I think that's pretty good.

A two place system will work out, I think. It keeps the spirit of the original to try and place first, is not too big of a blow of a blow to lose, and discourages picking on less experienced players. We'll see how it does turn out.

You summed it up well BoneMan.

I haven't put it in yet since I had second thoughts last night and thought I should sleep on it. I'll give it some more thought today. But I definitely think its the best candidate for a new rating system.

I tested it out on a test server, myself with a rating of 200 playing 6 others with a rating of 0. If I lost , (2-7th), I would lose 21 points. And if I won it was something like 120.

The second thoughts that I had were that the current system has a more diplomatic feel to it. You can surrender with 3 players and everyone gets points. Kind of a peaceful end to war. With the win/lose system this is lost.

An alternative is to use the first system scores for surrender endings and the second system scores for domination ending. hmmm

I actually like the current system -- i've taken plenty of bad beats -- a couple of 'i didn't get a turn' 7th place finishes, etc. thats part of the fun of the game. I also think that the midgame tends to get interesting in the 'do i fight for 2nd or do I team' aspect..as more people get experience playing, i would expect more alliances to stave off defeat by the top dog. Like you say, this is like poker and like other group elo systems where there is some aspect of luck. Over time, skilled players will rise up the stacks, despite the early outs.

Just a thought.

Playing for win/lose rather than for a place would make this a different game. I was shocked when I first got points for losing, but on reflection it is still an interesting game. It would be great to have both win/lose games and place games available on different tables.

Problems:

with win/lose, stalemates are likely, a 3 player situation could go on for ever, the smaller 2 always picking on the larger. It should be possible to check a box for 'agree draw' - if everyone agrees, winning points are shared 3 ways.

The problem with the place system is that 2nd v 3rd place is often totally arbitrary - at the whim of the winner. I would suggest (although it is a complication) that everybody eliminated after 1 player has a majority of the board is treated the same (i.e. based on the average rank).

ELO is good, even for chance games like this, but perhaps it should be a "flatter" version of it - i.e. the effect of the current ratings on the points gained or lost should be smaller than it is. This is only an issue when there are a lot of 0s around. Or, maybe, start everyone at 500.

Most game sites that use ELO start everyone off with 1200 points... I think this helps to smooth over the math so people's scores don't zero out so often. Something to think about for here.

measure does have a good point. Starting everyone at 1200 would make a HUUGE difference in terms of the big point swings. I don't think you'd have to change anything else.

I hope you put the new system in soon.

By the way, Ryan... if you start everyone with 1000 or 1200 points, then we can see not only who's better than average, but who's worse than average.

Right now, if you start with a sting of losses, your rating doesn't reflect it.

But if you started with 1200 points, and started with a string of losses, you rating would drop to 900 or 1000.

Starting everyone at 0 in some aspects breaks the ELO system.