If I lose against a stronger player, but only by a few points, would my rank increase?
The number of points doesn’t matter. Only winning or losing does.
7 Likes
No, your rank will decrease. But only by a little, less than if you lose to someone your rank.
3 Likes
Your rank will most of the time decrease
There is a slight quirk in the rating system where it might increase in a very special situation, but that has nothing to do with how many points you lose by
2 Likes
Since the tweaks in 2021, your rating should always go up when winning and down when losing a ranked game. And the only thing that matters for how much it changes is the rating difference between you and your opponent.
(ok there are few special cases where game is annulled for some reason, those games will be ignored by the rating system so they wont affect your rank)
7 Likes
That special situation being winning, right? 
1 Like
When the thread is about:
… then “winning” does indeed seem to be very special 
2 Likes
The special situation was if the rating points you lost from your loss were less than those you lost from some historical loss that got pushed out of a rolling window of games used to calculate your rank.
4 Likes
I had forgotten about the 2021 update, especially since my motivation for go fizzled out around that february, sorry
1 Like
True, yes
Thanks for all the responses everyone!