Board Game Arena

Hello, I did a search over the forums but haven't seen this question asked yet.
Would it be against the rules of this website to create a second account? I've climbed the TtA ladder by playing 1v1 games, and occasionally I'd like to play 4 player games, but since that's mostly an elo-losing endeavor (if only because should anyone quit/time out, I would lose a lot of points) I'd like to make a second account to play those with.
Just asking this question to make perfectly sure it doesn't break any rules.

I seem to recall this being asked before, but I can't find the thread right now.

From what I remember, it is perfectly fine to have multiple accounts.

However....
If those multiple accounts are used in such a way as to even give the appearance of boosting ELO/ranking, BadThings (TM) happen. Never play more than one account at a table without ELO being off, for example. Depending on how paranoid you are, you might even want to avoid playing the same player with both accounts without ELO being off in at least one of them.

I don't think it is illegal as I've had opponent's do it to me. In the two cases that happened to me (there are probably more I'm not aware of), it was to protect their own ratings.

The problem I see with it though, is you are hurting the ratings of those you play against. So from my side I ended up playing someone with a low Elo who is actually really good. It is an automatic loss of Elo (instead of gaining 10 with a win I gain 0, and instead of losing 10 with a loss I lose 20), so because they made a new account I've automatically lost 10 Elo points. Now this case was with tournaments where I was forced to play, so in normal games if you make opponent's aware that you are better than your Elo and they are taking the risk, it probably isn't as big a deal.

Who gives a hoot about your elo? No one. Just play the game and have fun

ojomojojojo wrote:Who gives a hoot about your elo? No one. Just play the game and have fun

While I agree with you, there are quite a few vocal people who do care about ELO, and will not hesitate to report apparent ELO boosting to the administrators.

ojomojojojo wrote:Who gives a hoot about your elo? No one. Just play the game and have fun

Totally agree. Sadly some folks on this website rather protect their precious ELO and/or complain/bellyache/etc if their ELO wasn't correctly calculated. More so with TTA than with any of the other games, especially when the game is easily being won.

Scipaeus wrote:I've climbed the TtA ladder by playing 1v1 games, and occasionally I'd like to play 4 player games, but since that's mostly an elo-losing endeavor (if only because should anyone quit/time out, I would lose a lot of points) I'd like to make a second account to play those with.

It's not technically against the rules to have a second account if you aren't using it for cheating, but you have to be careful about doing anything that looks suspicious. Under normal circumstances, just avoiding loss of ELO I'd call "unfair" if not cheating, and as someone pointed out, it does screw with the people you're playing with since you'd be starting over looking like a beginner to the game. If games were restricted, you also wouldn't be able to get into games more appropriate at your level. So I don't think I'd do it.

You could put out your own invites with ELO off. There's nothing wrong with that if you're teaching it to someone else or that sort of thing. There's "good" reasons to play with ELO off. If your real concern is that tie situation you get when someone quits the game, I can't say I blame you for that, because that is unfair to start with. In my opinion, the solution to that is being able to not participate in that tie, not to have to avoid playing 4 player with ELO on. (In fact, I keep meaning to post about that very issue, though it'd be about turn-based games where the whole situation is different.)

I would ignore the comments about how important ELO is. It's important to some people and not to others. If no one cared about it at all, they wouldn't bother having it here. You can care about your ELO without losing sleep over or making it the most important issue on the face of the earth. I can "care" about something without it taking over my life or losing any sleep over it. You can take it to extremes, but if you don't, I see nothing wrong with caring about it to an extent.