Why do I sometimes lose rating for winning games by timeout?

[roberoonska]

I’ve noticed that sometimes when I win ranked games because the other player has timed out my rating will go slightly down instead of up. Should this be happening? Is it a consequence of the Glicko-2 rating system?

[BHydden]

I’ve noticed this once but it was only 4 points and I didn’t have any proof of it happening.

[Eugene]

For me, the answer is “as far as I know, that should not be happening”.

As BHyden said, it’s been mentioned once or twice, but no-one has hard data.

Note that the ranking graph only plots one point per day, so it might have gone down due to a bigger loss on the same day, if that happened.

[_KoBa]

@anoek

Your “current” rating is the rating that everyone sees and is used when match making and computing handicaps. When you finish a game, we add the game to the list of games, and compute your new “current” rating by applying the results of those games to your “base” rating. When recomputing, we also use your opponents’ “current” ratings as opposed to simply the ratings they were when the game originally concluded

So when your win, your rank is counted by your last 15 ranked games (or last 30 days if ain’t that active,) based on what are your previous opponents rank now.
Have ya endured a losing streak lately or simply lost against someone whos lost few sones after your game? Those can have big impact when counting your tally

[roberoonska]

Well for example, yesterday I won two games against the same player because he timed out in both. I started out at 1422. Winning the first game bumped me up to 1436, and winning the second game bumped me back down to 1434.

I’ve actually been winning many more games than I’ve lost recently, so by the time the games were done I was three stones stronger than my opponent, despite it starting out as two even games. Could that explain this weirdness?

I know its only a small amount but it seems really counterintuitive that I should ever be penalized for winning.

[BHydden]

@roberoonska

I know its only a small amount but it seems really counterintuitive that I should ever be penalized for winning.

I think the important thing to remember is that, although your rating updates after each game, this is a sort of live tracking of how the batch is expected to be processed. Nevertheless, ultimately our rating is processed in batches. You may originally get 50 points for beating player x, but if player x loses his next 10 games, it may well prove that the initial 50 points was too generous. it may appear that your rating went down after a win, but what has really happened is that your latest win plus the revised value of an older game ended up being less than the old game was originally estimated at. (eg. 20 + 20 < 50 ) both wins still have a positive result, but the net value has gone down.

I hope this makes sense, really though my advice is to just trust that this system is much more accurate at figuring out your true strength and to trust it without worrying too much about how much you change after each game.