Board Game Arena

After yet another game, in which a supposed 'beginner' bested me, causing them to gain nearly 100 elo, and me to lose 25, I will not for the first time, make this argument. Probably to again be met by a chorus of jeers from complacent players (or not very competitive ones).

Because it is often unknown whether a 'beginner' has really never played a game before (they do not have to, and may not, answer queries about it) they could have a huge advantage in gaining elo, as above. That does not concern me however, so much as the heavy loss a more experienced player may get if defeated.

Yes you can choose to avoid beginners, and in fact mostly I do. If i m hosting, i will often exclude them. It is not that easy however, particularly if they join after you as the last player, or you just didnt register that a beginner was included in a big line up, or you just be bothered/don't have time to wait.

I don't know why this couldn't be adopted. After all, players on 100 or below don't lose any elo when playing ... anyone. So its not like it would somehow ruin the whole system, or go against an important principle

wentley wrote: ↑13 June 2026, 05:09 If i m hosting, i will often exclude them. It is not that easy however, particularly if they join after you as the last player, or you just didnt register that a beginner was included in a big line up, or you just be bothered/don't have time to wait.

It looks like you are "excluding" them manually by just looking at who is in the game, or worse, kicking them after they join the table instead of using the built-in BGA filter settings that prevent them from joining at all.

If you are talking about your heat game you lost to three players with lower elo than you, two of which were already at 100, you were also going to get a decent elo hit with or without the "new" player

wentley wrote: ↑13 June 2026, 05:09 After yet another game, in which a supposed 'beginner' bested me, causing them to gain nearly 100 elo, and me to lose 25,

Everyone had pretty much the same rating, the lowest was at 0, and the highest was a 159. As a result, the rating changes weren't very large, though they were a bit smaller than I expected. You only lost 9.5 rating despite them being lower rated than you. I don't think they change the evaluations just because everyone was extremely low rated, so I'm assuming it's a quirk of 2+ player mechanics. Generally, you should lose 10 rating for losing to someone of equal rating to you, so your loss should have been double digits by that standard. Instead, it was a single digit deduction, the remaining 15 or so points came from losing to the other two players in the group, hence the 25 total. You were in last and so lost to all 3 players to create a total loss of 25 points, the 0 rated player was responsible for less than half of those losses. Their +80 was the higher k factor multiplied across wins vs 3 players.