Ratings graphs: stronger/weaker opponent

The ratings graphs seem to have an assumption that your opponent will always be stronger or weaker than you. Two questions: (1) If you are 7 kyu and your opponent is 7 kyu, and you win, is that counted as a win against a stronger player or against a weaker player? (2) What about handicaps? If you are 7 kyu and you opponent is 5 kyu and you take a handicap of 2 and you win, does that count as a win against a stronger player?

I believe @flovo or @Eugene has answered this before, but iirc the gist was this (please correct me if I’m wrong):

Suppose your rating is, say, 1500 and your opponent’s rating is also 1500 (because rank is only a scaled projection of rating). If you win the game, you were the stronger guy - so it’s a win vs weaker - and vice versa.

Sounds good for my first question. I didn’t think of going by the rating instead of the rank. I suppose that means that the answer to my second question is that handicaps are ignored when determining who is stronger.

  1. Stronger/weaker is decided by rating points. If your rating is 1547.43 and your opponents 1547.44 it’s counted as win against stronger opponent.
  2. The rank is adjusted for handicap before comparison.
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