@Ghost- perhaps it has changed, but as I understand it (and I think the site does at large) is based off your post about it on the GR site, namely that each player puts up some fraction of their GR (2/37, maybe?), and then this pot is distributed accordingly at the end according to whether it is WTA or PPSC. So in this sense, if you lose, your rating goes down by 2/37 whether you lost to the 6 best players on the site or the 6 worst, which is what I think rdrivera is referring to.

I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with this, especially because in general GR lag skill level, so it's fundamental "ethos" is for one to prove oneself so it makes sense that the differentiation is on positive results rather than negative ones.

I think what you wanted someone to say (maybe?) is that games against weaker players are not fundamentally broken, i.e/ that if GR were an unbiased predictor of skill then the EV for each player going into the game would be zero. This is true, but I think it's also worth mentioning that there is no doubt that since effectively all (good) players are underrated, playing against weak players is effective GR farming.

@Valis

Very true. My writing wasn't so good as a teenager, and will always not be well designed for the layman :P

@uclabb

It is true that your rating goes down the same for defeat against any opponents. This sentence is what I was after: "I think what you wanted someone to say (maybe?) is that games against weaker players are not fundamentally broken, i.e/ that if GR were an unbiased predictor of skill then the EV for each player going into the game would be zero."

The point about good players being underrating is convincing. Interestingly, though, when I was still an active player, everyone thought that good players would on average lose out against weaker players, and that to GR farm, you needed to avoid playing weak players against whom you had to do very well to get any benefit.

*Small correction: the "pot" interpretation is only valid for WTA. In PPSC, it doesn't hold, else if a player has a rating of 700 plays opponents with ratings summing to 300, then the better player is guaranteed to lose rating!

let us not even consider PPSC existing if we may please. it should have no bearing on the conversation

" the better player is guaranteed to lose rating!"

That hurts...