Moving this here, because I was derailing the original conversation. 

I said:

For me personally the thing that most keeps me from trying out new boards is that there are no unranked games.  I know this has been discussed before, but I can't remember what the result was.  Is Tom philosophically opposed?

It seems like it ought to be a relatively minor change to the website, and IMO would do more toward promoting diversity of play than any CP formula would.

I'm curious if I this is a common thought?  Would the rest of you play more new boards if you could play unranked games more easily?

Picking up from there, we get a few comments of either yes, unranked games would be good or that they use dev, tourneys, private games as unranked.

Itsnotatumor:

To continue the hijack what's wrong with devs, privates, and the occasional tourney? Devs are how I always learn M57's boards in order to start winning when it counts.  And, privates seem totally underutilized. Only a few people ever invite me and half the time they're full before I get around to joining. 

NewlyIdle:

FWIW, speaking as one who plays tourneys almost exclusively, I don't like the fact that non-team tourney games don't count in general and board rankings.  It makes no sense to me.  If it's really just a back-door way to provide unranked public games for board learning, then foo on that.  Provide a front-door way instead with an "unranked" option at game creation.

As for what's wong with devs, privates, & tourneys...

Devs - Only playable while game is under development & only if developer turns on the dev flag.

Privates - requires friends who want to play the same board.  What if you don't have many friends on wargear?  What if you want a chance to expand your circle?

Tourneys - requires a tourney.  Tourneys are also hard to fill.  Games with more than 3-4 players per game, require huge #s for the tourney, and so they almost never fill. 

It's a pain having to invite people to private Devs - I'm a pretty outgoing person so I'm not too uncomfortable putting out cold-invites, but I'll bet there are some who are not as comfortable asking people who they have never played with, much less shared a word.

I'd like to see most flavors of games becomes available in un-ranked form.  One that particularly appeals to me is having the ability to invite people to an otherwise public un-ranked game.  I can see why this format might be a bit shady for ranked games, but otherwise, I can't think of a reason it shouldn't be allowed.

One that does seem a bit unnecessary would be un-ranked tournaments. What would be the point?  Tournaments should count - period.  If you want to learn a board, play a single ranked or unranked game. In fact, I've never understood why tournament play is not a factor in determining CPs. Champions win tournaments, don't they? Personally, I've always felt the paradigm for determining CPs was a bit backwards in this regard. Magnus Carlsen doesn't get his #1 chess ranking from one-offs, does he?

One thing that does come to mind where unranked public games is concerned is the issue of cheating.  Is it an issue at all if games don't count?  Or will there be players who just like to win and figure this is an easy way to slip under the radar? I'm also thinking about how these games show up in the 'charts'? ..even as unranked, they count, right?

Quick question because I can't remember. Is an unranked game creator currently able to terminate the game they started?