Board Game Arena

How does the point system work in the Arena? In the past 3 days I have taken 2nd place 3 times and got 1 point twice and zero points a third time. This seems odd to me.

If somebody quits or gets ejected for being overtime, the BGA standard is they lose (0 points) and everyone else wins (1 point), with no tiebreakers between the winners. You weren’t actually second place, though your name may have been second in the list; you tied for first, and had 1 point.

In Texas Hold ‘Em with winner takes all (as the current Arena season is configured), when the game runs to completion the winner has all the chips and everyone else has 0, with the tie-breaker being the order the players went out. So if you were the last one to go out, you’d be in second place with 0 points.

I mean at the end of the match, when they are giving ELO points, I have gotten 0 -1 +1 and +1. Not sure why so few points.

Also you should get a bonus point if you took out another player, 2 if you happen to take out 2 players.

FromLardToHard wrote: ↑01 April 2026, 15:06 I mean at the end of the match, when they are giving ELO points, I have gotten 0 -1 +1 and +1. Not sure why so few points.

On the game summary screen it will show you something like +1 ➞ [new Elo]

If you hover over that arrow you should see the breakdown of how that was determined.

For example, in this game where you were second of 4 and got 0 Elo as a result it was because you had an Elo of 271.63 to start with… the table winner’s Elo was 130.93 so you were favored to beat them, but you did not. So you lost 8.2 from losing to them. The other two players were also below you at 151.81 and 122.75, so you were favored to beat them as well and thus your victory picked you up less Elo… 4.45 from one and 3.85 from the other, for a total of 8.3 gained.

Net gain, 0.1 Elo, which got rounded down to 0. But that’s just for display; under the covers Elo is tracked to two decimal places, and you actually did go up from 271.63 to 271.73 as a result of that game.

So why do they match you with players that far away from you? Also do you get any bonus ELO for taking out other players? In some games I have taken out two other and even two in in one hand.

Have you set your filters to avoid players far from you in elo? No? Then anyone can match.

No elo bonus or penalty for any action during the game or for final score... All that matters is the placement at the end of the game: win, lose or tie against each other player.