ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑21 July 2023, 06:49
What does the word master mean? Saying master isn't a high bar validates my point.
A master is simply a player with a rating of over 700. My peers would generally be over 850, but that condition is necessary but not sufficient, largely because of the number of players who have used illegitimate techniques to artificially boost their ratings.
While master isn't a high bar by my standards, your game history shows it is obviously far beyond your current capabilities. And that's the point of it. It lets us exclude the people who aren't even close yet.
ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑21 July 2023, 06:49
Who do you consider the "best" players and why does that even matter? Players that you don't deem the best are still benefiting off of a faulty system. By your own admission playing with flams gives you an advantage. Your words so I am not drastically overstating. If two players play 100 games and one player wins only 65 due to not playing w/ flams and the other wins 75 that is 10 games in which one player receives +10 elo and the other receives -10 elo for those games. That is drastic overtime.
You only get +10 ELO for a win because your games have a low average ELO (in turn because you have an abysmal ELO). I never get +10. If I play a 4-player game with partners of a similar ELO to myself and score 30, I get something in the region of +0.5 ELO. If we score 29, we our ratings decrease. It's a bigger gain if we play 5-player, but it's still something like +3; nowhere near +10. And Flamboyants aren't generally turning 0 scores into 30s, even in games they rescue; they are usually turning 29 scores into 30, so the losses are smaller than you say.
The way the calculations grant different ELO adjustments based on the existing ratings of the players mean that players scores tend to reach an equilibrium (provided the player does not actually improve their play). Adjustments in the direction of your personal equilibrium are greater.
And I doubt that 10% of games played by players with (legitimate) ratings over 900 are converted to perfect scores by Flamboyants. I didn't say that's the effect on my games; just that it if were, it wouldn't bother me (alongside the requirement to play with more skill to achieve the improved results).
I'd say that the advantage granted to highly skilled players by Flamboyants is probably less than the advantage gained by playing 4-player rather than 5-player. I'd estimate that it's worth something like 20 to 30 ELO points. Maybe 50 at the outside, but I doubt that. Maybe even lower. So yes, you are drastically overstating the benefit.
Now, ChiefPointThief, your rating has been boosted to 142 by abandoning over a third of your games (56 abandonments out of 157 games, not counting 2 in training mode). My rating is currently 961. The difference of 819 is
not the result of playing with Flamboyants.
ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑21 July 2023, 06:49
There is a master game list. If you go to hanabi's game list you can see every game being played right now. That is where I got my numbers from. On that list you will see experts and masters playing with flams only.
So, an unfiltered list of games in progress at the time you looked. Not even an attempt to find games played by top players. And I'll remind why you were looking at those games: to check my statement concerning the consistent use of Black Powder (not Flamboyants) by top players.
ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑21 July 2023, 06:49
Conclusion: the current elo system doesn't adequately gage a players skill because it doesn't account for settings such as flams and black powder.
No. The system is certainly an accurate enough gauge of skill to allow skilled players to restrict access to their games to other skilled players. It is adequate for its purpose. We can afford some fuzziness around whether players within a few points of 700 or 500 can join our games, and the system still allows us to exclude you.
It is
imperfect, but imperfect is not the same as inadequate. Nobody has claimed that the ELO system we currently have for Hanabi is perfect, and I think we would all like to see the tables used for the calculations to be expanded and updated to take into account Flamboyants and Black Powder. But even that is a lesser priority than the change recently implemented, because players like you who have been using abandonment to boost ratings have produced much larger distortions.