After months of wargear and finally getting near 1700 ranking score I dropped to 1300 due to insanely terrible dice rolls in sever games in the past 2 weeks. I was really curious to ask the people who are at the top of the rankings to share your experience if you had any major UPS and DOWNS to get to where you are.

I'm starting to get really frustrated and want to hear some stories that I can affiliate with. I don't want to give up but sometimes I feel like unless I play tons and tons of games luck will dominate me. I'm limited to 10 games since I'm not premium so if I could I would get 200 games going... ^_^

So if any of you top dogs want to share your story about the grind to the top I would greatly appreciate it!! thanks boys :)

Hi! I'm not a top guy, but let me tell you some things!

First of all, apparently it's good for you not to be a premium. As I understand you'd spend your life in here trying to reach the top!

Second of all, don't blame luck! Luck is just part of Risk. Every game requires that you understand the position, the pace, the behaviour of other players and therefore develope a unique strategy. And also it requires you to constantly update those parameters as the it goes on. Doing that is what makes you a good, average or bad player.

Last of all, having "ups and downs" happens, don't get frustrated and play for the love of the game. This will help you through the "downs" and on the way to the "ups".

If you want my experience, I've been in nearly top ten of global ranking and now dropped around 35th place. And that happened when I reduced the number of my active games. So now I'm working to raise my stats (read: I'm working on QUALITY, not QUANTITY).

Cheers!

ps: right now I'm 30th in global ranking with 1783, 20th in board championship with 53 points but, more importantly, my winning percentage is raising, and its now 29% 

I'm not necessarily one of the top players either but have had my ups and downs.  Some of it has to do with luck (as I seem to be on an unlucky streak) but the other big factors are: new players are coming to the site and many are great players from ToS, players are changing their strategies and becoming more familiar with the boards (maybe somebody can verify but I believe the pace of new board creations has slowed), and somewhat to do with too many games going on (I have a bunch of games and sometimes don't focus as much as I should).

There are great examples of players with low total games but who have great scores.  Even if you play 10x fewer games than others, if you win those games you'll not only get to the top but you'll stay at the top!

Tesctassa II wrote:

more importantly, my winning percentage is raising, and its now 29% 

Even more importantly than this, your H-Rating is 59%.

29% doesn't really tell us much; if you played in nothing but 10-player games, 29% would be a phenomenal score, but if you played nothing but 2-player games, 29% would be ..well, terrible.

You can read the FAQ to get a technical description of what an H-Rating is, but suffice it to say, your 59% H-Rating suggests that if you played nothing but 2 player games, you would probably win 59% of them.

Hmm.. I just decided to check your 2-player game winning percentage and guess what it is...?

58.3%

M57 wrote:

Tesctassa II wrote:

more importantly, my winning percentage is raising, and its now 29% 

Even more importantly than this, your H-Rating is 59%.

29% doesn't really tell us much; if you played in nothing but 10-player games, 29% would be a phenomenal score, but if you played nothing but 2-player games, 29% would be ..well, terrible.

You can read the FAQ to get a technical description of what an H-Rating is, but suffice it to say, your 59% H-Rating suggests that if you played nothing but 2 player games, you would probably win 59% of them.

Hmm.. I just decided to check your 2-player game winning percentage and guess what it is...?

58.3%

lol! Pretty harsh!

Anyway, you're right about the ratio being almost meaningless, but I think you've got it wrong M57 and you can try it by yourself. My 59% on 2-players games alone would produce an H score of 74%. H score, as said in tecnical description, tells that if you have a score of 50%, then you're expected to win 1/n of n-player games, not that you if you play JUST 2 players games you'd win 50% of it.

You can see this by checking also other player's stats. And also, checking someone's stat is probably the best way to understand a player's value.

ps:By the way, let's keep this discussion "on topic".

Tesctassa II wrote:. My 59% on 2-players games alone would produce an H score of 74%. H score, as said in tecnical description, tells that if you have a score of 50%, then you're expected to win 1/n of n-player games, not that you if you play JUST 2 players games you'd win 50% of it.

