> You can also try predicting it match by match and use percent chance to win (which is what online chess clubs like ICC use), but this leaves a lot to be desired in practice and also simply misses the point entirely: ELO is structured around players having a roughly equal number of games each tournament, and double elimination means that placements and number of matches played are always different. ELO, and it's commonly used variants like Glicko-2 or trueskill simply aren't well-suited for the format used in Melee tournaments.
I can't follow this argument; the point of doing this match-by-match and percentage-to-win -wise is exactly so that the number of games and placement do not matter. You won a round against someone with higher ELO? Your elo increases, their decreases. Doesn't matter if this was one game out of 20, or three.
Essentially, it rewards players who lose early over those who lose late. In a double elimination tournament, two people, one in losers and one in winners at the same point, the loser will play 2x the games of the winner.
So if a player wants to optimize for ranking, its actually in their best interest to throw round one of a tournament, play more games, and have their skill update more times.
The number of games matter because with more games you have more chances to win and update your score.
This exactly. I play an online game that uses ranking, and your best bet for breaking a 1500 is actually playing the game at odd hours when there are only a small amount of players online. Because of the distribution of the player pool, you're more likely to match with lower-ranking players (as there are limited number of similarly-ranked players). Then you slowly but surely creep up your ranking with very little risk.
'Breaking a 1500' and maximising rating are way different goals though. If you want as high a rating as possible, playing lower-rated players is probably not going to get you there - you're only getting a small increase per game.
Well you don't have the option for off peak hours in a tournament setting. There's also obviously a high increase in risk as you progress towards the finals of a tournament.
Then shouldn't your ranking fall again when you play in the full pool? If you're a strong enough player to maintain the higher ranking, you should reach it regardless.
>So if a player wants to optimize for ranking, its actually in their best interest to throw round one of a tournament, play more games, and have their skill update more times.
That's only the case if you believe your current ELO underestimates your real ability respective to the opponents you'll meet in the lower bracket.
Also if you lose your first game against a low-ranked player, you'll immediately lose a lot of points; then the wins against other low-rank players will not give you many points back.
If you're within a calibrated ELO system, your expected change in rating should be 0 for a match, and then having more matches doesn't actually help you.
I can't follow this argument; the point of doing this match-by-match and percentage-to-win -wise is exactly so that the number of games and placement do not matter. You won a round against someone with higher ELO? Your elo increases, their decreases. Doesn't matter if this was one game out of 20, or three.