A friend of mine has completed one game on the site. If you view his profile it gives the usual p1200 and blurb about waiting for the fifth game to be completed. However, when I view my my buddies page you see him at the top with a rating shown of 1947.
I think this is a bug in the my buddies page in that it doesn't properly conceal the rating in the same manner that the profile page does.
I don't think the intent of the profile page is to fully conceal the provisional rating. It is mainly to avoid seriously confusing newcomers with the wild fluctuations of the first few games and to emphasise that the rating for the purpose of calculating the impact on opponents is locked at 1200 for the first five games.
It's not difficult to calculate someone's rating before they have finished five games (although it is tedious.) Just look at the results of their public games and check their opponents' ratings by looking at their profile graphs. With at most four games to deal with, applying the provisional rating formula is not too difficult.
Of course, now that you have discovered this 'feature' of My Buddies, it will be much easier to do the check that way 🙂
