Making Your First Few Ranked Games Count!

This post are for people who are just about to hit level 30 or people who have been playing normal games and are looking to transition to Ranked Games. In this post I will go over briefly the history and algorithm which is used to calculate how much rating you win or lose per game, and explain to you the proper preparation you should have when you first start playing ranked games.

The first topic revolves around rating. You’ve probably heard the word ELO thrown around a lot on forums, streams, or in game. Elo, is actually the last name of a mathematician that created an algorithm for calculating rating gained and loss between 2 players in a chess match. The algorithm takes into account the 2 player’s rating and factors the chance of one player beating the other (based on rating) then awards the winner the appropriate increase and the loser the appropriate decrease. If you are a higher rated player, you are expected to have a higher chance of winning. Therefore, if you win, you gain less rating. On the flip-side, if you lose you lose more rating.

In Early beta, Riot adapted “Arpad Elo’s” algorithm to create their own algorithm for their 5 versus 5 match making system. Since then, for all intents and purposes, ELO became synonymous with “rating”. Fast forwarding 2 years, we now have our current ELO system. The most important thing to know about our current system is that because everyone starts off at 1200, the system tries to bring everyone up to their “true elo” asap. Because of that your first 20 games will count for so much more than the later 20 games. You will see yourself gaining or losing up to 40 rating per game in your first 5 games if you are on a winning streak, then you will start seeing it normalize to about 10-14 per game. So if you start off on a losing streak you will probably have to win twice a much to get back the lost rating. Conversely, if you start off on a winning streak, you will have to lose twice as much to drop down to where you start off at.

Preparing for Ranked Games:

A good way to do well in ranked games is to prepare yourself. Here are some tips in terms of preparation.

Make sure you have a complete rune page for the champion you want to play competitively in ranked before making that leap if you want the most edge you can get.

Don’t try a new champion in ranked games. You will spend half the game familiarizing yourself with the champion and it may lose your team the game.

Practice a champion several games in normal games prior to trying it out in ranked games. Make sure you have a couple of warm up games in normals with the same champion you plan on playing in ranked before hand.

If you are in a slump, just jump back in to normal games to practice a little more to get yourself in the right mood to try again.

I know I have emphasized this a few times already but you want to used normal games to practice. Practice new champions and builds to make sure it works before trying it on the big boys in ranked.