Placement games

Your first several recorded games move your rating more than later ones do, so you settle near your real level quickly instead of crawling there over a whole season. A fresh player's starting rating is a placeholder — placement games are how PickleFriend closes that gap fast.

Why early games move faster

Elo updates your rating by a step sized by a factor called K. A bigger K means a bigger swing per game. During the placement period, PickleFriend amplifies that step — at the very start your wins and losses count up to twice as hard as they will once you've settled, and the boost eases back down as you play through the period.

You'd rather find a player's real level in a few nights than watch them beat everyone (or get beaten) for weeks while the rating crawls after them. Amplifying early results gets them to the right neighborhood fast.

How long it lasts

The placement period is per player and counts recorded games, not nights. By default it covers your first 8 games in the group. During those games your rating updates at an amplified rate — strongest on game one (up to double), tapering toward normal as you approach the end. After that, you move to the normal update rate automatically. Nothing to switch off.

Nothing flags the end of it — you just notice the rating stops jumping once the early games are behind you. The length is a group rating setting, so an organizer can raise or lower it; the default is 8, with a range of 1–20.

There's also a one-time pool placement at the very start of a brand-new group: while the group has very few games on record, everyone's results count for a bit more, because the whole rating pool is still finding its shape. That fades on its own as games accumulate and isn't something you manage.

Pool-wide placement — when a whole group is new

Player placement handles one new player at a time. Pool placement handles the case where the whole group is brand new and no ratings mean much yet.

When a group's total recorded games are below a threshold, everyone's rating changes are amplified by the same 2× multiplier that individual placement uses. The idea: before a pool of ratings has self-calibrated, individual results contain more signal about relative skill, so the faster everyone moves, the sooner the whole pool settles into shape.

The pool placement threshold is 48 games by default, and an organizer can adjust it (10–100) in Group Settings → Ratings → Pool placement games. Once the group's game total crosses that number, pool amplification stops automatically. You don't manage it, and it doesn't reset.

Pool placement and player placement are independent. A brand-new group on its first night applies both at once — a fresh player's games move at 2× (pool) and at up to 2× (player), stacking for faster early calibration across the whole group.

The "U" provisional marker

On the public ratings page, a player whose rating is still provisional shows a U prefix before their rating number (for example, U1487.5) — a visual cue that the number is real but based on limited results.

The U appears in two places, each with its own threshold. On the Players tab (all group types) it's driven by the player placement games setting and drops once the player has played through the placement period. On the Ladder standings tab it's driven by a separate minimum-games-for-eligibility setting: players below that threshold are hidden from the standings entirely, while the U marks those who are shown but still building their division record. Neither U appears in the mixer or on the dashboard.

Organizer controls

Both thresholds live in Group Settings → Ratings → Rating Calculation:

Setting	Default	Range
Player placement games	8	1–20
Pool placement games	48	10–100

Raising the player placement count extends the faster-moving early window; lowering it means players lock into normal rates sooner. Pool placement affects the whole group at once, so changes there matter most at the very start of a group's life.

How it ties to ladder start ratings

In a ladder league, placement and start ratings split the work. When a cycle promotes or relegates you, you don't reset — you inherit a competitive rating for your new division under the start-ratings swap rule. That swap is for players who already have a history. Placement covers the other case: someone entering a group from scratch with no results to position them yet. The swap slots the movers; placement calibrates the newcomers.

What's next

• See How Elo works for the full picture of how scores become ratings.
• See Start ratings when you move for what happens to your rating when a cycle moves you between divisions.
• See Public ratings page for how ratings and the U marker appear to players.