As you have probably noted, your Elo score fluctuates a lot up and down as you play.
Sometimes you get two or three lucky wins and the next two opponent’s drop or quit for some reason and suddenly your rank is much higher. Sometimes you go on a losing spree and your rank drops a lot.
For matchmaking this is great, when your score got up quickly like this you will face tougher opponent that will knock you right down again.
However, Rank is also used for something else:
–> community tournaments
and here those Elo fluctuations are a nightmare.
Most community tournaments have a tight Elo range requirement for people signing up to ensure fair and interesting matches.
For example a requirement for a tournament could be to have a 1v1 rank between 1000-1200 or 1200-1400.
This is very hard to accurately proof when people sometimes fluctuate higher and have an Elo higher then their true skill level. And it’s also very easy to lose a few games to cheat yourself into a tournament below your skill group.
This issue could be solved by also giving an Elo moving average that represents your true Elo much more closely.
For example: the game could show the average Elo you had during your last 25 matches.
This would greatly improve the organisation of tournaments and ensure good matchups.