What is the point of the leagues/divisions anyways?

So I was playing chess games and discovered I am number one in my league by a mile. That isn't to brag or anything, I wasn't playing better than anyone, I was just playing more.

It seems to me that leagues just encourage people to mindlessly play game after game. You don't lose points for losing, so even if you win just 30% of your games, you can become #1 if you just play a lot. To my knowledge, I haven't played with anyone in my league, even though we are the same rating, so losing does not benefit my competitors.

I have also noticed that the scoring system disproportionally seems to benefit certain formats over the others. a 5 minute game has a prize of 9 points for winning while a 10 minute game has 15 points. In the time it takes to win a 10 minute game and win 15 points I could invest the same time into two 5 minute games and win 18 points.

You would think this system would encourage people to try out different time formats but I am here to tell you that it actually has a negative effect: people are encouraged NOT to play other formats until they advance into the higher leagues. By staying low rated in those formats, they can save them until they get into a higher league where the point race is more intense, and then finally play in different formats where they are vastly better than anyone else for 20 games.

It isn't fair to players with a balanced rating across the board. Even if someone comes anywhere close to me, I could just switch from rapid games to bullet games (which I am way lower rated in because I haven't touched), win 20 games in half an hour, and pull ahead again.

So I ask, what is the point of the league system, when if we assume that players should want to win their league, it encourages them not to analyse and learn, but to immediately hit the 'next game' again and again, and it encourages players to only play one format in order to 'save' them for higher league levels, where they then use it to gain an unfair advantage over others?

In higher leagues you'll need to play 100s of games every day for the whole week to advance... so "saving" a rating doesn't really work, but sandbagging would work. There are other ways to abuse it too, for example having multiple people play on the same account would let your account play 24 hours a day.

But sure, it does make certain time controls more popular. 5 minute chess and 3 minute chess are both blitz, so both earn 9 trophies per win, but obviously you can play more 3 minute games than 5. And since arenas give bonus trophies, it also encourages arena play.

As for it mainly encourages more playing, yeah. Being in a high league means there was a week where you spent a lot of hours playing. It's a bit like a "best win" statistic except for hours played in 1 week.

Like you, the guy leading my division probably doesn't know leagues exist. He got over 4000 trophies the last two weeks, and in a very inefficient way. Dude just plays 10-15 hours a day on his own. People like this exist.

As far as I know the person who has gotten more than anyone is @ertino (nearly 10,000)

And from his account history you could argue that he's not even aware leagues exist (77,000 games in only 2.5 years).

the main point of yours, the unfair advantage, wont make you suddenly get 100s of points, only a bit

and thousands are needed, so its like nothing

the only big problem is that it encourages a possibly unhealthy amount of chess-playing

and the prize winners will be 'the people who bend the rules the most without breaking them'

When we will have next tournament i m grandmaster Naman garg :) :)

The league system is merely about playing tons of games nonstop. It has little to do with the quality of play. I am bowing out after attaining the Elite classification only because the people in my previous group Crystal didn't seem to care about playing around the clock simply to amass points. 

got my grey stone trophy & bounced.

I tried to be open minded about the League system but it is really a joke. In my current Elite League a 1600 player is leading. In less than 24 hours he has accumulated 1,176 points and is still going. In order to progress you have to play marathon chess sessions every day of the week starting immediately after 3:00 EST Sunday.

Can some one tell me why my points are not added to my league points when my opponent quits in one min?

Mainly to promote playing chess on this site over other sites

my theory is that it's pushing them over the 10 million games played per day mark, which looks better to potential advertisers.   🙂

It's rigged yes, because only 3 min blitz players will ever get to Legends club. No matter what other's say or do it will only ever be heavy blitz players who are in the Legends club. I've done the math, their is no way around it...

Yes--I found it useful to play 3/2 arena tournaments to amass points. They now have even IMs in the regular arenas who evidently play to gain easy points and progress.

When people have fallen from (Rapid rating) 1300 to 376 in a month, then I suspect they are both sandbagging and having two different players use the account. The leader in my champions league would need to play 24 hours per day, with an 83% win rate in non-arena games to accumulate points they have at the moment.

I suspect some people will work in teams to achieve "Legend" status, and then sell the account. While others will simply pair up so they each can achieve "Legend" status.

I'll need to try for Legend status when i have time off from work. For my past achievements, I played about 12 hours per day for 6-7 days. 

Now the guy leading my so-called Elite division has amassed 2,229 points. I don’t understand this idea of quantity over quantity. It seems like an empty distinction. 

Indeed...for most normal players, the late but not so great Leagues competition for those prizes (including free Diamond memberships) was comparable to the water mirage in a desert---chasing after something that was never truly attainable in the first place! There's no point in playing so many games for nothing, when all you're going to end up doing is sacrificing your rating(s) for empty pride in League "advancement"...!!!...which is pointless now anyway, since there are no prizes left to aim for.

The guy that won my division, rated 1606, and passed to Championship league level played almost ten hours a day and amassed almost 4,000 points! Unbelievable. At this point I think the Leagues are worthless. But certainly more titled players are showing up in the arenas to score easy points.