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Sorry, thanks for the clarification.

By the way, if anyone is ever curious as to why someone is rated higher or lower than you think they should be, or why someone is or isn't getting a promotion challenge, I'm the person to ask. I'm pretty good at figuring out what the numbers mean and how the algorithm is interpreting them, and I can usually figure out who you need to rematch to make up for a bad showing.

@Lotharbot : I would like to respectfully request your thoughts on helping me determine where I should focus my attention on ladder matches. I seem to be stuck in algorithm hell like Morphod. I am getting a bit disheartened as well and any help or suggestions to show me the way to silver would be greatly appreciated.

One good way to estimate where you stand is to compare your recent games with the targets in a recent promotion challenge. What makes Morfod stand out is that he is frequently beating those targets! What balances it is that he sometimes falls behind them, too. But when significantly more of your games are above the line than below it, you'll cross it.

For silver promotion, let's use Vainaic's challenge. That was pretty recent. Here were his targets:

moh 13
morf 12
pfunk ot loss
ryguy ot win
roncli ot win

How've you done against those same pilots in the last month? You haven't played moh or ryguy, but we can look at the other three:

Morfod -
11-20 (-1)
6-20 (-6)
10-20 (-2)
7-20 (-5)
3-20 (-9)

Pfunk -
14-20 (-5)
12-20 (-8)
14-20 (-5)
13-20 (-6)
13-20 (-6)
10-20 (-9)
18-20 (-1)
15-20 (-4)
6-20 (-13)
8-20 (-11)

Roncli -
13-20 (-8)
10-20 (-11)

All of those games are short of the targets! Which is your answer. The ladder will give you a promotion challenge when it thinks you have a reasonable chance of passing one. Right now? It's no surprise that it thinks you're not ready. If these games had been a mock promotion challenge, your final score would have been -32.

What you want is to have more of those scores be plusses than minuses, and for the plusses to be bigger than the minuses on average. If you do that, and it goes on for a month, and you still don't get a promotion challenge . . . then you can talk to Lothar and see if there's some result holding you back. But that's generally not necessary. The algorithm generally does the right thing pretty quick, though "pretty quick" can sometimes mean a couple weeks, which can seem like forever when you're waiting for it to happen.

Let's see what a pilot who is close looks like. Take Morfod, comparing him to deimos' promotion challenge.

Targets
mark392 11
Jediluke 11
cyrus OT loss
Drakona 16
Rethink OT win

And if we look at morf's history in the last month, we see . . . well, he hasn't played mark this month, but two months ago, he got 7, which is a -4. Everyone else, in the last month,

Jediluke
6-20 (-5)
8-20 (-3)
18-20 (+7)
10-20 (-1)

Cyrus
21-23 (+2)
20-15 (+4)
20-10 (+9)
20-11 (+8)
17-20 (-2)
20-17 (+4)
16-20 (-3)
11-20 (-8)
22-24 (+0)
14-20 (-5)
17-20 (-2)

Drakona
13-20 (-3)
28-26 (+5)

Rethink
21-19 (+0)
20-15 (+4)
15-20 (-6)

Across the board, Morfod has a lot of plusses and minuses. Some are big! Are there more plusses? In this set, they're actually even. Are the plusses bigger? Yes, slightly, by an average of about 0.6 per game, the equivalent of passing a promotion challenge at +3. Though that isn't the whole story -- that includes a lot of hot results against Cyrus; against the other pilots he's actually minus on average, and who knows how many games against Cyrus he'll get and where they'll be? You need broadly strong results. Just the same -- to a first approximation, he would be expected to pass!

Now, this set is just a sample -- the ladder is actually looking at every match against every pilot. When you look under the hood, though, the story is the same: Morfod is reeeeaaallly close, and has actually been perhaps on the favored side in the last week or so, and a little more time and consistency will give it to him. Consulting Lothar might be reasonable in this case, as Lothar can look and see where the big minuses are as the algorithm sees them, across all pilots, and he can go get more matches against those pilots to try to improve the score. (Though I'm not sure that's really helpful; the algorithm sorts itself out in a couple weeks pretty much no matter what you do. But it can feel good to have something to focus on. )

To come back to your case, Swarthy -- the answer is that you should improve your game across the board. Making silver probably isn't a reasonable short term goal for you. Since you need to improve your game in general, it will probably take some months. Well, unless you go all Cyrus on us. Better short term goals for you are taking and defending top bronze, going after some dark horses, defending thsoe trophies, dominating your rival. Pick up some bronze streaks and bus drivers. That sort of thing.

Making silver may seem like an easy, intermediate goal, but it really isn't. Silver pilots are extremely fierce, and silver is a tough neighborhood. Even pilots who had been elite in the previous era often find they need soem significant training on top of the derusting in order to make silver. All in all, making silver is an admirable achievement and getting there can be . . . discouragingly difficult. Pace yourself. You'll get there. Work on your game and the results will follow.

One of the design goals for the algorithm is certainty over responsiveness. Which means, when it does something, nobody should say, "What, really, him?" Everyone should say, "Well it's about time!"

This means that when you're close, everyone says, "Come ON already!" If you find yourself surrounded by people saying, "Why are you not silver yet?" and it goes on long enough that the chant changes to, "Come ON, stupid algorithm, it's TIME" that means it will very likely happen soon.

One of the reasons it is this way is that pilots can have hot and cold weeks. We don't want people jumping classes for that, which is why it looks at 3 months worth of data. When I was on my way up, I had a week where I put up some very hot scores, and everyone was like, "Holy cow, she's making gold soon!" . . . but it was just a good week. It would be another six months before I actually got in.

Wow!! - I didn't expect all that and I am very grateful you took the time out to explain it in such detail. It makes perfect sense...How can I not understand this now?

I guess there is a mental separation process needed in this game that I haven't displayed and reading some past forum posts on other topics it seems to boil down to "fun-game-with-a-friend" vs. "steel-caged-winner-take-all-death-match-in-your-face-game"!!! The "fun-game-with-a-friend" are outside the dcl ladder and that is where you learn/de-rust/get wasted/get better. If you bring that fun attitude to a ladder match you deserve to lose. Not to say the ladder matches are no fun...they are the most thrilling and rewarding (if you win). If you lose it's a night of no sleep, despondency and depression and hating the game and thinking you suck worse each time. And omg then people pass you to silver!! ok...i get it. I need to ramp it up with the eye-of-the-tiger attitude of, (you ask for a match - you ask for death!)

I will use this info and guidance you've shared as my new roadmap to silver. Thank you!!

We need to play more games, Swarthy. I have the most fun playing people I am dead even with, and our games are almost always close

Yes Rooster oh man I enjoy that too and there are a few of us kinda hanging in the same good-time frat house, but now...I MUST CRUSH YOU ALL!!!!!

Solid plan, swarthy. Yeah, ladder matches are war. And the farther up the ladder you go, the more true that is.

I will say Silver tier is nasty! There are so many amazing pilots in Silver that I hope some of the top ones make Gold to push the competition up. In saying that, I will do EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO FOIL MORFOD'S RATING!!!!!

I expect a couple single digit scores against him now that I've said that! hhehehehee