I completely understand the reason behind the daily point reduction and in most cases it works.

However if a member is going to be away from a computer for a lengthly amount of time is there anyway that they can register this planned absence and not have have the daily point reduction? For example someone in the Armed Forces could easily be away for 6 months (or longer for our colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic), so whilst their score would level out at some point they would still lose a lot of ranking points.

So if someone gets to 950 then goes away for 6 month and registers that then their rank doesn't drop? So not fair, it should drop like everyone else, they can always build it back up.

The same applies to me when I go offshore for my periods of 2 weeks on the rig.

It is extremely difficult to get time on as there are plenty other people awaiting the use of the communual computers, therfore I just have to persevere with the daily points reduction when applicable!

Can see both sides of the argument here but the point reduction is definitely necessary, if you're only off for a couple of weeks then 7 points is nothing to get back... 1 good tourney in that discipline and you've got them back.

It may only be two weeks as you see it, but it is two weeks around 10 or 11 times annually, making around 20 -22 weeks away annually

Still nothing you can lose or gain 7 points in 1 tourney game

What would be there to stop people abusing the system? Someone gets to the top of the ranking tables, then just happens to be going away for 6 months...

How I see it is that although the points reduction is annoying, it ensures that people at the top do not sit, but 0.5 inst a huge difference whereby people who are at a certain standard should be able to regain points back relatively easily. To add to this the lowest you can drop to is 750.

For example if someone was 800 (then was offline for a number of months), then dropped to 750, they know that they should be able to beat anyone up to 800, and in tournaments with more points available, it would be quite easy to get back up to your usual standard.



In this situation and any others where members are offline for a number of months, there should be a limit to where the ranking loss applies. I think it should be about 3 months, this inactivity would lead to roughly -45 points, enough to knock people who are off the top of the tables and at the same time it doesn't kill their rankings down to 750

Plus someone who has a maximum of 800 would see their rank decay to 762.5, if I've worked that out ok.