guinniboy wrote:id have to say major since this can land u on page one, though i see far too many players getting there with a high percentage of wins coming from silver nobodys often missing turns and handing free points away, maybe multi accounts or friends who dont care but are jioning only to lose to help pad these ranks, why do u see majors and higher playing 40 straight games and winning against privates, cadets, and new recruits? seems they would not put those hard earned points up against such low ranks unless they were insured victory.
Interesting supposition g'boy, however, I must disagree (from a subjective view). I, along with regular partners, put ourselves out there, and whoever wants to take us on is welcome. It takes just one loss, against the very low ranks, in around 8 or 9 games to wipe out all the points gained previously, and this does happen. I notice those who play the team games often fluctuate between Colonel and Major. The drop can be so poor, on occasion, that even the most experienced strategic player will get hammered. I must say on this last point, that cooks, cadets etc. don't help themselves by deadbeating with far more frequency than those in higher ranks.
I do not 'specialise' as such, although I do play classic most of the time and eschew some of the stranger maps. So I suppose the argument could go that I specialise on the classic map.
This whole thread seems to be joined at the hip with the others about low rankers playing poorly, high rankers not taking low rankers on, etc etc. As I see it, players like myself are damned if we do and damned if we don't. That is to say, if we lock ourselves away and play among ourselves, 'hoarding' the points, we are accused of not being genuine in our approach and not daring to take on the lower ranks. If we take the ' we are open to anyone' approach, the majority comes from the lower ranks (unsurprisingly as most of the membership is below the Corporal rank), when this happens we are accused of fleecing them for meagre points....such is the price of being good at something.
So, in summary, I would say an Elite player is a player who will always play anyone on those maps and styles they enjoy that are 'generic', and win the vast majority of the time, climbing the ranks to sit within the top 200 (which of course includes me

).
Once there, of course, the leap higher is a slow process unless they really do find a niche game that few others will deal with. These players I do not call 'Elite' in the true sense of the word. After all, to be at the top when playing a map everyone knows is surely better than playing a map that only a few know and others play literally acting as flies in a spiders web.