Board Game Arena

Well, the ELO rank calculation for Cribbage does not calculate the odds of winning very well. It actually discourages anyone with a high ELO and high chance of winning to play with beginners, which seems counter productive. If I'm playing a beginner at the game, the 80% chance of winning that the ELO rank calculation gives me is nonsense. The beginner is just new to bga, not a first time cribbage player. So I win 5 ELO points if I beat a new player, and lose 15-20 if game is lost. This is very far from real odds. There is absolutely no learning curve for most players who decide to play cribbage -- most would already have played many many games.

So, if you're trying to increase your ELO you can't play anyone who has less than 75% or so of your own ELO, otherwise you lose too much. Odds are you're not going to beat an Experienced Cribbage player 4 games out of 5 just because he's new to BGA. Even if you're not actively trying to increase your ELO it is discouraging to play 2 games (win 1 and lose 1) and lose 10-15 ELO points.

The only way you would have a prayer of increasing your ELO after a while would be to only play BEST OF 5, or BEST OF 7. That's kind of a nasty thing to pick against a new BGA player expecting to play only 1 game, but have not adjusted their defaults.

Well, that's an inherent problem of ELO itself. Cannot be fixed unless BGA revises the whole rating system.
Fortunately Cribbage allows longer game/match length option, so you may choose playing longer games as you said.

Also, 'new to a platform' applies to everyone in any rating system, not only for a limited pool of experienced players using ELO.
Hence, initial K-factor boost exists in BGA to evaluate new players' skills quickly.

Well, I was just pointing out that IF you want maintain a high ELO, the system really discourages frequent players from playing with new people. If you pick only 3 of 5 games, a new player will be blindsided into playing for 45-65 minutes when they only wanted a quick game.