ELO

Hi

I'd like to suggest that the impact of timeout games on ELO calculation be changed. If a player has won a few games thru opponent timeout, it can really distort their ELO rating. I agree there should be a penaty to the player who times out, but not such a benefit to the "winner".

Yes I agree, timeouts do distort the true ELO of the winning player.

The problem with reducing the benefit for a winner that was won against a timed out player is that a clearly losing player could delibrately timeout to spite the winner player so they wouldn't get the full benefit of the win.

Most of our chess players on here wouldn't do that of course, but it a sad fact that it would happen eventually with a bad loser playing.

How do you think we can get around this problem? Any suggestions will be looked into.

Perhaps an algorithm along these lines :-

- player timing out still loses what ever points he / she does now.

- for the wining player - discount the score if they are down on material (or discount less if equal in material)
- for the winning player - discount score if timeout occurs in first xx moves (maybe with a few breakpoints : first 10 moves / next 20 / thereafter).

nice suggestion