Recently, a “new” player called Gardiyan has beaten the strong bot wanderer_c in his very first game. Probably, this guy is in fact the former ahmedi who achieved a rating of 2000+ some years ago. Then, he totally crushed me, stopping my streak of about 50 wins.
How rude is that?
In that game, I couldn't win a single elo point if I won.
And I could lose 30 points should I lose.
I was one of the rare 2000+ player not to snub Monthly Cups, accepting situations where I can only win 1 or 2 points (or even 0) and can lose many.
If now, strong players create new accounts (starting at 1500) to punish me for not being elitist, I think this is over.
When I started to play breakthrough, I was very pleased to meet strong opponents rather quickly.
Then, I tried to pay that back while I was becoming a more advanced player by keeping on playing Monthly Cups.
For sure, cheaters/multi-account players ruin it all.

I dont know how you could know he was ahmedi …I think you brought up some very interesting points…

Who's ahmedi? I can't see him in your list of opponents - got a player ID?

I do remember some suspicious sock-puppetry in breakthrough a few years back, by another person who chose to play under a turkish flag. Ray smoked him out in that case:
http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=120&topic=16
http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=120&topic=23

Maybe he is the same guy, maybe he's forgotten the password for all those old accounts? Maybe he's turned over a new leaf - but what's is he supposed to do? At least with MCs, you can chose if you want to sign up or not, so can try to avoid that one player as his rating stabilises.

Maybe it is a new user to the site. Or is it axiomatic that all strong players are already users at littlegolem? :)

I don't grok the motives of such sock puppet rating manipulators, but if the littlegolem rating system is so brittle that a game against a new barely-established account can hurt your rating so much as if you'd lost a game against an established weak player, then what's the point being so emotionally invested in the ratings?

It's not just little-golem. It's a pretty-much unsolvable problem. Someone expert in the game will always take points off other people on his way up to the correct rating. It's just more noticeable when it happens to higher-rated opponents. The only solution is to play more, ratings will level out in the end.

Incidentally, this is a good reason for there to be several well-behaved differently-rated bots playing the game - they can act like a pH-balancing buffer-solution, always prepared to pass ratings points up or down as necessary.

I believe there are rating systems more sophisticated than just “locally” adding/subtracting some amount to each player's rating after a game and not doing any “global” computation/adjustment to the pool of ratings. I could be wrong, but I recall reading that KGS for example repeatedly recomputes all players' ratings to try to minimize the deviation of actual historical game results with predicted/expected results based on the ratings, and a player with few games is considered less significant/influential for this purpose. Or something like that… the result/intention being that a strong player who has just created an account won't demolish the ratings of players he plays while climbing the ranks.

Hmm, some more info here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?KGSRatingMath

E.g. “Using this formula, KGS constantly recalculates the most likely rating for every player based on the games they played. Old games are decreased in weight exponentially with a half life ranging from 45 days to 15 days (weak players have short halflifes so their old results don't affect them as much).”

But I claim no special knowledge about this stuff… :)
Perhaps someone more familiar with different rating systems and techniques can comment. :)

IIRC, USCF (and they can't be the only ones) don't calculate a new player's rating until she's played 4 games. The opponents' ratings are not affected by those 4 games. The new player's rating jumps discontinuously from non-existent to a value derived from the results of those 4 games.

It's an alternative to starting everyone at 1500.

ITWA makes the first 10 games special too (mostly to protect partners rather than opponents). To protect everyone, it also has a ratings reliability factor too - unknown players move quickly, well-known players move more slowly.

Returning to the original post, I suggest you take a broader view of the situation, edbonnet. It was not that long ago that Wanderer was beating you fairly regularly. How did you respond? By taking on the challenge and playing many games against Wanderer until you got to the point where you now pretty much never lose to it.

You and I are now in a similar situation. As I must now deal with my nemesis (you!), so must you deal with your new nemesis. As I work to find ways to improve Wanderer in order to win games against you, you must work on your game to learn how to beat your new challenger.

You (and I) may lose a few rating points along the way, and I agree the hit will be even harder because of the ridiculously low rating of this new player, but in the long run we will be better players, we will probably ultimately end up with even higher ratings, and the game of Breakthrough will be the better for it.

Just my 2 cents worth.

I am in constructive dialogue with Gardiyan presently. I believe that he has read this thread as he invited me to a game - i.e. he seems to have opened the dialogue (though he made me move first, so in practice I said the first words). From what he has said so far, there is no evidence of any malicious intentions. And it is certainly not my intention to provoke any.

Rating figures maybe overrated ;-). Are there special privileges for players with high rating? If not, then why bother? I suppose the target should be to win games, not to achieve a high rating.

Thank you, I agree with what he wrote.
the important thing is the game.

