k early evidence is that perhaps I was too committed to my proposition because my first data was looking at just a really unfortunate set of circumstances... data is still showing the overall principle I'm talking about is likely proving true but it's not as widespread an issue as i had thought. More people playing will make it worse... but it's not as bad as i expected. I'll admit that.

this is taking a bit too much time to analyse and i have my actual real life job to do. haha
But here's what the data says.

If you want upward mobility in elo then you want

1. Not a lot of people playing
2. Mostly people playing higher than you... if someone is playing close to your score then stop playing for a while and wait for them to stop.
3. Less people playing means greater differences in scores which means greater potential for score mobility.
4. You want to be in a league like diamond or gold where the scores are more spread out and there's not as many people.

Basically we have an incentive now for less people to play ... specially in our own league and specially when we're at the top of the league.