Why not a moving Elo average?

In seasonal games like baseball, we keep track of such things as a player's seasonal batting average, which we can compare to his career average. At the beginning of each season, the seasonal average is reset.

For a nonseasonal game like kdice, use a moving average (say, the last 100 games). Make the number of games big enough that most of the random part of score variation is smoothed out. Also, this number of games would be the threshold at which new players would become eligible for top-25 listings.

A moving average would discourage kamikaze-style playing that would occur toward the end of each rating period if scores were reset every month or whatever.

I like your idea, skrumgaer.

The current system reward players who can MAINTAIN a high ELO. Your moving average idea further enhance that goal and rewards players who are CONSISTENTLY playing well.

Kudos to you – great suggestion!

Reasonably accurate rankings, low punishment for playing badly/fun, no need to keep track of ## games, less boring rating number and much higher activity for top players are some advantages for rank vs average.

Ryan, any final decision on the reset?

About reseting ELO rating:
I've read the arguments here about this. They are very valuable. You can compare this to the gpokr reset, which works well. The significant difference however is not how this would affect each individual player, (it could be positive or negative), it is that this is a rating and not an accumulation of money. Ratings balance out and tend to stay small. Gpokr money inflates, ($200 million with 15,000 players in one month). They're both just numbers measuring success but it just feels wrong that something which is classified as a rating that gains accuracy over time gets reset. Maybe if it worked differently it would seem ok to reset this value.

About reseting score:
This value is closer to a gpokr money as a measure of success. It keeps going up and over time it becomes increasingly hard to catch up for new players. This definitely needs to be reset and I plan to do this every month starting April 1st. Ratings will stay the same since it does not suffer from the same amount of inflation.

But the main reason for a reset, although it does also help with score inflation, is to add a bit more fun with monthly competitions and trophies.

disappointed but respect your decision.

it would be intersting to see how the top 25 players move before and after (say 2 weeks) of the reset.