..so if you have an H-Score of 50% you're expected to win 1/2 of your 2-player games.   1/2 = 50% If follows that if you have an H-Score of 59%, you're expected to win 59/100 of your 2 player games.

To expand on this.. to score a 50% H-rating in 3-player games, you need to win the expected number of games = 33%. As it turns out, you would need to win about 42% of your three player games to get a 59% H rating.  Winning 59 out of 141 three player games would do it exactly.

Here's another example from your stats... The average player is expected to win 25% of their 4-player games.. By definition, this would result in 50% H-Rating.  You however, have won 31 out of 100 games (6 more than expected).  This translates into a 57% H-rating.  Again, this is very close to your actual H-rating of 59%

I am curious how you translate your H-score of 59% into an expected 74% 2-player game win rate.

You can see this by checking also other player's stats. And also, checking someone's stat is probably the best way to understand a player's value.

Checking which stat?

In the interest of keeping the thread on topic as requested, I will relate that at one point after joining WG, my global rating exceeded 2000.  Within a few months it fell back down to ~1350, and as I type this, I'm sitting at 1855.

I attribute the drop to a number of things.  Luck of the dice is only one of them.

• The quality of my play was probably suspect because I was busier than usual during that time and might have been a bit more hasty in evaluating my positions and making my moves.
• I was also trying out a number of different boards because I gave myself a mandate to do so.  I probably don't play as well on boards that I am unfamiliar with.
• It's possible that I was "noticed" or taken more seriously by better players, and I wonder that these players might bring a different game against players that they perceive as a higher threat - consciously or subconsciously.

I know I play differently against better players.  Depending on the situation and the board I might do a number of different things.  For instance, on a large board, I might give them a wider berth and try and secure continents on distant parts of the board.  On the other hand, when there are a number of territories owned by numerous players, I try to play more aggressively against the better players (i.e., by attacking them first) to secure the area.

M57 wrote:.

I attribute the drop to a number of things. 

^ I was drunk for 18 days straight over the holidays... went from #3 to #15. Plus, the higher the GRS, the harder it is to hold on to it. GRS is a measure of streaky dominance.

Mongrel wrote:

 the higher the GRS, the harder it is to hold on to it. GRS is a measure of streaky dominance.

Agree.  And I think that's what I like about it.  It's a good measure of how well you've been playing (or luck you've been having) over the last 20 or so games.

M57 wrote:

Tesctassa II wrote:. My 59% on 2-players games alone would produce an H score of 74%. H score, as said in tecnical description, tells that if you have a score of 50%, then you're expected to win 1/n of n-player games, not that you if you play JUST 2 players games you'd win 50% of it.

..so if you have an H-Score of 50% you're expected to win 1/2 of your 2-player games.   1/2 = 50% If follows that if you have an H-Score of 59%, you're expected to win 59/100 of your 2 player games.

To expand on this.. to score a 50% H-rating in 3-player games, you need to win the expected number of games = 33%. As it turns out, you would need to win about 42% of your three player games to get a 59% H rating.  Winning 59 out of 141 three player games would do it exactly.

Here's another example from your stats... The average player is expected to win 25% of their 4-player games.. By definition, this would result in 50% H-Rating.  You however, have won 31 out of 100 games (6 more than expected).  This translates into a 57% H-rating.  Again, this is very close to your actual H-rating of 59%

I am curious how you translate your H-score of 59% into an expected 74% 2-player game win rate.

You can see this by checking also other player's stats. And also, checking someone's stat is probably the best way to understand a player's value.

Checking which stat?

lol! I made a HUUUUGE mistake (staing up 'till 4:00am isn't of much help!). I forgot that "O" in the FAQ means "Opponents" not "number of players" (to satisfy your curiosity that's how I got that 74)....

Anyway, I did said I wasn't a good player, so...

As for my raising win ratio, you can think it this way: I play more 4-to-8 players game than others, so if my win ratio is increasing, my H-rating is going to increase as well. Probably that's what I was trying to say (but I did it awefully...)

