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My opinion of the new rating system.

Just realised that some of those blue lines are misleading, this is better: http://i.imgur.com/b2ySkhI.png

It's exactly as the image dictates. Variants ONLY affect your Variant rating.
No it wasn't misleading, I got it. You merged pools but not variants.

Makes sense, but like I said, hopefully this will encourage more pool players. As of right now, the pools are not near as balanced as regular games.
Yes, pools will need to take on a different form. Their current implementation - besides our best efforts - is not very popular.

I believe the problem resides in them simply not being as easy to use as the main lobby. Nothing fancy about it, just not as straight forward.
pools should be excluded from the standard ratings. what are the percentage of total games played in pools compared to regular challenges ?
Yeah, I liked it better when pools were pools.

We still have pool ratings, but I don't like them merging with standard.

Oh well. I just need to play more pool (and win).
I don't like the pools ratings merging with the main rating either, they were more active when pool ratings were pool ratings.
the difference between the 1+0 pool ratings and bullet ratings are too big to include in the same standard rating.

for example I have 1800 1+0 pool rating and 1950 bullet rating (most games are 1+0). normally they should be similar. im sure its the same for many others.

either way once the standard rating is gone (its gonna be taken away right?) there should be less problems.
For the record, I'll provide an opinion that's contrary to what is being argued above: I believe pool ratings should disappear entirely.

I've read here many times that pool ratings are a better reflection of the "real" rating of a player, because he doesn't get to choose his opponents. (This argument is seemingly popular in part because pool ratings are generally lower.)

First of all, the impression that you can achieve a high rating by repeatedly beating weaker opponents is misguided; you'll quickly only earn fractions of points, and a single defeat would set you back dramatically (just ask the top players in the 1mn pool who invariably end up losing to someone rated much lower). The only case where this is possible is if the rating system introduces floor ratings and doesn't properly account for them in computations (I don't believe lichess does that).

More importantly, though, there is no such thing as a real rating. The only thing ratings measure is your standing in a group of peers. Stronger players are proportionally more represented in the pools, so the par for an average rating is harder to achieve. Similarly, the average strength of a player who plays enough to be FIDE- or USCF-rated is much higher than the one of the average user, so lichess ratings appear inflated compared to the "real" numbers.

If anything, using a single rating for a given time control will make it closer to the accurate evaluation of a player's strength, at it will reduce the rating deviation Glicko takes into consideration.

Let us simply use the bullet rating for the 1+0, the blitz rating for 3+0, the standard rating for 5+0 and 5+5. No more hesitation to join because "that lower rating is depressing", no more dual rating for something very similar.

(Pool games counting towards the bullet/blitz ratings was a very good first step, btw.)
Theoretically the rating system is supposed to make the average opponent rating not matter, but in practice this is not entirely so. From what I've seen the average opponent rating is a determinant for how valid a person's rating is.

The math and adjustments are hard to make correctly, there was that guy ChessNetwork who on another site achieved a >3000 rating playing people more than 500 points beneath him and getting 1 point each time.

I guarantee you if I played two different 1800 players, and one of them had an AOR of 1500 and the other had an AOR of 1800, I would be able to tell you which one has which AOR based on their play. The math and adjustments are a very fine thing, I have even read it suggested that to truly make the AOR not matter at all people should get 0 points for beating anyone 200 points or more below them.
Pretty sure that players can win 0 points for versing weak opponents.

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