Win/Loss rewards

If you haven't played in a while (or at all), your rating will fluctuate a lot more. Eventually, it reaches the standard method of increasing/decreasing, which is as follows:

- If both players have roughly the same Elo (e.g. an 1150 vs. an 1175), the winner receives eight points, while the loser loses eight points. A draw awards no points to either player.

- If there is a noticeable Elo gap (e.g. a 1600 vs. a 1750), the 1600 would receive more points for winning and lose less points if they lose; for the 1750, it's the opposite.

- If a draw occurs in an unbalanced Elo game, the increase/decrease for both players is the reward they would get for winning, minus eight. In the 1600 vs. 1750 case, a draw would most likely result in +3 points (+11 - 8 = +3) for the 1600 and -3 (+5 - 8 = -3) for the 1750. (A win for the 1600 would therefore be +11 and a loss would be -5, while the 1750 player would get +5 for winning and -11 for losing.)

Obviously, if you were to reach the very top of the ratings on this website, you're going to more or less stagnate before long, simply because there is no one to reasonably challenge you. The highest rated Rapid player currently stands at 2936 (Andrey Gutov); Blitz is 3380 (Hikaru Nakamura) as of this writing, and Bullet is 3450 (Arkadiy Khromaev).