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Tim's avatar

Really interesting post. I love reading about this. One of my students did his capstone project on whether the "Swiss gambit" is an effective tournament strategy (spoiler: it's not). He used Elo's formula to calculate expected scores for different rating distributions. It is surprisingly simple and mostly derives from the assumption that the winning odds only depend on the difference in ratings.

Something else I found interesting is that rating points are only exchanged. The higher rated player antes up more points but the total is always k, and the winner takes all (or 50/50 split for a draw).

I guess it's useful but I personally find it near meaningless. In addition to the issues you mention, for someone who doesn't play many rated games, it forever lags their actual rating (if that exists). And the obsession is probably unhealthy. I also hid the ratings on Lichess and love that feature, though I occasionally peek as well...

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Germaniculus's avatar

Chess is better suited for elo in some respects: The level of players is more consistent over the years, they play a lot of games and their actual value as a human being depends on it

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