Ratings

How come I can draw with someone by agreement and get -4 points?

How come at the start of a game, an opponent's rating can be 810 and at the end of the game it's 1050?

I mean really, COME ON!

Everyone starts out at 1200, but if ratings only moved a few points in the beginning, then you'd have some master at 1200 having to crush a few hundred players before getting to play people on their level.  No fun for those crushed and no fun for the master.

Or if someone is rated 800 they have to brutally lose a bunch of games.

So your first few games your rating will swing sometimes hundreds of points.  After each game though, the number of points added or subtracted is fewer and fewer as your rating is getting more and more accurate.

You will always lose points after a draw if you were the higher rated player, although it will always be much less than if you had lost.

Hope that helps.

If you draw someone lower-rated, do you expect to hold on to all your rating points?

I can't comment on the 1st point, but the 2nd is simply that the person in question is a new member. Your ratings jump massively in both directions at first until the system figures out where your average rating should be. It evens out pretty quickly and returns to normal.