Board Game Arena

I play 6 Nimmt... a lot... love it. And I've noticed something peculiar.... it seems that when nobody in the game has a particularly high ELO the drop out rate is pretty low. That changes when a high ELO player is at the table. Suddenly, the drop out rate from lower-rated people escalates. Now why should that be? I seem to recall that twice within the past week when a 1700+ player took a big hit a lower ELO person suddenly stops playing. Now, I'm not some conspiracy nut.... and I really don't care much about ELO's, particularly at 6 Nimmit where they're almost meaningless. I just want to play, but it appears that some people are using suicidal proxies.

Two questions that come to mind.

One, has this happened often enough to be statistically meaningful?

Two, is this any different than other games? Some people have no tolerance for losing, so it stands to reason that lesser players that don't like losing might be more likely to drop if a higher ELO person is on the game. (Which is even more dumb if they took a game that wasn't restricted.) But, by the same token, it also stands to reason that higher ELO players are more likely to drop if a lower level player is beating them. I don't know 6 nimmit so I don't know if there's anything particularly special about that game.