Why do I lose ELO on a tie game?

[HairyGnome]

Why do I lose ELO when I tie?

I've only ever noticed it when I play against a lower ELO player: is this why?

[RicardoRix]

yes.

If you're higher, then you're expected to win.

[the555]

It’s stupid, a draw is a win, it comes up first place. How can it be counted as a win for one person and a loss for the other? Should just be 0 points for everyone.

[Romain672]

It’s stupid, a draw is a win, it comes up first place. How can it be counted as a win for one person and a loss for the other? Should just be 0 points for everyone.

Let's assume you play against the best of the world which win 99% of his game.
You manage to get a tie against him. Should you get 0 elo?

Btw, the tie isn't counted as a victory, you win and lose elo a lot less on a tie than on a victory/defeat.

[the555]

I’d say zero points is fair yes. It is counted as a win it comes up first in game history.

[Jellby]

It's not about being fair, it's about how ELO works.

[Remkar]

I’d say zero points is fair yes. It is counted as a win it comes up first in game history.

It isn't about winning points because you didn't lose, though.

ELO serves a specific function, and that is a relative numeric system to rank players (more specifically, to show how likely one player is to beat another player).

If you played someone 10000 times and tied every time, that is evidence that you should be ranked the same (in terms of ELO). Therefore, whenever there is a tie, both players are brought closer together in terms of ELO.

If a 150 ELO player played 100s of games against 400-700 ELO players and tied every time, we wouldn't want those ELOs to stay the same, because a correction is obviously needed.

Does that make sense?