Bobby stopped playing after he reached that rating. Fischer syndrom... got it? :D

Garik broke that record more than 10 years later and did not lose his lead thereafter while playing a decent amount of games every year.

In a way, Martin broke UD's long standing Bobby-like rating and he could be VO's Garik; but he doesn't sound quite like it in this thread ;)

And they have the same problem with chess rankings. I haven't played a rated game since 8 years and I'm still on the FIDE list with the same elo. Even for top players there is no drifting if they don't play. They're withdrawn from the list if they stop playing for a -very- long time. That's why you still can see semi-retired players among the top 100.

Heh Sun, I don't intend to stop duelling. I'd love to break 2500, though I doubt I will. However, while combat is as flickery and unstable for me as it is at the moment I don't intend to try.

Ah sorry Martin, I misunderstood your post. You might have to wait a little (ie until the others' rating increase up to their real level) but I'm sure you will break it.

PS Softy, you are right but I still think better fighters are generally underrated. If I correctly do the math, the VO distribution is much larger than the Elo system. With a 400 difference the win/loss expectation is 10:1 in the Elo, only 2.5:1 in VO. If that is correct, the current rating distribution is obviously too narrow.

Sun Tzu : Your point concerns the variance of the distribution. But my gripe is about (a) the mean (b) the skewness towards higher ratings.

I need a plot.

/me goes looking for Alamar....