alanback: Ooops, you are darn right, for the rating system to take this type of tournament into account, a gammon should also multiply the rating won/loss by three !

Imho triple gammon is a different GAME than backgammon anyway, so it is probably recommended to make its tournaments unrated. Or create a different rating list for it...

All that is, if one really wants an accurate rating system for backgammon, as we have already seen that the current one isn't accurate anyway :-)

nabla: Don't panic. What actullay do twelve points of rating matter in one's life? It's Backgammon.

joshi tm: That was the point of my last sentence. Some points of rating matter even less when one knows that every rating must be taken with a grain of salt. Or maybe they don't matter at all :-)

joshi tm:  The question is not whether ratings are important; of course, they are not in any real sense.  However, the question here is, if there are to be ratings, should they operate logically and consistently, or illogically and capriciously?

alanback: shouldnt be any ratings at all in the dice games

 Andersp:  I disagree.  As I stated earlier, backgammon is a skill game with a random component.  A rating system is appropriate in backgammon to measure the players' relative skill.  It just takes more games to establish a reliable indicator of skill because of the random factor.  There are rating systems that work very well on other sites, mostly based the granddaddy of them all, FIBS.  This is not to say the rating system here doesn't work, but it does have serious defects.  The problems pointed out by nabla and Abigailll are the most significant ones. 

alanback: But if we didnt have any rating then you and other "very good players" could play in all tourneys without any worries and not be forced to only play each other, wouldnt that be nice? :)

Andersp:  Assuming that a rating system can be properly designed, why do dice games differ in that respect from pure strategy games?  I don't mind losing games per se, I just would like the risks and rewards to be in balance.

alanback: i thought i would post the link to your tournament :)

Unrated Triple Gammon -- all players (up to 20)

Hrqls: The only problem I see is that players already lost giving points to their friends by resigning in a backgammon position, like in the European Song Contest.

joshi tm: they already did so ? hmm :(
but the same could be done in any tournament

(although in triple gammon you can do something more sophisticated, and very unsportsmanlike!, with 3 people, each player losing a backgammon to another player, giving each player 5 points for 2 games ... but lets suppose most people are fair and sporsmanlike enough so that not 3 players would conspire ? and if they did it could be caught easily ?)

Hrqls:  Thank you :-)

alanback: I might be stupid but im not sure i understand your talk about unfair rating.  If you lose 12 points to a lower rated player its because he was lucky, but you have reached your BKR because of your skill, not luck?   am i correct?

Andersp: reaching 2100+ can be done by luck, and with little games .. the more games you play and the higher the bkr .. the more skill should be involved .. i think ?

Hrqls:   So if i win agains someone who has 2200+  thats luck...and if he wins its skill? right?

Andersp: only if its against me .. ;)

Andersp: If you win against someone who is 2200 it means... well, not much, since the BK rating formula is inaccurate for backgammon anyway !

Andersp:  I'm sure you are not stupid, just pretending to be ;-)

If I lose to a lower rated player, it may be that he or she played better than I on this occasion, or because the dice favored him or her.  Similarly, if I win a backgammon match, it may be because of the dice or because I played better.  In chess, it's almost always a matter of skill, though there can be occasions I am sure when a player with less overall chess playing ability outplays a better player. 

The point about backgammon is that the player is only partly in control, due to the random element.  Thus, a rating in backgammon is not so much a prediction about the outcome of a single match, as it is a prediction about the outcome of a large number of matches.  Given a sufficiently large sample, the luck factor will even out and the player with greater skill will win a majority of the games.

My BKR is the result of a mathematical formula being applied to the results of my games.  Some of those games were won or lost primarily on skill, others on luck.  I offer no conclusion as to the interpretation of the backgammon BKRs on this site.

I hope that clarifies it, in case you were not just pretending ;-)

Andersp: I think you make a valid point.

If a 1900 bkr beats a 2200 bkr, then it is called luck. If a 2200 bkr beats a 1900 bkr it is called skill.

But the better point is that a person with a 2200 bkr probably got that by being lucky themselves anyway, so doesnt it all work out in the end? On this site, at least after a person has played a certain amount of games, the person with a higher bkr is probably a better player, yet having a high bkr doesnt mean that they won all their games by skill alone either!

nabla: Triple gammon is not more a different game than backgammon as cubed backgammon is. And we don't have a different rating for them either.

AbigailII:  Correct.  Of course, the fact that the system has one flaw is not a persuasive argument in favor of a different flaw. And yes, these are only significant to one who cares about having a rating system that works.  Those of us who do care are apparently in the minority, and not represented at all in the management of the site. 

AbigailII: Your logic is unfaulty ! However, things can be seen for another point of view : cubed backgammon IS backgammon, and single games are the degenerated case of matches to one point.
I take "degenerated" for its mathematical meaning, it is not supposed to be insulting to one-pointer lovers :-)

But of course you are basically right, there isn't a bigger difference between Triple and Single than between Cubed and Single.