Rating

What is ELO rating ?

Your ELO rating for a game is your level at this game. It's a 4 digits number followed by sign .

Example: 1648 .

If you never play a game on BGA, your initial rating is 1500 . Each time you win a game your rating increases, and it decreases each time you lose a game.

How many points do I gain / lose for each game ?

ELO points gains / losses depend on the level of your opponents, and your rank at the end of the game. Some examples:

• If you end the game at a better place than a player with a higher ELO, you gain a lot of points.
• If you end the game at a better place than a player with a lower ELO, you gain less points.
• If you end the game at a worse place than a player with a lower ELO, you loose a lot points.
• And so on...

Some advice

• There's no use beating players a lot weaker than you (not many points to win). Try to find opponents of your level: it's both more fun and more good for your ELO.
• The game rank is very important to calculate the ELO. This is the reason it is important to continue fighting for the second place during the game if you think you can't win.
• The number of ELO points you can gain/lose during a game increases with the number of players. The maximum is reached when there is the "recommended number of players". Try to play games with this recommended number of players.
• When you are the first player to quit a game in progress, you loose as many points as if you would finish the game at the last place, plus an additional penalty of 10 points. Even if you are in a difficult situation, your interest is to play the game until the end - or concede the victory to your opponent.

How is my ELO ranking computed ?

The BGA ELO system is directly based on the standard ELO rating system, in use for chess.

The ELO system main principle is the followin: the ELO points difference between 2 players determines the probability of each of them to win the encounter. If two players has the same ELO, their probability to win are 50/50. If one player has 400 more points than the other, his probability to win is 90%. ELO points gains and losses after each game tend to adjust ELO ratings of each player in order this principle is applied.

ELO system on BGA has some specificity:

• During your first 30 games, your ELO rating is more "elastic": you can win (or loose) more points at each game. This way, your ELO rating converge faster to you "natural" rating.
• Original ELO rating system has been designed for 2 player games. For games with more than 2 players, BGA considers (for the ELO rating) that you win a 2-player game against each opponent after you (in game rank) and that you loose a 2-player game against each opponent before you (in game rank).
• Games with more than 2 players last longer. For this reason, there's more points to win (or loose) in such games... as long as the number of players does not exceed the "advised number of players" for that game.

Okay, but I want to know the formula !

The formula is exactly one's used by the ELO rating system, with the following adjustments:

• At first, when someone left a game for any reason this game is not taken into account by the ELO rating system.
• K=60 for the first 30 games, K=40 afterwards.
• K is multiply by (N/2) for N-players games. If N exceed the "advised number of players" for this game, K is multiply by (A/2), where A is the "advised number of players".
• If 2 players has a rating difference greater than 600, we consider that their ELO difference is 600.

Good players, Experts, Masters

• Good players: > 1600 ELO
• Experts: > 1800 ELO
• Masters: > 2000 ELO