Board Game Arena

Hi,

I am.playing 2 player dozito, which, when played by two advanced players, is mostly (if not pure) luck.

I see that i lose about 3 times what i win in ELO rating.

Lets consider a pure luck game for example, a toss of the die hame, highest wins, re-roll.on tie.

Once you reach 100 ELO, you lose 3 times what you win, you will never reach a high ELO. The more you play, the more you will "decay" back towards 100.. how can this be right?

I would have expected a zero sum system, at least for luck based games.

Love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

There is no money involved, nothing to lose or gain but ELO and maybe pride? Its not a big deal. The system isnt perfect and it would be near impossible to adapt the ELO for each individual game.

Dont worry about ELO and just enjoy the game.

I am not sure what you are talking about, it is - for the most part - a zero-sum game. If you paid attention, almost all your opponents you played recently, they lost or won the exact Elo that you won or lost.

This is not in contradiction to decay back to 100, Elo is reflecting win probability. If there is a high luck factor, there is not much difference in win probabilities between players, hence players tend to have similar Elos.

peaceful-lion559 wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 14:51 Lets consider a pure luck game for example, a toss of the die hame, highest wins, re-roll.on tie.

Once you reach 100 ELO, you lose 3 times what you win, you will never reach a high ELO. The more you play, the more you will "decay" back towards 100.. how can this be right?

How can this be right? It's exactly what is supposed to happen in a pure luck game. If there is only luck, then everyone has the same win probability, hence everyone is stuck roughly at the same Elo levels.

What you need to understand, your current Elo is not only dependent on your skill level, but also to a large degree on recent luck, your Elo will fluctuate extremely widely around your "true Elo" in luck-heavy games.

I don't say it's great, but it is what it is.

If you are rated higher than your opponent, then you are expected to win the game. So yes, your rating increase for a win will be less than your rating rating decrease for a loss. This is exactly how the rating system is supposed to work.

peaceful-lion559 wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 14:51 Hi,

I am.playing 2 player dozito, which, when played by two advanced players, is mostly (if not pure) luck.

I see that i lose about 3 times what i win in ELO rating.

Lets consider a pure luck game for example, a toss of the die hame, highest wins, re-roll.on tie.

Once you reach 100 ELO, you lose 3 times what you win, you will never reach a high ELO. The more you play, the more you will "decay" back towards 100.. how can this be right?

I would have expected a zero sum system, at least for luck based games.

Love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

You don't lose 3 times what you win in elo, you made that up. I see your last 4 games were +7, +7, -7, -8. Looks about even to me. I see some higher variation if I scroll lower, which will show things like -13 and +13.

Your elo gains/losses are determined by your relative rating to your opponent. If you play someone lower rated you lose more for losing and gain less for winning, while if you play someone higher rated you lose less for losing and gain more for winning. It is zero sum. The winner gains the rating the loser lost. There's some acceleration in your early games to get your account to the right rating, but after the first X games it will settle to normal.

If you're playing a game largely determined by luck, don't expect to get a very high rating. You don't earn rating just for showing up, you have to do better than your opponents, which in the long run requires playing a better game to win more often, something which games of mostly luck don't offer as much opportunity for.

Ceaseless wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 15:50

peaceful-lion559 wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 14:51 Hi,

I am.playing 2 player dozito, which, when played by two advanced players, is mostly (if not pure) luck.

I see that i lose about 3 times what i win in ELO rating.

Lets consider a pure luck game for example, a toss of the die hame, highest wins, re-roll.on tie.

Once you reach 100 ELO, you lose 3 times what you win, you will never reach a high ELO. The more you play, the more you will "decay" back towards 100.. how can this be right?

I would have expected a zero sum system, at least for luck based games.

Love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

You don't lose 3 times what you win in elo, you made that up. I see your last 4 games were +7, +7, -7, -8. Looks about even to me. I see some higher variation if I scroll lower, which will show things like -13 and +13.

Your elo gains/losses are determined by your relative rating to your opponent. If you play someone lower rated you lose more for losing and gain less for winning, while if you play someone higher rated you lose less for losing and gain more for winning. It is zero sum. The winner gains the rating the loser lost. There's some acceleration in your early games to get your account to the right rating, but after the first X games it will settle to normal.

If you're playing a game largely determined by luck, don't expect to get a very high rating. You don't earn rating just for showing up, you have to do better than your opponents, which in the long run requires playing a better game to win more often, something which games of mostly luck don't offer as much opportunity for.

I noticed this when i was around 200, managed to get just above, lost one game, then needed 3 games to get just above 200, lost one game, needed 3 more to get above 200, and so on.

peaceful-lion559 wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 14:51 Once you reach 100 ELO, you lose 3 times what you win, you will never reach a high ELO.

peaceful-lion559 wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 16:46 I noticed this when i was around 200, managed to get just above, lost one game, then needed 3 games to get just above 200, lost one game, needed 3 more to get above 200, and so on.

One post you say it's 100, now it's 200? Make up your mind. But let's scroll down to when you were last 200, which was... yesterday. I see you get there, gain some 6s, there's a -10 loss, you gain 9, I see a -12, a gain 8. Those aren't triple numbers.

I finally found a triple digit comparison where you gained 5 and lost 16, except it was for something ridiculous. https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=821850533 You gained 5 for beating a 0 rated player, meaning they had never played this game on BGA before. They gain 1 rating for losing because this was their first ever game. https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=821852635 You take them on in a rematch and beat them again, but 1 rating isn't really much different than 0, so you still only get 5 points. https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=821850766 You then managed to lose to them, hence the 16-point loss. Their +46 came from this being their third game ever, so the impact of those early wins/losses is multiplied until they get more games in. If you're beating up on a complete beginner, your numbers are going to be much lower for wins and higher for losses than if you faced more appropriate opponents.

More regular numbers, on the other hand, came when you played people closer to your level. https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=821629532 You were a 207 vs a 190. You got 9 points for that win. Their larger drop means they were newer on BGA and still within their first few games, so BGA was getting them settled, checking their history indicates it was their 11th game ever, hence their higher gains/losses for the time being, which will settle down with more games. https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=822391076 Here you only lost 7 points for a loss, as you were a 145 vs a 242. As expected, they gained the same amount of rating you lost, as they're not completely new.

ELO is a bad system for luck based games, because ELO is weighted towards your most recent games. For a luck-based game, your elo will reflect if you are on a winning streak or losing streak, more than your ability.

An alternative system that looks at your whole recent history would be better for luck-based games. One example is "Massey Method".

https://datascience.oneoffcoder.com/massey-method.html

peaceful-lion559 wrote: ↑17 March 2026, 14:51

Love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

Avoid playing Arena, because in Arena, you cannot filter by Elo.
Play non-arena games and set an Elo filter to avoid being matched against players with very low Elo, because in a high luck game, you don't want to be playing against players rated lower than you are.

Maintaining over 200 Elo in a very high luck game is almost impossible mathematically.

With a 100 Elo rating difference you are expected to win 1.78 games for each loss, which is a 64% win rate, 36% loss rate. If the game is such high luck that a 100 Elo player has over 36% chance to win then sustaining over 200 Elo should not really happen.