The chess analogy isn't exactly fitting. Chess is one game with one setting on one "map." Same with most other games where the scoring system that allows for practice games is allowed. Other games that put you in a variety of situations often don't have quite the same system and often have some form of "lifetime" scoring involved. Thing of multi-player shooters or even old SNES games where you had a limited number of lives to accomplish an objective or a big OMRPG. Granted there are still exceptions or inadequate analogies even within those games.
But the key point for our purposes, is that it's at least theoretically possible to design a scoring system that allows points to be distributed fairly even when players of disparate levels are playing against each other. This possibility is a direct result of the simplicity of the situation that players can find themselves in. Players of the game will only find themselves faced with one situation and it is reasonable to assume that one can predict the amount of games a skilled player will win against a player of lesser skill.
With CC and it's variations, not so much. As GLG proved, there are some games that a skilled player can win 95%+ of the time. As joining any 1v1 Classic or Doodle game with standard settings proves, there are some games where even the best players can't hope for more than maybe a 60% win percentage against an unskilled opponent.
Instead of tryingto work that out (
etc.,
etc.), CC has decided to do its form of lifetime scoring, which assesses all games equally.
The consequence of this system is that there are not practice games. As one poster here said, each game you play is part of who you are on this site. Anybody looking at your score alone can figure out something about you. If they look at your game selection, they get context to that.
Taking away a piece of that information has a counterpart, which may be a negative from many peoples' standpoint: A player will get to choose which games he is rated on and will likely choose only games that he thinks the net outcome will be positive. Think of who will benefit from that system. It will be the players with the most experience. Many will be outraged by the "new farming" that occurs as experienced players "shop" for net positive games. I can GUARANTEE that there will be C&A cases about inappropriate "shopping" for rated games. Will these games be evaluated under the current C&A guidelines or will we say
caveat emptor to those noobs that get "shopped"? This will require a rethinking of how we evaluate farming on this site. And if we do come down on this side of free-for-all, this will inevitably add to the complexity of future C&A cases. (I sincerely hope that if these problems do come to pass, and if this activity is outlawed, that this form of abuse will be called "shopping"
).
A further point that I'd like to note is that not all "practice" games are beneficial. If any of you has ever been on a poker site where they allow freeroll tourneys or other types of free play, you will know that the difference between poker for money and how people play with free chips is night and day.
For more on this topic, see
here.
Please note that I am not saying that no points games would be a "bad" thing. I am simply pointing out what a monumental shift in the mentality of this site that they would represent. Personally, I am undecided whether I am for or against the idea. However, I think a change of this magnitude requires clear and convincing evidence that it is preferable to the users, and I do not see that.
