I think chris had exactly 25, but I could be miscounting. Either way, his rating was higher when he had fewer games completed.

I won't argue that. Even looking at HHH's (what I believe is) incredible stats, he is obviously an extreme outlier. Players like him are extremely rare. Players who score extremely high ratings are much more common at lower game counts.

I am one of those who could have taken #1 having almost all the time 5 at the same time, and a ton of unexpired games. Gnuffone wanted to leave it so i'd take n1, but after 2 years of constant playing that would be so lame for me. No i dropped again when other players with 15-20 games unexpired joined like Luxis, PureMind and others.

Now i left and i'm thinking to wait 3 months as many other did, at least until something changes in the ranking.

if the incentives were not the current system (more games played is a disadvantage relative others in the top 10), i'm absolutely sure more of us would be playing the 1v1 ladder. why play if it's all about getting the most bang out of your first 20 games? after climaxing, do men keep making love?

adjust the algorithm and the ladder would have 5 to 10 more good players playing within a week. and since much of the 'community' side of the website revolves around the beloved 1v1 template, it's safe to say the forums would get a boost in activity.

who would rejoin if the ratings' upper limit were less inflated (in a staggered way) for games 15 to 25 and gave more incentive for players to play more games instead of less? i'd rejoin. i assume piggy and sze would. red probably would. and others would have less reason to quit.

I think Zaeban also managed to get #1 (2100 rating) with a lot of games (at least 40)

http://warlight.net/LadderTeam?LadderTeamID=272

count it yourself, i might have a 10% error

Is there a way to make this more fair in the short run? Obviously the system works great with many games played and the only problem we have is when there are too few games.

Does anyone know of a way that this could be fixed? We can find two players who have reached #1 with more than 30 games and probably 15(?)+ people who have done it with less than 20 games.

I think if there was some way to fix this (besides raising the amount of games needed to be ranked because that would obviously deter people) there would be a lot more interest in the ladder in general.

Yes there is, let me explain why did we see that much fluctuation when it comes to #1.

First of all the ladder rating is always a performance rating over past x games, it does not reprecent global overall rating, but rather how well you can perform in a given time period. For example Carlsen managed to get performance ratings >2900 in some chess tournaments, but he never actually reached that rating himself.

By the law of large numbers we know that if X_{i} are some random variables (here let it be performance rating in game number i) then (X_{1}+...+X_{n})/n ---> E(X) when n gets bigger. That explains easily why a bigger statistical sample gives us a more accurate rating. It also shows how a small n can give you a huge rating which would not be adequate (for example suppose someone won only 1 game against piggy when he had his record breaking rating, he'd be rated on performance ~2400). Now n=15 is relatively good from a statistical point of view, so in general the number of games is not a problem by itself. Now we introduce the psychological factor which is magnified by game management. For example in chess no new game is finished untill the game before had ended. Here we can postpone our losses if we have a decent enough positional understanding when are we better and when are we worse. Now, getting to number one is a psychological goal, which in general is not connected at all with playing at your best, it means besting all the others currently participating in the ladder, which can be temporarily achieved by postponing your losses. One more remark, postponing losses is much more valuable for people with less games played, because it has a greater impact on win/loss ratio, which is most important (read on the algorithm for details).

So how to improve it? The solution is really very easy, the player should be ranked once he completes his FIRST 15 games. That way he will not be able to replace "older" losses with "newer" wins. It would be much less annoying than moving the game cutoff up...

Also I do not think that is a really big deal, people that postponed losses took 1st place for a few days at most, we can more/less say, that all the best players either did or at least had the opportunity to hold 1st place for much longer. I think JSA made a list like that a while ago.

Are you suggesting that losses never expire? I'm not sure I understand. For some players (such as myself) who have improved vastly since joining the ladder almost two years ago that would be detrimental. I feel like this would only help the newer players who join only when they have already become "good".

^^I understand what you were saying now. Play each of the first 15 games in order, one at a time. Not that they don't expire -.- I tend to make things up when I'm confused.

While that would work great if everyone played as fast as they could, for some people who play slow, take vacations, and draw out games, those first 15 could take months to finish, with the games expiring before they got ranked. You would have to average one game finished every 6 days to complete 15 before time is up. For someone who plays slow that could only be two turns of a 20+ turn game.

anyone encouraged enough to count the number of unexpired games i had wen i took #1? I'm too lazy to do, but i thought it was like 25-30.

Most practical solution:
- rank games in the order they start (sze explains this above)
- rate the first 20 games exactly like how the seasonal ladder works
- use True Skill instead of the current ELO

Seasonal ladder's wiki:

"The rankings are determined using the same ELO scale that the existing ladders use, with one small modification. Players who play fewer than 20 games (due to leaving the ladder early or joining late) get a penalty of 40 rating points per game." Thus, games 15 to 19 would be a provisional rating on the 1v1 ladder.

True Skill (how it works and how it influenced the ladder right before I became #1):

http://blog.warlight.net/index.php/2012/01/trueskill/

With these changes, (1) people with less than 20 games couldn't game the system, (2) players with more games would be rated better, (3) the incentives of the rating system would encourage us to play more games, and (4) more good players would participate in the ladder.

Well talking about someone hitting high with low game count. [REGL] nich http://warlight.net/LadderTeam?LadderTeamID=2129 is currently on a 2019 rating, if he beats Z-Dog and Red before Frank's game finishes he might have a shot of getting into first. He isn't gaming the system, but the system lets people do this. He is on 9 games and currently his rating would put him in 5th.

Yeah, and I don't know if you've looked at his games, but he does not deserve top 15 even in my opinion.

Of course, I don't think I deserve top 3 the way I have played on the ladder.

It's another Red, not me.

Yes, that is why i put Red, if not I would've put [WM] Red
He is lucky, if i am correct you are better than other Red

I was confused because i couldn't find the game against him :D

Here is an example how how a person can make a top ranking without many games:

http://warlight.net/LadderTeam?LadderTeamID=2129

I am not saying he is good or bad (haven't looked at games, never played against), just that a small sample size can really benefit you.

He/she has 1 top 10 win, no other quality wins. If he/she wins 1 more game, they'd be top 3 on ladder with only beating the 8th player on ladder.

Whoops, just saw this was posted a few above. Can't edit it though.

A while back there was a guy called DEATH TACO who beat a really lackluster group of players (<1500 rating for the most part) and also beat HHH. He had over a 2000 rating when he finished his 15 games, then dropped off the ladder so no one could see a series of losses he took right after that. Before that particular run, he averaged something like a 1600 rating.

These particular examples seem to be more issues with winning every game you play. In the seasonal ladder Fizzer tightened the game matching some and increased the count to 20 games in order to reduce this problem. A similar fix might work in the 1v1 ladder. Even increasing the required game count to 20 would greatly reduce the chances of someone getting ranked without any losses.