Is ±10 still an appropriate range for opponents?

[dane]

The recent change to ratings has had the effect of reducing the difference in ratings between a newcomer and the top of the leaderboard from about 45 to about 28.  That suggests to me that being matched against opponents now with a rating range of ±10 is equivalent to be matched against opponents previously with a rating range of about ±15, so I've adjusted my personal settings to match only against opponents with a rating range of ±8 (maybe ±7 would be more appropriate) in an attempt to be matched against roughly the same subset of potential players as before the change.

Does anyone see a flaw in my logic?

[markus]

To some extent it's personal taste how weak / strong you like your potential opponents to be.
The rating update did not affect the meaning of a difference in mu. So if your opponent is 1 point lower in mu and has the same phi as you, they'll be 7.5 levels below as before the update and your chance of winning is 73%.

The update affected the difference in phi between players and the initial phi of players. This increases the level of new players, as the level is based on some lower bound of the skill (mu-2*phi). I think that this is a good thing of the update (apart from being more accurate in terms of player skills), because I want to be matched with people of similar skill (mu) even if they don't play much (high phi).

So, I guess if you primarily care about the waiting time, you can slightly reduce the range now and have the same waiting time. In general, I would recommend using only +/- 7 levels at most as it gives you more equal matches. But as I said that's a question of taste.

[livresque]

I understand your thinking and almost broke a statiscappilary at first until I saw there would be no real difference in the end other than not being as challenged because of how many other factors are at play. Changing +/- 10 by +/- 3 isn't really a shift depending on how you want to be bound by the same domain...thank mu Markus for explaining it better.  Just want Dane to know it's a plus that we can adjust these domains, but it might not change the game, if that makes any sense.