c4countdown

Obviously when people play Countdown, we all have our bad moments and days. Everyone has at least some degree on inconsistency.

I however, had an extremely bad past 3 days on Apterous. I have lost nearly 200 ratings points throughout those 3 days. The final day I wasn't as bad but I was being beaten by almost everyone (some close games I admit). I am also worried that I may be overplaying. I realized today that I have played 20 games in one day after looking at my archives. I had no idea that I played that many games. Other days in the month I have played about 10 games and others about 15. I shouldn't be playing that much, I get so carried away sometimes. Even though I still enjoying playing the game, is my brain (not my heart) getting fed of this and needs a break to refresh? I sometimes feel like I'm getting worse or not better. I know it goes in cycles but I feel like I go into very steep cycles compared to the majority of the other apterites. Last time I had a two or three days off Apterous (though I was playing a bit on the iPhone App), I was very rusty so I'm worried that may happen again. I shouldn't be playing more than 10 games a day, I just always give in to temptation to play more haha!

I have also noticed that other people of Apterous that are on a similar standard to me have also before had extremely large rating decreases when they were quite close to reaching 1000. I was on around 930 earlier in the week but now I have shot down to about 740 in 3 days. Is it really hard for the weaker players to get into the middle or higher standard or can your ratings fluctuate rapidly whatever standard you're at? I was heading towards the 1000 mark but now I wouldn't be surprised if it took me another half year to do that now and stay up there. My lowest ever rating on Apterous I think was about 600 and I have been on Apterous for 4 months.

Sometimes I miss out on easy words which I could have been able to get if I was on form. With learning words, I only ever seem to pick up two or three words a week maybe, sometimes more, but not very many words anyway (even the ones I know). I sometimes always can only spot the more basic suffixes and prefixes like ER, IEST, RE etc.

So how do I work on becoming more consistent? I know Countdown goes in cycles but the level the cycles I go into is so deep. My numbers is overly strong though I do sometimes mess up, my letters and conundrums are my main weak and inconsistent point. I got told a few that I'm improving when I'm on form, but other times I feel like I was at the standard near to when I first started Apterous.

The single best thing you can do is not worry so much.

I wouldn't worry too much about the ratings fluctuations, because ratings changes are weighted by your current rating. So now you will have bigger ratings increases when you beat players and smaller decreases when you lose. That all balances out over time.

The main thing is you enjoy playing, because you inevitably get better with practice. Try nice conundrum attacks, that helped me loads with conundrums.

The rolling rating system has long since faded into irrelevance- Pro Ranks are the only real measure of skill that people care about. Not sure that's any help, but still.

I know exactly what you mean Peter. I've been there myself where I have had bad days or even weeks, and my rating has plumetted.
The thing with apterous though is it doesn't matter about form from months gone by, as mostly only fairly recent stuff shows up anyway, and you'll soon get your ratings points back when you get back to form.
The best advice I can give is, only play when you're really up for a game, when you feel you can give it your best shot. Far too many times I've played when I've been tired or not really felt like concentrating and it just doesn't work. I know of others who have done the same. Best to play when you're at your best, then your results will give a fair reflection of how good a player you really are.

Ben Wilson wrote:The rolling rating system has long since faded into irrelevance- Pro Ranks are the only real measure of skill that people care about. Not sure that's any help, but still.

Eh, I care.

Obviously people have good and bad days, but generally it's nothing to do with consistency, the phenomenon you suggest.

The better you get, the more better players start to challenge you/you start to challenge them - the more you play better players, the more you lose. Just natural gaming pattern.

I have cycles, although maybe over weeks rather than days, where I'll be very strong (for me) and drift up towards 1600, but then there'll be times where I'll decline relatively quickly - I once went from around 1500 to 1200 for no obvious reason. I just start missing all of my worst words (e.g. ANIMATE), but it clicks back in soon enough, and it's usually signalled by spotting some obscure vowel-heavy word that I was previously only dimly aware of.

At a time when I was trying to improve at the game, I found Superstats more useful than either ratings or Pro Ranks. Those two systems tell you something about your performance in relation to other people's performances, whereas Superstats gives you information on specific aspects of your own game over a period of time, which I think is potentially more useful. Like you, I used to worry about fluctuations in my rating and Pro Rank, but try not to

I think the advice in this thread is lacking consistency.

Sounds like you need the AA. Apterites Anonymous.