Rating question

[ghochan]

Thank you for the information.

Not to be critical, since it really isn't a big issue for me, but it seems strange to me that my rating would go up or down depending on how my past opponents perform in the future after the game(s) against me. Shouldn't my rating be based on my opponent's skill level at the time of our game? If he improves over time after playing me, why should I be rewarded for that?

For example, say I play some young newbie named DarthRemark and, of course, I beat him in 10 minutes because he is inexperienced and, well, frankly, he stinks. Six months later, however, he makes it to the top of the ratings because of all that he learned from me. When I played him, he was at the bottom of the rankings and I deserved to only receive a few points because he wasn't a strong competitor. If I play him again and beat him, I would receive more points because he is now a much stronger player. But I don't understand why I would continue to earn points from that old game six months ago that I won with my eyes closed.

Spion, fuer mich kannst du das System auch auf deutsch erklaeren, obwohl die Anderen das sicher auch interresant finden wuerden. Ich wuerde gerne mit der Uebersetzung helfen, aber ich glaube dass dein englisch viel besser als mein deutsch ist und du wuerdest solche Hilfe nicht brauchen.

Vielen Dank.

ghochan

[Lion]

May I reply?
I actually read all the pages Hermann Kleier produced I was the person responsible for rating-questions in the dutch stratego federation, so I also asked many such things to Hermann before...

Now, as for what you say about this rating changing based on past results and these opponents new ratings:
I think this is mainly usefull for new players, whose rating is not well known. There might be a DarthRemark who appeared here from the zone and loses his first game here to a certain Lonello. Next he beats some bottom player and ends up with a rather bad rating, but he is a good player. Now the next few players he will beat would lose relatively many points for bringing him to the rating he deserves... But after a winning streak of 20 games it turns out he was not a bad player to begin with so those players he beat we unrightfully punished so much for losing to him, and they get compensated a bit.

It of course assumes that players in general don't improve/get worse very quickly. If they do then the scenario you picture appears, but games get less value when they get older, so if you played a game against Darth say 3 years ago when he was a newbie (supposed we had this rating) this game would have no more value now compared to the many recent games you played. So even though Darth is now "worth" more than when you beat him 3 years ago, you still wouldn't get much profit.

Only if a new player gets much better quickly or when you just don't play any more recent games you might get a somewhat too high rating, but this would be a minority of cases.

Hope this explains a bit why it's so,

Lion

[ghochan]

Thank you, sir. That makes perfect sense.