I went from 511 to 148 \m/ in the peak-gr

yay, from 700something to 460? brilliant.

cheers Ghost!

Uh....at around 683 the format starts going all wacky. Anyone else see that or just me?

638*

Hadn't noticed. I also haven't looked beyond the top 50 of the list in a long long time.

1 game finished and I'm up to 31st. Not too bad. My lack of games isn't really helping me much though.

Only dropped 25 spots. I was expecting worse after an absolutely horrid month. What I find hilarious though is that half of the *students* from the School of War are now higher ranked than their TA's

The School of War must be a GREAT school then.

1223-1229 is fun

"Uh....at around 683 the format starts going all wacky. Anyone else see that or just me? "

Looks fine to me.

Yeah, Cachimbo, EmperorMaximus, and Scmoo472 are all in the top 100, though that is probably more their doing than the schools. As Dean though, I'm very happy it turned out like that. :)

Thanks TGM.

@jmo: Amazing jump 85 places to rank 35!
@santosh: Amazing jump as well!
@Agent K: Congrats on your re-entry, you'll have to join some of our invitationals!

I have a really DUMB question about Ghost Ratings. Is one way to achieve a really high GR just to play a LOT of games. So long as you come out at least marginally ahead on average you GR will grow - is that right?

For example my ghost rating is 175. Since started with a ghost rating of 100, I have added 75 after a total of 28 games. Thus on average since I have started I have added 2.8 ghost rating points per game (some times I lose, obviously, but I seem to be gaining just a little more than I loose). Thus if I continue the same way, after another 153 games I should be on track to overtake MadMarx (but I won't really because by then he will have continued increased too). I realize this is a GROSS simplification, but am I basically right - I just need to play a LOT more games if I want to seriously rise in the rankings?? (obviously if I was a LOT better I would rise much more quickly, but given my mediocre talent for the game)

No, spyman. It doesn't work like that. I think there's an explanation on the Ghostmaker's website.

I tried to read TGMs explanation, but not being a mathematician it went over my head. This is my simple understanding - let me know where I have gone wrong.
Each player invest a certain portion of their current GR in a game. If you win you get all the GR invested. If you draw you get (Total GR Invested)/(Number of player in draw). And if you don't win and you don't draw - you lose your investment. Is that right?

Given my history (win/draw/defeat ratio) so long as I keep playing players of the same standard on average as I have been doing (some high GR, some medium or low GR), and so long as I maintain my standard of play (sometimes good, sometimes bad, but good a little more often than bad) my GR will trend upward over time (like the stockmarket - up and down but up a little more than down).

I guess I must be wrong - but I what have I missed?

... apart from the fact that as my GR rises it gets harder to maintain the growth, as I'll either be investing more relative to other players, and thus my returns will not be as great, or I'll play higher rated players and I won't win or draw as much. So appreciate there are limits.

Got my first Ghost rating! Im 722!

Congrats, Diplomat :)

"I have a really DUMB question about Ghost Ratings. Is one way to achieve a really high GR just to play a LOT of games. So long as you come out at least marginally ahead on average you GR will grow - is that right?" -spyman

Absolutely not - Lando Calrissian and The Czech have clocked up, by far, the most played games on this site but their GR rating/rank is fairly low in comparison to what most would accept as their high level of skill.

If you want to increase your GR quickly, you want to try and play less games with noobs and sub-par players to yourself and have more select games with higher-rated players to:
a. develop your play further through experience against better competitors
b. giving yourself the best chance to win more GR points relative to the probability that you will win/draw/lose.

@Sarg, playing lots of games could help if you were still only playing the right games.

I find PPSC low-pot gunboat to be the worst for GR. Live games generally don't help either since they can be so unpredictable.

Losing all my games this month didn't help much either.

Broke the top 100 and top 50 this month, excited, haha.

Also, awesome jump there Santosh!

@That's very true Lando but I would wager that it would be somewhat difficult to find "a lot" of "right games" all taking place in any 1 month period. Obviously, that depends on the definition of a lot and right games - but if one was talking about 30-50 games a month as a lot, I would argue that it would be near impossible to get that number of games that fall into the categories I outlined to spyman.

Good one JMO!!!

"Live games generally don't help either since they can be so unpredictable."

This is very true indeed - and it's such a shame because playing a game live can be very fun and intense.

I have *got* to stop care bearign and letting players in on draws. I don't care about the points, but it's hurting my GR. Two losses and three draws (a 5 way to noobs, a 5 way to good players, and a 4 way to good players) and I still lost 25 places on the list, down to 83. This sucks.

You're right, I agree. And the right game is different for anyone. If you look at the people at the top they have all taken different paths to get and stay there. It seems some people do well playing against the best of the best, while others get lots of wins playing against lesser opponents.

Someone who draws a lot against the best players usually does just as well as someone who gets equally as many wins as the worst players.

Who could posiibly play 30 to 50 games to completion in a month? I guess if you played live games, maybe. But for those of us who do 1-2 day turn arounds, we'd have to be playing 100+ games at a time. The 6-10 I play is more than enough to keep me insanely overloaded. :-)

I agree with Lando, that you can have different approaches and still get to the top, but if you look carefully the top 50 players you will see most of them ended less then 3 games in the month and this is a trend (well, PE is an exception, but this only prove´s my point eheheh) . It´s hard to keep a good level playing a lof of games at same time or a lot of live games with random (and mostly poor) players.

@Draug - Don´t start thinking that way. I think GR is great but it´s not the game objective. It should not have any influence on the way people play the games and this has been discussed a lot in the past.

I know, but it's just frustrating to get penalized for being nice. What's it matter if we drag it out to the three way or let the two little guys who fought hard and stayed important survive and make it a five way? It matters in GR, that's for certain.

Also, congrats to dejan reaching the runner up position. With MM being so far in the lead, almost hors concours, it´s like being in the top spot.