ELO

[SandySandie]

What does ELO in the ladders mean?

[Compass Rose]

The following information is from Dog Soldier.

"I will try to explain ELO used at the blitz. If math and statistics make your head hurt, read this at your own peril. :-D
ELO at the blitz is based on the FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs) or World Chess Federation for those of you not familiar with the French French acronym system of scoring.
It is a complex, mathematical model that assigned everyone a base score at start. At the blitz IIRC we use 2,000 for new members on a ladder. The math works like this:

Rating Change = K-factor * ( Result – Expected Result )

Now that is how it works in chess. In chess there are only three levels of victory, win, lose or draw. They are assigned values of 1.0, 0.0, and 0.5 respectively.

At the blitz with our many levels of victory this becomes more complicated and I will not be going into the details, because frankly this was set up ages ago by a web master who has been gone for years. His code is buried in the mines of Moria here at the blitz. How exactly the script works is something I have not gone dungeoning here at the blitz to determine.

If anyone wants to understand the FIDE ELO system, the following link is a good one IMHO.
http://www.chesselo.com/index.html

If you can follow the math and explanation at that site, (do not blame me if you get a headache from this) then you can see that adapting the chess ELO system to the blitz would really be a matter of interpretation by the fellow who did it. He was a smart cookie because it works pretty good. The blitz does not host simple games like chess, so it is easy to say our ELO might be a bit more complex.

Bottom line, ELO at the blitz can give a rough estimate of a players skill level when compared to other players ELO in the same ladder. I say rough, because unlike chess every scenario in a war game is different at start and certainly none are as balanced as chess is at start of a chess game. So use ELO with caution, knowing that playing style and experience are nearly impossible to quantify. "

[SandySandie]

Thank you. I now do remember viewing Dog soldiers article, and yes it did make my head hurt so missed his bottom line, and the bottom line is a good statement, all understood. Thanks again.

[PoorOldSpike]

Here's an interesting ELO story- I was a member of the German  Wargame Players Club some years ago which only used the ELO system, I was at the top of their CM ladder for a while but later slipped way down because I'd been taking a layoff.
But then I began my comeback and issued challenges to the top ten players, but none of them would play me!
I asked the club Boss why not, and he said- "They're afraid to play you because they're high-ranked and you're low-ranked, so they know that if you win they'll lose a huge amount of ELO ladder points and they'll drop like a stone down the ladder, whereas you'll get a huge amount of ELO points and will rocket up the ladder past them"

Also, they knew that even if they beat me, they'd only score a tiny amount of ELO points because I was low-ranked, so they'd decided it just wasn't worth their time and effort playing against me.
The maths the club used in their ELO system was very severe and some members were complaining about it, but whether they've tweaked the maths since then to improve it I don't know because I left the club a while back.

[typhoon]

The following information is from Dog Soldier.

"I will try to explain ELO used at the blitz. If math and statistics make your head hurt, read this at your own peril. :-D
ELO at the blitz is based on the FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs) or World Chess Federation for those of you not familiar with the French French acronym system of scoring.
It is a complex, mathematical model that assigned everyone a base score at start. At the blitz IIRC we use 2,000 for new members on a ladder. The math works like this:

Rating Change = K-factor * ( Result – Expected Result )

Now that is how it works in chess. In chess there are only three levels of victory, win, lose or draw. They are assigned values of 1.0, 0.0, and 0.5 respectively.

At the blitz with our many levels of victory this becomes more complicated and I will not be going into the details, because frankly this was set up ages ago by a web master who has been gone for years. His code is buried in the mines of Moria here at the blitz. How exactly the script works is something I have not gone dungeoning here at the blitz to determine.

If anyone wants to understand the FIDE ELO system, the following link is a good one IMHO.
http://www.chesselo.com/index.html

If you can follow the math and explanation at that site, (do not blame me if you get a headache from this) then you can see that adapting the chess ELO system to the blitz would really be a matter of interpretation by the fellow who did it. He was a smart cookie because it works pretty good. The blitz does not host simple games like chess, so it is easy to say our ELO might be a bit more complex.

Bottom line, ELO at the blitz can give a rough estimate of a players skill level when compared to other players ELO in the same ladder. I say rough, because unlike chess every scenario in a war game is different at start and certainly none are as balanced as chess is at start of a chess game. So use ELO with caution, knowing that playing style and experience are nearly impossible to quantify. "

Hell I was around when the ELO system was first introduced does that condem me to the mines of Moria also. I also hum a mean MR Blue Sky :-)