Ratings

A standard Elo rating system is used to calculate the ratings. It is a method that was used for the first time in chess. A detailed description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

For the implementation on the Little Golem server, an initial rating of 1500 is used. The K factor is determined by the number of games played. For the first game this coefficient is equal to 50 and after each game the coefficient decreases by 1. The minimum coefficient of K is 30, after that it does not decrease anymore. The rating cannot fall below 1100. The rating is calculated to four decimal places (one decimal place is displayed). The rating change in each completed game is displayed next to the player’s rating.

Ratings go up and down and do not have a permanent value like grandmaster titles have in chess - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmaster_(chess) .Therefore, ranks are also introduced on LG, taken from the game Go. More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_(rank)

Rank starts at Kyu level 22 and for every 50 rating points a higher Kyu is gained. 1st kyu is followed by 1st dan. To obtain 1st dan, a rating of 2200 is required. The next higher dan can be obtained after 100 rating points. Rank is only obtained after 20 games have been played. Until then, the rating is marked with a question mark. The rank is gained forever and never drops again.

There is a button on the bottom right of the game page that allows you to toggle between rating and rank display. The toggle applies to all LG server pages. It’s not necessary though, as the tooltip on the rating works at the same time.

The rating is calculated separately for each game and variant.