And I thought this thread was about Electric Light Orchestra... Oh well, time for my Geritol and warm milk.

I dunno...

Unless an algo can actually predict the result of a game with precision high enough so that the game does not need to be played at all, I'd say that the result of any given game is still mostly a function of what you had for breakfast that day. I see not that much point to increase the rank granularity - which would be necessary if the 'improved' rating algo were to have any effect on the rank. If we don't want the rating to be reflected in rank, then why bother?

For now, I think what we need is some general wide-margin 'pockets' of rank to give the players some idea how to find an even game or how to set the handi. Which we do have in the current kyu/dan system, and I think it works pretty well.

What I think is infinitely more important than tweaking the rating algo is to find a way to make the ranks more uniform around the world. That would really be worth putting effort into, imho.

I dunno...

Unless an algo can actually predict the result of a game with precision high enough so that the game does not need to be played at all, I'd say that the result of any given game is still mostly a function of what you had for breakfast that day.

This isn't really about increasing rank granularity (of course as you say there's a fair amount of randomness in who wins any given game). It's about increasing the accuracy of the ranks people actually have (e.g. fixing the 4k who's really 2k or the 2d who's really 1d). For example, there are "corner cases" (as Harleqin mentions in his signature) such as people who improve quickly or people who stop playing for a while and then come back (either stronger or weaker, depending on what happened while they weren't playing tournament/rated games).

It's nice if a rating system is better at deciding what handicap people should play with as then everyone gets to play more interesting games and fewer routs.

Edit: Your comment about syncing up the world's rating systems is on a different topic I think. Coming up with better ranking systems is an interesting and useful mathematical exercise. Syncing up the rating systems of the world is all politics. A completely different job, and probably a job that would be done by different people.

I dunno...

Corner Cases are Corner Cases for a reason. They usually sit right between the ranks, and given the random factor to each of our games I am not sure if there is a great benefit of forcing them into this rather than that rank. Chances are - their actual playing strength jumps back and forth between these ranks anyways, on daily basis (sometimes from game to game.) Eventually they will learn enough (or forget enough) to find their way firmly into a rank. And if not, given the randomness of our play, I am not sure its really such a big problem.

You are implying that a rating algorithm's job is to predict who will win a game. The actual job is to predict the likelyhood of each player winning.

And I thought this thread was about Electric Light Orchestra... Oh well, time for my Geritol and warm milk.

"Don't Bring Me Down" started playing in my head when I saw the thread title...

I'd say that the result of any given game is still mostly a function of what you had for breakfast that day.