How Your Rating Is Calculated
HRI uses Glicko-2 with event-weighted K-factor multipliers, applied post-hoc. The Glicko-2 core is the same algorithm that powers lichess.org. The event weighting scales rating changes by tournament tier and elimination-round depth, without feeding inflated opponent ratings back into the engine.
This page is the authoritative methodology document. Every parameter, every guardrail, and every deliberate deviation from pure Glicko-2 is listed below. Changes to the system over time are recorded in the Changelog.
The Basics
What Affects Your Rating
After each tournament, the Glicko-2 algorithm looks at every match you played and adjusts your rating based on three factors:
Did you win or lose?
Wins increase your rating. Losses decrease it. Draws have a small effect that depends on the opponent's strength.
How strong was your opponent?
Beating a 1,800-rated player matters more than beating a 1,200-rated player. Losing to a strong player costs you less than losing to a weak one.
How confident is the system about both ratings?
If either player has a high RD (few events), the result causes a bigger rating swing. As both players play more, the RD shrinks and results cause smaller, more precise adjustments.
Event-Weighted K-Factor
HRI runs pure Glicko-2 with real opponent ratings, then scales the resulting rating change by a multiplier based on tournament tier, elimination round, and whether you won the tournament. This preserves the statistical integrity of the engine — we do not feed inflated opponent ratings back into Glicko-2 — while still rewarding harder events more than easier ones.
The total multiplier for any match is: Tier Multiplier + Top Cut Bonus + Winner Bonus
1. Tournament Tier Multiplier
Every match at a tournament gets a baseline multiplier based on the tier. Higher-tier events have stronger fields, so your rating change from each match is amplified.
2. Top Cut Multiplier
Making the elimination bracket matters. Top-cut matches get a progressive multiplier bonus added on top of the tier multiplier. The deeper you go in the bracket, the more each match is amplified.
3. Tournament Winner Bonus
The player who wins the Finals gets an additional +0.15 added to their multiplier for that match. Winning the whole tournament is the strongest signal of skill.
Guardrails
Rating systems occasionally produce extreme outputs — a badly-seeded player's first event can generate a 700-point correction that is mathematically correct but visually shocking. HRI applies two guardrails to catch these without compromising the integrity of Glicko-2's self-correction.
Putting It All Together
Here's the total multiplier for every combination. Your rating change from Glicko-2 is multiplied by this factor after the calculation runs.
Where HRI Deviates From Pure Glicko-2
Pure Glicko-2 treats a rating period as a single batch: all matches within the period use each player's start-of-period rating, and ratings update once at the end. HRI makes two deliberate deviations from this, documented here for transparency.
Rating Deviation Bands
Every rating has a deviation (RD). All players appear on a single leaderboard, sorted by their conservative rating (see "Leaderboard Sort" above) — so provisional players naturally fall toward the bottom until they build a record. For quick visual context, RD is grouped into three color-coded bands:
Rating Formats
HRI tracks independent ratings for each format. Your Premier rating is not affected by your Limited results, and vice versa.
Overall — the canonical cross-format rating
The Galactic Championship requires every player to compete in BOTH
Premier and Limited. Overall is built to seed that event — the
equal-weighted average of your Premier and Limited ratings:
Overall rating = (Premier + Limited) / 2
Overall RD = (Premier_RD + Limited_RD) / 2
If you've only played one format (as of
2026-04-17), the missing format is filled with a
correlation-shrinkage prior, not the population mean.
Card-game skill transfers: the empirical correlation between
Premier and Limited ratings among players who play both is
ρ = 0.65. So we estimate your missing-format
rating by pulling your known rating partway toward 1,500:
missing_prior = 1,500 + 0.65 × (known_rating − 1,500)
missing_RD = 150
A 1,900 Premier player with no Limited history gets a Limited
prior of 1,760, for an Overall of 1,830. Not 1,700, the way it
used to be. The old 1,500 / RD 350 prior assumed
zero correlation between formats, which let mediocre dual-format
players outrank elite single-format players on Overall — the
v3.4 change fixes that pathology while still discounting
unmeasured formats via RD (conservative sort penalizes high-RD).
