Babak the impatient is registered as an impressive 15th place with a rating of 354.533316271904.

Dammit Chris. :P

wow! I moved up 5 spots b/c of the changes?? wooooot

thank you jbalcorn ;P

and thx Ghostie, Chris and FS to you all as well.. specially Ghostie who deserves some sort of medal for all this work ;)

can I ask how the all time list works? Is it the best rating you've every had or is an average of all past ratings?

Best rating you ever had.

As Xapi said. (Hence "Peak rating")

Aww i'm only 432 now, tbh i thought moving so quickly to the mid 200's was a bit quick as none of my recent games were that fab.

and i'm not beating Trim anymore, grrrr

thanks tho Ghostie, don't mean to moan :)

Dammiiiiitttttttt, sorrry again messing up the forum with my logging in to do trims moves and then gettin sidetracked by the forum :P

Thanks Ghost, but I'm still confused (as I'm not very familiar with all the math behind the calculation) - if I remember correctly, my last rating (from the end of May) was also something like 510-520 or so. Within the last month I have finished 4 games & won all of them. It doesn't make much sense that the rating hasn't changed practically at all - do I understand correctly that also the former ratings were off then?

Wow Rait, 61 wins. Thats fantastic, congrats. :)

Rait, that is correct. There was a bug which basically meant that, as soon as you drew a WTA game (or to a lesser extent, played somebody who had drawn a WTA game), your rating was wrong. The tendency was for the error to inflate it.

What this means is that, in May, your rating was probably quite a bit lower. In fact, I can check what it should have been.

Ok, it's cool now, I understood

Rait, were those wins in PPSC? It's my understanding that if you have a ghost rating of around 500 and the total of the other six player's ghost rating is also around 500, that a win gets you about half the pot and thus you are just getting your points back and you aren't really gaining ground...

I honestly really appreciate all of Ghost's work, but I don't think a "perfect" rating system can be developed for diplomacy since it's so easy to gang up on a good player (makes that player's rating lower than it should be) and it's so easy to ride someone's coat tails in PPSC games (submit to a strong second place finish, thus getting you a higher rating than you should have) unlike in chess where it is one-on-on and the skill level of each person can be much more accurate. I think Ghost's system is MUCH better than total points, but I know for an absolute fact that you are WAY out of my league when it comes to diplomacy skill and yet I have a higher rating... It's all very interesting and fun to see what the formula spits out, and I think the overall picture is relatively accurate, but my earlier post was meant to be a joke as I am obviously over-rated by the formula, just as Jacob pointed out...

That does depend on what you think a "perfect" rating system is. In any game, it is possible to calculate the exact skill of a player precisely from few games. What is possible in all games is to calculate it to within a certain precision given a certain number of games.

The problem for diplomacy is two-fold. Firstly, the number of games played is generally fewer, so the precision must be lowered, and secondly, the nature of diplomacy is such that chance plays a greater role, thus, it would already take more games for the same precision.

As for riding coat tails in PPSC, according to the reward system, that is "good play". Thus the problem there isn't so much with rating system (be it points or G-R) but with what you define as good play, by the reward system.

To compare MM and Rait by another metric, % games won or drawn:

MM: 65.1%
Rait: 62.3%

However, MM has more draws than Rait for the number of wins.

Rait does have one problem in that he is an incredibly strong diplomat, but some players will realise this and almost immunise themselves against it, only half listening to him in a way.

I am really curious about Rait diplomatic skills - what makes him so skillful? Does he pitch his ideas really well (that is sell his tactics and strategy in such a way that you have to go along with him)? Does he use the soft sell - friendly personable etc in such a way that you want to go along with him. Or is he domineering so you feel you must go along with him?
Or is it less to do with his one on one communication and more about the way he plays other players off against each other.

... and MadMarx your record looks just as impressive. Why do you think he is WAY of your league? Or are you just being humble?

MM knows what happens to the leader of a pack of hungry wolves who all want to be number one.

@Babak - remember how I helped you next time we play :-)

I know I took a huge hit - I gained 75 points with only 3 games finished, and no wins. It was the WTA draws from live games that bumped me up so high. When I calculated my rating by hand, it was WAY off. I want my rating to reflect my true skill - so I alerted Ghostie to the problem.

Sorry for those WTA drawers that got hurt by the change :-)

I think the difference between Rait and MadMarx is how they pitch their diplomacy. MadMarx is probably the most persuasive player I've ever played against. Rait plays more "games", spreading discord, establishing diplomacy relative to game position etc. TMG is more like MM and MarekP is more like Rait, to include the other stratospheric players. But thats just my primitive analysis.

In my experience, MarekP is more likely to put himself into an invulnerable position and use that to his advantage diplomatically, with Rait able to use diplomacy to protect himself.

Ghostmaker, thanks for your reply, you make excellent points. Recent discussions I'm having in league play are slowly resulting in my realization of how narrow my personal definition of "good play" is, but your third party / neutral comments really drive the point home, which is much appreciated, especially since I've sold short all of your efforts in developing a MUCH better (obviously) rating system than total points in the process, please accept my apologies.

@ spyman: Have you ever had a VERY strong feeling that someone was about to stab you, that you couldn't really explain why to anybody, but that you'd bet the farm on that feeling? That's the best way I can explain it. It's very obvious to me, crystal clear, many small seemingly insignificant factors that add up to much more skill than I could hope to possess... Though perhaps I am somewhat over-focused on skills I lack rather than ones I possess, but even considering that the scale is still way out of balance...

MM is just being humble to divert attention. He knows the danger of people ganging up on top players and immunizing themselves to their silver tongue and he's forced to bring out some Diplomacy skills on the forum.

Rait's tactical skills are awesome as well. I believe there was one game in which I pitted myself against him, but every 50-50 or even 33-67 "gamble" he had to make, he countered me perfectly each time. It was like he could see into my brain.

much better... back in front of dj and friendly so I feel better ;)

Maybe I am just crazy...but I don't even see me on the list. Could someone check for me just in case I missed it? I did check both pages twice. Thought I would see it by now

Use Ctrl+F or F3 to search for yourself.

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