Lichess,
Please reconsider your position on denying rating refunds for players whose ratings are provisional and were victimized by a cheater.
I reported someone who cheated, and it cost me 34 points because it was my 2nd game after a 4 month absence. You agreed with my assessment and banned the player, but I lost a lot of hard-earned rating points simply because I was unlucky enough to play against a cheater only 2 games after returning from a break. It's unjustifiable to deny a refund simply because a rating is provisional. It actually makes more sense to refund a provisional rating loss because it's so many points.
Now I've reported another cheater and am not certain if I am going to be refunded, because my RD was still over 100 at the time. If that report is also approved and I'm not refunded, that will be 52 points lost in 2 games due to playing against cheaters. Even 34 is unacceptable, but 52 is outrageous. At the 2000 level, 34-52 points is very difficult to regain.
@JG_on_DGT said in #1:
> At the 2000 level, 34-52 points is very difficult to regain.
How hard it is to regain has nothing to do if you're 1000, 2000, or 3000. It's all about your RD, and as this is still high, your rating will readjust quickly. And the now (incorrect) lower rating accounts for higher gains in future games, so any game played after that loss will compensate.
It really is not much of a deal, the rating will quickly converge to the appropriate level. After a couple of games, the influence of that game will be basically zero.
> At the 2000 level, 34-52 points is very difficult to regain.
Not if your RD is over 100, hence the lack of refund.
Thinking Outside the Box:
Some will love this idea, and others will hate its sarcasm and terminology. A scar is a scar, and the word "cost" is exaggerated. If you say "cost," then think about the 1500 rating points that were "lent" to us when we joined. When are we planning on returning those 1500 rating points that were "loaned" to us?
Rating Compensation:
Assume a feature like this... You may return those original 1500 lent rating points anytime you want. How would you go about returning them? Well, I would deduct a percentage off my points gained when I win games. With enough saved deductions, I'd be able to compensate for the 1500 originally received or the abuses caused by other means.
Rating systems:
Chess ratings are designed to accurately reflect a player's skill level based on their performance against other rated players. While losing rating points after a defeat can be frustrating, especially if the opponent cheated, the rating system is meant to adjust up or down based on the results.
Rather than seeking to recoup rating points, the focus should be on maintaining fair play, detecting cheaters, and having a robust system to handle violations. Allowing players to effectively undo losses would undermine the integrity of the rating system itself. The rating should reflect one's actual performance over time.
@Toscani said in #4:
> When are we planning on returning those 1500 rating points that were "loaned" to us?
you have to return them with interest. after all, lichess is not running a charity here.
One thing people often forget in these discussions is that the way the system is designed, having 50 points less means that you gain more points (or lose less) for each of your game. This is why a full refund does not make sense if you already played some games - and would in fact be unfair. The more games you played since, the less need for a refund. In other words, the rating tends to "fix itself" whenever there is any irregularity, e.g. whenever you win or lose a game for reasons unrelated to your performance.
And yes, the higher your rating deviation is, the faster this "self healing" process works.
i definitely agree that points are hard to earn no matter what level of player you are. even if your rating is provisional, every point comes from hard-earned wins and draws, so i think they should definitely refund the rating points if u became a victim of a cheater.
also instead of viewing the 1500 points as lent, i'll recommend viewing 1500 as 0 points and everything else how many points above/below that
@markma2010 said in #7:
> i definitely agree that points are hard to earn no matter what level of player you are. even if your rating is provisional, every point comes from hard-earned wins and draws, so i think they should definitely refund the rating points if u became a victim of a cheater.
This part shows complete misunderstanding how the rating works. You would be right if rating was rather a sum of points cummulated for each game independently of your current rating, then missing your points from a game would be a loss that could be never recovered without a (full) refund. But that's not the case as we tried to explain repeatedly (last time in #6, i.e. the comment just before yours).
> also instead of viewing the 1500 points as lent, i'll recommend viewing 1500 as 0 points and everything else how many points above/below that
Right, 1500 is just an arbitrary constant used to center the rating distribution somewhere. It could just as well be 0 but then we would have to deal with negative ratings which many people wouldn't like (mostly those having negative rating, I believe). BtW, if you look at the "Glicko-2 paper" (
www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf), you might notice that the first step in the calculation is to "normalize" the rating values by subtracting 1500 and dividing by another constant.
@mkubecek i agree with your point, but i think i never talked how fast you will recover the rating, im just saying that no matter what sd you have you need to like win games to get them back
Guys, are you serious?
How long do you want to sweat a single loss? That is what happened: a single game lost. People lose games all the time. It is no big deal for your rating at all.
And if you lose many points because of high RD, you gain many points for wins as well. How comes that nobody ever complains "oh, my RD was so high, I won a game, now I am overrated?"
Really, one game... just take it as a loss like any other. You wouldn't worry for a week if you simply blundered a piece, lost on time, got disconnected or simply got outplayed.
I know the saying "Don't care for your rating, it takes care for itself" is very hard to follow. But what is a rating worth if you're not playing? And if you're playing - as mentioned - it will adjust *very* quickly.
