It's from a time long ago where a player's ranking was determined by their ELO score. With ELO, there's more risk to your score when you play people significantly lower than you, so tables requiring a specific score were introduced.

I remember elo starting at a 1500 base, and how it got reset to 1500 at irregular intervals (leading to a lot of bitching).

I don't recall it being set at a 0 base. Maybe that was slightly before my time, or maybe I just sucked and didn't look at score at that point. Do you remember this at all?

There was a time where you earned points based on your winning a game, but (key difference) the amount you won was based on your ELO. You didn't need to get many wins (or play many games in general) if you were rated high enough, because the payout was so significant at higher levels of ELO.

We did get to the point where points were reset monthly, but there was a brief time where ratings were done by ELO. I don't think ELO was fully reset all that often, but it's sure impactful when that did happen.

All that being said, memory is a funny thing, I may not be correct.

And you're right, ELO typically starts at 1500....so what on earth was the +200 then? Was this actually from the pre-ELO days? (Those are really hard to remember.)

@ Montecarlo

I agree: I Love this game
Now that we have elimination table I feel fresh air in it.

Seems we love risk management ;) (our nicks...)
All Best for next 10 yrs to Ryan and all coworkers and players.

sup Ryan, how is the driving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TEBz94xvVA

Ryan's from Toronto... that's Montreal.

I know, I don't think it's much different weather wise, I lived 10 years in Toronto :)

Yeah, I'm stumped on the 100 vs 200 table thing. Only guess is it's some kind of pre-elo system. Ryan, do you still check forums? Would love to see if you remember.

I remember at least two complete elo resets. The first time was fun because I ended up racing Cody as we both started out quite lucky. First to 1600, 1700, 1800, etc.... But then I lost a couple in a row, and dropped right off the leaderboard.

This would've been before the points system was implemented where you accrue 1/elo_rank points after each game. Once that scoring system was implemented, there was less fun to be had, and a lot more pointwhoring.

For some reason (perhaps rose-colored glasses), the simple elo system with no monthly points was the most carefree time for me. There was no pressure to win a month, you could just relax on your high elo if you wanted. (which led a bunch of us to start begging Ryan to implement a system which would subtract elo if you were intentionally dodging playing just so that you could maintain a leader spot).

Now that I'm rambling, I would love it if he went back to pure elo, no points, no monthly competitions. There's something about those competitions that encourages pointwhoring something fierce.

it's pretty different... I am also in Toronto, and can tell you there's no cars on ice happening here, for example.