Competitive rating is tracked per game, not globally. Being Grandmaster at tic-tac-toe says nothing about your rating in Connect Four. Every rating starts at 1000 for the ranked mode of that game.

Each tier spans a rating band and is split into three divisions, where division 1 is the highest:

• Bronze — 0 to 1199
• Silver — 1200 to 1599
• Gold — 1600 to 1999
• Platinum — 2000 to 2399
• Diamond — 2400 to 2799
• Master — 2800 to 3199
• Grandmaster — 3200 and above

Your first 10 ranked matches in a game are placement matches. While you are provisional the rating moves faster (K = 40 instead of 24) so the system can find your level quickly. Provisional ratings are shown as such and are not eligible for the tier badges until placement completes.

Ratings use the standard Elo expected-score formula: expected = 1 / (1 + 10^((opponent − you) / 400)). Your new rating is your old rating plus K × (actual − expected), rounded, and never below zero. Beating a much higher-rated opponent gains more than beating a lower-rated one; losing to a much lower-rated opponent costs more. Draws move ratings by the difference between 0.5 and the expected score.

• Counts: ranked queue matches against another human player.
• Does not count: casual matches, custom rooms, bot matches and practice runs. These are excluded in code, not merely filtered out of a display.

The queue searches for an opponent within a rating tolerance that widens the longer you wait, so a short wait gives a close match and a long queue eventually resolves rather than hanging. Queue entries are reserved atomically, so two players cannot be handed to each other twice, and a player can only hold one active ticket per game and mode.

Ranked play runs in seasons. A season records the period a rating belongs to, and closing a season snapshots the standings. Ratings are not silently decayed while you are inactive — if inactivity handling is introduced later, it will be documented here before it ships.

Leaving a ranked match before it ends is recorded as an abandonment for that participant. Repeated abandonment leads to a rank restriction, and the match still resolves for the opponent.