How the ratings and boosters work
Everyone starts at 1200
Your rating only changes when a match is confirmed by both players. The moment it is, the app shows you what it did: something like +15, 1216 to 1231.
Every result counts together
After each confirmed match, the app works out everyone's rating again from all the results in the event at once: the ratings that best explain who beat whom. Chess uses the same idea for tournament performance ratings. Two things follow from it.
- Beating strong players counts for more. A win over the player who goes on to top the table is worth far more than a win over someone who loses to everyone.
- Your rating can move while you aren't playing. If someone you beat keeps winning, your win over them looks better and your rating rises. If someone you lost to keeps losing, that loss looks worse and it drops a little. The rating page tells you who moved you and why.
The same opponent counts as three games at most
However many times you play the same person, those games count as three in total. Playing a friend all night is fine, but a friend losing to you on purpose twenty times is worth three games, not twenty. New opponents always count in full, so playing different people is the fastest way up.
Your rating page
Tap your rating on the event page to see how it moved over the event, what each match did at the time and what it is worth now, everyone you have played, how close you are to your next booster, and the event day by day, including who topped each day.
Topping the table
The Alpha of the Pack is the highest rating among players with enough matches: 3 for a one-night event, 5 for anything longer. That stops someone winning two early games and sitting on them.
Draws
A draw counts as half a win for each player and doesn't count as a win or a loss on your record.
When boosters unlock
Unlocking a booster means you may add one more pack to your pool. In most shops you buy it at the counter, like any other pack; if the entry fee covers it, the event says so. Unlocks are counted from your total losses, not a streak. With the default threshold of three:
- Losses 1 and 2: nothing yet
- Loss 3: one booster unlocks
- Loss 6: a second unlocks, and so on
At most 3 losses to the same opponent count towards boosters in an event, so two friends can't take turns losing to each other to collect free packs. In events longer than a week the limit starts again each week. Losses to anyone else keep counting as normal.
Keeping it honest
If two players keep playing each other and one of them wins almost every game (6 or more games, 85% or more one way), the organizer sees the pair under Worth a look. It's only a prompt: usually it's just a much stronger player, and nothing happens unless the organizer decides it should.
Your player card shows boosters as delivered / available. Unlocking a pack and actually getting it are tracked separately, so the organizer always knows how many are still to be handed over.
Draws don't count toward booster unlocks, since they aren't losses.
Older events
Events created before the new rating keep the original system: standard Elo with a K-factor of 32, where each match moves only the two players' ratings, and every loss counts towards boosters.