Glicko momentum

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easchner

I had a thought about a moderate change to Glicko to make it settle towards your true score quicker.  Why not add a momentum factor?  Or more precisely, modify the RD to be sensitive to momentum.  If you keep winning or losing games in a row or at some high percentage during the timing factor why decrease your RD?

For example, someone new joins a 2400+ tournament and then loses 10 games in a row.  Their initial rating would be high (based on average of opponents) and while their rating would drop like a stone, so would their RD.  They could have a somewhat 'stable' rating that is much higher than it should be and take a long time to settle.  The same would be true in reverse.  If you don't lose many games then it shouldn't lower your RD much since it still hasn't learned much information about you, just that you're better than your opponents' ratings.

This would be even more important if you take time off (kind of Glicko's schtick) because when you get back your rating may have changed.  (Maybe played a lot of great OTB opponents or didn't ever look at a chess board.)

Granted, this may be such a small factor that it wouldn't affect rating settlement by much, but it could decrease the number of games needed to settle.