noticeable oversight being the inability to drop out of the league to a lower one. And getting a winning streak in a league large enough to exit it is apparently not so troublesome. The result being making elite league, the highest league of them all, is weaker than being a 200. So when sub 200s are in the same league as the top players, obviously the league filter isn't going to work very well.

I agree that either way, it's something that shouldn't happen.

For me, personally, games against low Elo players re basically free wins, so I guess it depends on the game.

My issue is a different but well-known one. I hate the 3 consecutive wins penalty, so if I get 2 in a row against a player, I'm likely using a red-thumb temporarily until the time period expires for the consecutive wins to be reset. I think it's silly to have an Elo penalty for random matchups I have no control over.

Alon the same lines, in one of my games, 50% of my arena games were against the same 3 players, and that made no sense to me. I have my settings to essentially allow "any opponents, any time window, and turn-based speed setting), So I shouldn't be getting matched with the same players over and over. I like opponent variety.

Back to what was discussed. Is it a common occurrence that someone can sustain a 50%-win rate against the 700 Elo players (or the top 10 Elo, if it's not a game with a 700 Elo top 10), but cannot sustain the necessary win rate against the players ranked 11th -25th, or the players 100 Elo lower than the top 10? That sounds odd.

The only times I run into situations where I feel as though my Elo is at unreasonable risk is what ceaseless alluded to, when I run into a player whose Elo is well below the player's actual skill level. (Either because the player is new to BGA but knows the game, or because the player is at the tail-end of an unlucky downswing in bad luck.) Aside from that, generally speaking, I am batting around .500 against equal Elo players, and I hold the expected win rate against the players 100 to 150 Elo below me.

Mainly though, I would say that red thumbs should not apply in arena - as long as they get rid of the consecutive wins penalty, and maybe write an algorithm for more opponent variety. At one point, I had 8 out of 25 games against the same player.

Ceaseless wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 01:29

There is a league system, in theory everyone doesn't have to face everyone, just set your league filter so that you only face people within your league, or a number of leagues range of it. The problem is that BGA's league system is terrible, one noticeable oversight being the inability to drop out of the league to a lower one. And getting a winning streak in a league large enough to exit it is apparently not so troublesome. The result being making elite league, the highest league of them all, is weaker than being a 200. So when sub 200s are in the same league as the top players, obviously the league filter isn't going to work very well.

Right. Or, in the case of one of my games, there are only 10 elites (and for much of the season, it was 6 or 7). SO, for most of the season, it was either

1) Play against only those 6-7 players, or
B) play against the entire field, because this game only has 2 arena tiers.

Neither one of those is optimal for a player who would like to have an equal mix of purple tier and bronze tier opponents. Aside from constantly reconfiguring the filters I suppose. But sometimes I would go 36 hours in the queue when I had more restrictive filters.

Ceaseless wrote: ↑25 September 2026, 01:29 There is a league system, in theory everyone doesn't have to face everyone, just set your league filter so that you only face people within your league, or a number of leagues range of it. The problem is that BGA's league system is terrible, one noticeable oversight being the inability to drop out of the league to a lower one. And getting a winning streak in a league large enough to exit it is apparently not so troublesome. The result being making elite league, the highest league of them all, is weaker than being a 200. So when sub 200s are in the same league as the top players, obviously the league filter isn't going to work very well.

That's what I'm saying, there is a league system but in reality it's not really one. It's just an arbitrary series of consecutive wins that you have to go through before you are considered "Elite league". That's not a system that is conducive to classifying players into groups of similar levels, all the way to the top, like sports leagues are. In effect, the gap in skill and Elo that exists in Elite league is huge, so only playing against Elite league players still means facing players rated lower than you the majority of the time.