So you are saying there are people monitoring the system to make sure no-one is trying to game it?
I’m saying that Salotto matches are automatically public on your profile so it’s visible for anyone to look at and cry foul. Starting with that, if someone does something suss they are risking their entire reputation. And certainly a higher skilled player snapping off a lower tournament will be suss because it’s not like they are anonymous. Someone they know will be aware they did something unethical. And then in their public profile will be a paper trail of it for all to see.
I think it’s far less rampant than people think. Sure you can swing your rating pretty heavily when you are at 200 games (and certainly less). Then again people that treat low robustness as meaningful are just dumb. And we see examples of that over and over everywhere.
Next is the fact that there’s no real money in pool. How many people are going to actually dump over and over in leagues and tournaments enough to really move their rating just to win a thousand dollars? If you have a robust rating, it would take forever. You’d be living the most boring, unfulfilling life for quite a while just to get a fairly petty payout. It’s not a realistic ROI for the risk and stupidity you have to do to make it happen. At best is someone dumping a league game here or there when it doesn’t matter and those don’t add up like you’d think they do.
At the end of the day, far fewer people really give it what it takes to make it happen. And doing so is a blatant effort. Those people get caught. There are tools in Fargo and Salotto to catch those blatant people. The statistical analysis of unlikely results and wilds rating changes is mathematically easily detected. And they can tell it’s not happening as pervasively as the drama queens suggest.
For example, if you knew it was happening. Like you were able to name names of people that have ratings off by margins that would let them steal a tournament. Could you name a single name right here and now? Would you be willing to name a name? If you are, let’s see it. If you aren’t, then either you don’t have firsthand experience or you’re complacent to it and part of the problem.
But the truth is most people beating this drum don’t have firsthand experience. And the ones that do, Mike Page easily can look into it and always finds one of two things. (1) the offender was so egregious they already have been caught or (2) the evidence clearly shows the offender isn’t actually doing anything wrong and it just “seemed that way” to someone.