Most noobs wouldn’t be aware about the genesis of the points system on Diplomacy.

A long time ago in a place far far away, Diplomacy was played without points. Over time, as the game became more popular, there were more and more CDs, people taking on too many games, and an inability to be easily able to know who was a “good” player and who was a “bad player” and how to easily and effortlessly find people who would not go into CD.

So, the wise old owls (Kestas et al) who were running the site, introduced “points” with the aim of being able to easily allow for more games between people of the same skill. Largely, all the aims of introducing a points system worked.

This relates to Babak’s well-founded complaint about suboptimal playing by Dragnaur. Assume someone has a habit of playing suboptimally, and another player has a habit of usually winning (eg. Babak). It is obvious that the player with suboptimal tactics would leak points, and usually not exceed 100 . On the other hand, the “good” players would gain points, so that their balance would rise to a total where they were as good as any other players on any given points level.

If the points system was actually used by the good players (eg Babak) to discriminate who their opponents were, then there would never be any possibility that they would have to submit to playing with players (eg Dragnaur) who the good players find so outrageously objectionable.

This doesn’t apply exclusively to Babak. Instead this is just a pertinent example. If you’ve got, say 3000 , then why not try to play a 300 point game if you’re looking for a good challenging game against other skilful players.

Instead people focus on Ghost Ratings**.

Now this diatribe would be complete, except the WebDip rating system is imperfect (IMHO). Firstly, the overwhelming majority of players have less than 500 . If you wanted to exclude noobs/suboptimals then you would have to set a buy-in of 101 . But this, if you’ve only got 300-400 , is a significant strain on your resources, and if you lose then you’re back down to the 200-300 range, and incapable of joining any further 100+ games without another significant hit. So then people just create games with 10, 20, 30 instead and complain when players go CD or do daft things (like the sort Babak was complaining about).

My recommendation to Kestas is that people should not be allowed to bet more than ¼ or their points. This way, if experienced players wanted to exclude noobs/others from games, all they’d need to do is start a game worth 26 , instead of the usual 101 . And, if players with 1000+ wanted to exclude those with less than 500 , they’d just need to start a game worth 125 . Simple really.

My recommendation to other players, especially those who can afford it, is to start and join games with a high buy-in. Simple really.

Comments welcome...

**Ghost ratings have their place too, it’s another way of determining skill in a very fair manner. However, due to the fact that V is fixed and not chooseable in setting up a game I think it is best to not have ghost ratings as the “official” ratings. Unless it is possible to have a system where the 17.5 is variable... but still that would not allow you to exclude people from games who didn’t have the requisite points... Some mathematical twist may be possible to implement though......

(Sorry for the length of this!)