And it is nice u are here gardiyan. I enjoy loosing my points to u :)

not rating, itself is important to be strong.
children doing match with Kasparov :D

Why are you eluding the question?
Are you really a beginner or have you played breakthrough with another account in the past?
In our game, you played many strong moves which require some experience, so I assume you are not a genius beginner, but rather an accomplished player benefiting the effect of surprise.

Can you elaborate on “children doing match with Kasparov :D”?
That seems totally random.

I agree with all of you saying that rating is not important, only the game matters.
In fact, it's hard to say when you win almost all your games on time (against a notorious spammer) or from opponent's bad mistakes ruining interesting positions.
Now you totally trapped me, gardiyan, you could have the courtesy to answer my question.

ingilizce olarak konuyu iyi anlatamıyorum, onun için türkçe olarak yazıyorum:

-benim geçmişte bir hesabım vardı (ahmedi), fakat uzun süre hesabıma giremediğim için zaman aşımından çok sayıda oyun kaybettim ve hesabımı kapattım, yani bir daha hesabıma (ahmedi) giriş yapmadım. şu an yeni bir hesapla (gardiyan) devam etmek istedim. bunda hile durumu yok. eğer ben iki hesabımla birden oynasam yanlış olurdu. ben sadece eski bir oyuncu olduğumu söylememekle hatalı olabilirim. edbonnet ve wanderer_c tarafımdan haksızlığa uğramış olabilir, kendilerinden özür diLiyorum.

“children doing match with Kasparov” ben burda “Kasparov bazen satrançta çok iyi olmayan acemi insanlarla satranç oynuyor.” demek istedim.

edbonnet 'Waiting players for new tournament' bölümüne kayıt olmakla düşük rating oyunculara karşı kaybetmeyi göze almış oluyor. bunun için kimseye kızmaya gerek yok.
ben edbonnet'in yerinde olsam kaybettiğim için bu kadar sorun yapmazdım. sonuçta kazandığı ratinglerin çoğunu güçsüz oyuncuLardan eLde etmiştir.

sonuçta ben tek bir hesapla oyunumu sürdürüyorum.

G00D GAMES…

I can not tell good english as a subject , as I'm writing for her Turkish :

- I had an account of my past ( ahmedi ), but can not get the timeout for a long time from my account I lost a lot of games and I close my account , so my account again ( ahmedi ) was not signed . moment a new account ( guards ) wanted to continue . No tricks in this situation . if I 'm playing more than two would be wrong with your account . I just say I was a former player , but I could be incorrect . edbonnet and can be wronged by me wanderer_c of them, I'm sorry.

" Kasparov match with children doing " I'm here, " Kasparov at chess , sometimes not so good with people playing chess novice . " Meant .

edbonnet ' Waiting for new tournament players ' section to register low rating afford to lose against players you got going on . You do not need to be mad at anyone for it .
I wouldn edbonnet would not make so much trouble for losing . The rating most of the gains resulting from the weak player has .

I continue my game I calculate the resulting one .

G00D GAMES …

ingilizce olarak konuyu iyi anlatamiyorum, onun icin turkce olarak yaziyorum:

-benim gecmiste bir hesabim vardi (ahmedi), fakat uzun sure hesabima ulasamadigim icin zaman asimindan cok sayida oyun kaybettim ve hesabimi kapattim, yani bir daha hesabima (ahmedi) giris yapmadim. yeni bir hesapla (gardiyan) devam etmek istedim. bunda hile durumu yok. eger ben iki hesapla birden oynasam yanlis olurdu. ben sadece eski bir oyuncu oldugumu soylememekle hatali olabilirim. edbonnet ve wanderer_c tarafimdan haksizliga ugramis olabilir, kendilerinden ozur diLerim ( I am sorry).

“children doing match with Kasparov” ben burda “Kasparov bazen satrancta cok iyi olmayan acemi insanlarla satranc oynuyor.” demek istedim.

edbonnet ‘Waiting players for new tournament’ bolumune kayit olmakla dusuk rating oyunculara karsi kaybetmeyi goze almis oluyor. bunun icin kimseye kizmaya gerek yok.
ben edbonnet’in yerinde olsam kaybettigim icin bu kadar sorun yapmazdim. sonucta kazandigi ratinglerin cogunu gucsuz oyuncuLardan eLde etmistir.

sonucta ben tek bir hesapla oyunuma devam ediyorum.

G00D GAMES…

Okay, in that case, we are all glad to have you back ahmedi!
(I am also glad I guessed your identity only based on your style)
I am looking forward to playing more interesting games with you!

You're a detective. :)
I can explain myself to you…
I'm happy :0)

Whilst attempting to feed my ratings points to gardiyan, so you guys don't have to suffer so much as he creeps up (I care not about my rating, I'll level out in the middle of the no-hopers quick enough) - I accidentally beat him ;-D Fortunately, that was the invitation game, with no reatings points transfer. Most importantly it was a fun and interesting game.

Right, lets get on with playing more games!