Originally posted by Legend
Agreed!
Another Q. Why not determine the tournament entry rating by using the average rating of a player. Say the last 50-100 games. If a player has not played that many games yet then use the average for the number he has played. That should deal with erratic rating changes and fair competition.
Russ is going to start disliking me soon.
it seems to me that there are three "values" to ratings:
1. getting a sense of fair match ups, taking on the david-goliath match up - you know, slaying the dragon, or just getting a sense of who you are up against
2. providing an organizational device for creating fair tournaments, clans and leagues
3. providing a positive feedback reward mechanism to measure and motivate for achievement (and this last one seems to be the most "emotionally intense" one)
Given the three "values", the best rating system would:
1. provide the "truest" measure of actual playing strength, and
2. be resistent to "manipulations" for possible deceit and underhanded strategies to pick up points through artifically lowered ratings (somehow this seems to be very common even though it seems like a stupid thing to do to me . .but it's happening a lot i guess)
given the these points, why not this approach:
1. true ratings should never actually drop that much or that fast; like once you are a 2000 player, should you EVER be rated 1000 after that? if that makes any sense at all, then the entire rating system is broken
2. ratings shouldn't change so fast that they are a wild roller coaster ride up and down. that discredits any rating as valid
3. if these points make sense, then ratings need to be more stable and slower to change back DOWN! Thus, ratings could go UP (!) when the upward trend is earned, and down only so far back down, once they have risen to a certain level.
Now, having said all that, i'd like to point out that the TOURNAMENT rating, never falling more than 100 points below the maximum, actually does this.
So, my suggestion: don't change anything, just make the TOURNAMENT rating the "REAL" rating, and make the calculating rating the current one, but subordinate.
go ahead, beat me up now. i can take it.