Erroneous league assignment

[Kamikaze28]

(07-27-2012 12:09 AM)ArtNJ Wrote:  With respect to the many games at once issue, its actually not a big deal. Correspondence chess has been dealing with that for decades. Basically, if a player delays a loss to gain points, then when they do take the loss they lose a lot more points. Conversely, if they take the loss immediately, then the subsequent wins yield more points. Yes, you can game the system to get over a rating threshhold for an achievement or to try and temporarily and briefly grab a certain spot on the leaderboard, but in the long run its very counterproductive.

True enough, but the short term repercussions from these kinds of cheesing may discourage long-term motivation thus rendering the point mute.

(07-27-2012 12:09 AM)ArtNJ Wrote:  As far as the encouraging people to play point, its hard to debate because there is no data so we are speculating about people's feelings. Certainly Blizzard put a lot of thought into it, but clearly there are people that are very turned off by the Blizzard system. Moreover, because its much more complicated than an ELO system, OML did not get it right out of the box, and it may still not be right.

Blizzard did not document their system in any way I am aware of - any available material has been reverse-engineered by the community. I don't know what kind of research Alex did before implementing this system. I don't know if there are books or papers on these kinds of systems, because that's not my area of study. What I do know is that if you think you can do something better than others, you are bound to take some risks.
Whether or not the system is 'right' is a very subjective matter and a definitive assessment requires amounts of data we don't have access to. We are limited to our own experience to form our opinion.

(07-27-2012 12:09 AM)ArtNJ Wrote:  I wont claim I can prove anything with this data, but I offer you the following information for what its worth: [...]
Well, I guess that data does prove one thing -- that the Blizzard hypothesis is at least debateable, agree?

Agreed.

(07-27-2012 12:09 AM)ArtNJ Wrote:  Anyway, OML made its decision, its set in stone. All they can do now is try and tweak the formulas so that the best players get top competition before they get bored and quit. Surely we can agree that no one should go 30-0 and be in Gifted.

I understand your point, but once again I'd like to explain that statements like "no one should go 30-0 and be in Gifted." are highly relative, especially in the beginning of a rating system. How good were these 30 opponents? The system doesn't know this from the start. It's bound to be cautious. 30 wins against unranked or freshly ranked players hardly means anything. 30 wins against Masters or Super Titans with high confidence ratings is a very valid reason not to be in Gifted League.