Eternal is intentionally excluded. Players with only Eternal
experience don't appear on the Overall leaderboard — that
format has its own.
Premier
Constructed format. Bring your own deck. The most commonly played competitive format. Feeds Overall.
Limited
Sealed or draft format. Build your deck from packs at the event. Feeds Overall.
Eternal
All cards legal. A wider card pool for experienced players. Tracked independently; not part of Overall.
Which Events Count?
Only sanctioned competitive events are included in HRI ratings.
Data Source
All match data comes from Melee.gg, the official tournament platform for Star Wars: Unlimited. Tournament discovery and tier/format classification comes from the SWU Competitive Hub. HRI processes every round of every qualifying tournament, including all Swiss pairings and the full elimination bracket.
Database-level constraints prevent malformed matches from entering the system: a player cannot appear as their own opponent, and the same match cannot be counted twice even if imported with players in swapped positions.
Common Questions
Why is my rating lower than someone with a worse record?
Record alone doesn't determine rating. A 10-2 record against top-100 players at a Regional is worth more than a 10-2 record at a small Planetary. Glicko-2 accounts for opponent strength; HRI's event weighting adds tournament tier, top-cut depth, and tournament victory.
Why are some players near the bottom with low Confidence %?
Everyone appears on the same leaderboard, but it sorts by Rating − 2 × RD — the lower bound of the 95% credible interval. A player with RD 200 sits 400 points below their raw rating for sorting purposes, so provisional players fall naturally to the bottom until they build a track record. Their Confidence % reflects the RD level, so a low number means "we don't yet know where this player truly belongs."
How do I improve my rating the fastest?
Win matches at high-tier events, make top cut, and win the tournament. The single highest-value thing you can do is win the Finals at a Galactic Championship (2.0x multiplier). Consistency at Sector and Regional events also builds your rating steadily. Playing more events tightens your RD, which raises your ranked-leaderboard position even if your raw rating stays flat.
Why are Premier, Limited, and Eternal rated separately?
Different formats test different skills. A top Premier player might be average at Limited. Separate tracks give an accurate picture of skill per format. The Overall view combines them via a match-weighted average — see the Formats section above.
How is my Overall rating calculated?
If you have both a Premier and a Limited rating, Overall is the
equal-weighted average: (Premier + Limited) / 2. If
you're rated in only one format, the missing format is filled via a
correlation-shrinkage prior: 1,500 + 0.65 × (known − 1,500).
See the Overall section above for the full math. Eternal isn't included.
I'm only rated in Premier. Why does my Overall rank look so different from my Premier rank?
Overall is a Galactic Championship readiness rating, not a
"best format" rating. The Galactic Championship tests both Premier
and Limited, so Overall blends them. If you haven't played Limited,
the system estimates your Limited rating from your Premier rating
(they correlate 0.65 empirically), then averages. Your Overall
number stays close to your Premier, but the conservative sort
(rating − 2 × RD) still discounts
unmeasured formats because we're less certain about them. To close
the gap completely, play a Limited event — even one tightens the
RD on your composite.
What does the "(clamped)" marker on a tournament mean?
The event multiplier added more than ±150 points of bonus on top of the raw Glicko-2 change, and the guardrail caught it. This usually happens the first time a strong new player hits a high-tier event. Your raw Glicko-2 change is preserved — the clamp only limits the extra points from the multiplier.
What is Glicko-2?
Glicko-2 is a rating system created by Professor Mark Glickman at Harvard. It improves on traditional Elo by tracking how confident the system is in each rating. The full paper is at glicko.net.
System Parameters
For the statistically curious or the implementation-auditing: HRI's published parameters.