party backgammons site

[KingMedicine]

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I rarely play backgammon but I am curious about something. And that is whether they are going to rate players and make your rating available to other players or not.

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A big difference in ratings between players will increase the rake.

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what the hell? what is the reasoning behind this? they obviously spent some time setting the rake schedule up - any ideas why there'd be 200% commission when ratings diffs are 300 or more? is that true even if the lower rated player wins? if so, not only does he have to beat a way better player, but he gets less money than if he beat someone his own level.

do other BG sites do this or did party dream this up?

[BigBrother]

gammon empire does it.

[KingMedicine]

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gammon empire does it.

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any explanation of why?

[BigBrother]

@ Bluff:

A big difference between BG and poker is that for all 'cash-games' (ie - non-tournament play) currently available online, you are playing Heads-Up. You get an invitation to play and you either accept or decline.

Contrast that with poker ring-game play where you can choose to play at tables with up to 9 opponents, and you can watch the tables to see how they are playing (average players per flop, average pot size, how aggressive/passive...etc) before you decide to join.

A 1600 BG player will be giving a significant edge to an 1900 BG player in a heads-up game, while a weak-intermediate poker player at a table full of mostly intermediates and 1 or 2 experts will be giving a much smaller edge on average.

I personally am NOT a fan of the rating system used on $$ sites, but for the reason that the system is typically abused by the 'sharks' anyway. I track my opponents' play by analyzing their games/matches and looking at their error rates. Anybody can do this for free, and if they are playing online for $$ they are foolish not to.

[BluffTHIS!]

It would probably be the same for HU poker as well, though the edge of the better player would take a lot longer to manifest itself. Thanks for explaining that more fully though.

So basically online BG is just like pool in that it boils down to who can outhustle the others better I guess.

[pzhon]

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gammon empire does it.

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any explanation of why?

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Is it really not obvious why they do it? Sharks will pay extra to play bigger fish. The fish often don't seem to care how much rake they get charged.

Many fish set up money games with a 1 point limit. This is essentially the same as a 1 point match, but the rake is higher.

With a flat rake, sites have a strong incentive to encourage players of nearly equal abilities to play each other, so that money deposited gets raked many times before it gets withdrawn. With a rating-based rake, the idea is that either more equal players will play each other, or else money that goes to stronger players after getting raked only a few times will be raked more substantially.

Of course, in practice, the success of a rating-based rake depends on many factors, including whether the ratings are trustworthy. I found GammonEmpire's rake insulting, as it penalized players for having honest ratings, and I stopped playing there.

[mikechops]

I agree the differential rating system sucks. I played at GammonEmpire for a while and my rating quickly became high enough that I couldn't get a game. I guess it could be manipulated, but I couldn't be bothered. Also the regular rake at GammonEmpire 10% is a lot to start with.

Apart from that, what do people think of the software? I was disappointed. There is no pip-count and I couldn't see a function to save the games out to a file for analysis. If I compare this with the poker beta for resizeable tables that came out 6 weeks before the main release in Febuary, I'd say they have a way to go before it's ready for prime-time.

The players are pretty fishy though. Unless people are trying to start with a crap rating, I'll give it a go.