(I'm new to this cool game, so sorry if this idea has been brought up before)

It seems like there are several, fairly legitimate complaints about the scoring that keep getting brought up. One is the relatively high role that bad luck can play, especially in the first move or two. This can lead to early eliminations, and large point-losses, which have very little to do with a player's skill.

A second is the fact that players who are "away", often do better than active players, simply because they pose less of a threat to people, since they are doing nothing, leading to a better score for simply not playing.

My idea is to have only 4 places scored instead of 7--lumping the bottom 4 together. I think this would help somewhat for both these problems:

From what I've noticed, away players tend to finish in the middle of the pack--they last until the weaker ones are eliminated, but once the board is reduced to the stronger players, away players tend to be eliminated. They don't generally finish higher than 4th or so, right? So lumping the bottom 4 together for scoring purposes would eliminate their advantage.

Likewise, the first problem--the fact that the worst point-loss (seventh place) is also the most likely to be due to luck (early-round losses), would be mitigated--7th place wouldn't be any worse than 4th place.

So what do you think, guys (and tell me if I'm saying something stupid)?

it's not stupid but it has been discussed enough before... you should read the forum and the ELO-article on wikipedia.
to summarise: the bad luck in the first phase is random, so averaged over all games it effects everybody equally... problem solved. if you have trouble with loosing many points you should probably play against better players and beat them => win many points...
thats it. the rating system is fine, if you are a good player you'll manage to win back the points you've lost due to bad luck...
have fun!

ahh... and about the away players... if you're table-mates were fair, they'd kill them fist after weakening you... that's what happens on the higher rated tables at least...

your table mates.... (you really should add a feature that allows you to edit entries)

I read some of the forum before posting this, just not all of it. I know these issues have been discussed; has this specific idea has been discussed before?

"the bad luck in the first phase is random, so averaged over all games it effects everybody equally... problem solved"

The averaging effect applies to any scoring system that you apply across the board. That doesn't mean that they're all equally good. The bigger the role played by luck, the less exact the rating will be (i.e. the wider the rating-range will be for a given player).

As for fairness, well...I suppose if everyone plays that way, it's a de facto solution, but surely it's better to eliminate the problem then to count on people to be "fair" (and on the lower rated tables, I don't think people follow this convention.)

As for ELO: I'm not proposing to eliminate it, just to adjust it to reduce the luck factor, and make the ratings more precise.

I agree that any arguments on basing "players should play fair" are weak arguments. Many people just are not fair. Thats it.