[hrothgar]

I had originally made this suggestion over in the one of the threads about the forum challenge matches. It didn’t generate much of a response so I am going to repeat it here in the hopes that the developers might be willing to respond.

At the most basic level, I would like BBO to support ladder games where ladder rank is based on challenge matches. For those of you who aren’t used to the Challenge Match feature, “Challenge” allows you to select an opponent and then play a robot match (your partner is a robot and you play against a pair of robots). Your opponent plays exactly the same set of boards. Scores get compared and a winner is announced.

Here’s how I would expect a ladder to function

Ladder format:

1. Players sign in to the ladder and issue a challenge
2. The ladder system will randomly pair you against another player at roughly the same level of the ladder. Players have three days or so to complete the match.
3. If you beat a player that is the same level or a higher level on the ladder, your score goes up by 1
4. If you lose a match to a player that is the same level or a lower level on the ladder, your score goes down by 1
5. New players enter the ladder at the mid point. Over time, player’s rank in the latter should rise / fall so they are matched against other players with appropriate skills.

Advantages of this system

1. Groups like the BBO forums can run challenge matches and the like without lots of work by human administrators.
2. Players get to compete against people with roughly the same skill level
3. BBO makes money renting robots
4. This isn’t quite a rating system, however, ladder rank might prove an interesting substitute while avoiding a number of the problems that plague a rating system.