And as I asked, this was the last post (I had to write it) about this matter.

I have falling from a GRS of near 2000 to 1200 in about a week (the consequence of bad play and too many games).  For the same reason I have also lost close to 10 championship points in a week as well.  With that said, the GRS is a very unstable stat, streaks of wins or loses greatly influence this stat, whereas the total CP score is much more stable as long as you have points coming from several boards.

Also, I do not understand how anyone can sustain a 2000+ GRS, so I must conclude that they are great players.

When I joined the site I rose fairly steadilly until I hit 2750, then I pretty much hit a brick wall.. I was fairly quickly busted down to 2400, and since then I have basically varied between 2300 and 2600.  I have noticed several other individuals briefly flirt with the 2700s, and fairly soon they get busted back down into the 2300 - 2500 range.  I think people tend to gravitate towards a certain score that suggests their level of play, but the score also represents your current streak of luck.  If you are having a particularly lucky streak you might get a couple hundred points above your level, but it will even out sooner or later (and the same for a loosing streak).  I think an interesting stat would be your average score over the last month or so.

I think it is worth noting that at the time I hit my peak, I was very heavilly playing a small subset of maps at which I was particularly good at (Guantlet, Total Wargear, Speakeasy among others).  I have branched out, and I am currently playing a wider variety of maps, which I think is a factor in my general lowered score.

To build off of BlackDog, maybe, a high, a low, and daily average GRS would be interesting for both monthly and all time.

My highest ranking so far was 2775. Best ranking: first.

Alpha wrote:

To build off of BlackDog, maybe, a high, a low, and daily average GRS would be interesting for both monthly and all time.

"All time" low (or possibly high) would necessarily include 1000.

M57 wrote:

Alpha wrote:

To build off of BlackDog, maybe, a high, a low, and daily average GRS would be interesting for both monthly and all time.

"All time" low (or possibly high) would necessarily include 1000.

yep, not necessarily for all, but for most I agree.  I did lose my first few games.

Personally, I don't know how you guys do it.  I have 41 games going now on 30 different maps.  I don't like playing more than 1 game on a map at the same time and today reminded me why.

A WarGear: The Gathering tournament started and hence I got 5 games all at the same time.  Now this is one of the few maps on the site that I go into expecting to win and I quickly dispensed of 2 opponents and was feeling pretty good since they were both better overall players than I am.  All of the sudden I had turns in the 3 other games at the same time and I took the turns in them and then when I go my next turn on 1 of them I all the sudden realized that I took the back row rather than the 2nd row and so I wasted units and am not getting any bonuses!  I do that whenever I have multiple games on the same map because I think I am playing one of the other games and I mess up what I'm doing.

I know, this is completely silly but that is the reason I don't like playing the same maps at the same time because I'm a moron.....clinically!  I like ranking the stats by different categories and I am all the way up to 13 on most losses and 16 on most games played.  If there was a stat for most different maps played I'm sure I would be 1 or 2 since I've played every map except for 2.

Oh, and I really thing that drinking and wargearing should be a stat we keep track of somewhere.  I specifically remember a great fail and rambling post by a certain Dwarf over on ToS that still makes me smile low the many years later.

ecko wrote:

My highest ranking so far was 2775. Best ranking: first.

Tell us about your experiences and 1 thing that you have learned to help you become a better player.

Personally, I don't know how you guys do it.  I have 41 games going now on 30 different maps.  I don't like playing more than 1 game on a map at the same time and today reminded me why.

 

I generally do not play more than 1 or 2 on the same map... and I usually only play about 20 games at once.  Fortunately neither has any effect on ranking.

Yes BD, but you are a genetic freak when it comes to Online Risk so I exclude you.

Purple is the color of you and Wonder Woman and I don't really enjoy being beaten by either of you anymore.  I now have "You have been eliminated by BlackDog" emails go directly to the same folder as the "You have been eliminated by Yertle" and "Your map has been reviewed" emails......stuff I try to pretend never happened.