User blog comment:Madness Incarnate/The Mathematics and Psychology behind "Elo Hell"/@comment-99.226.117.210-20130110215924

From what I understood, the ELO hell gets worse the lower you go. ELO hell by your definition that it is an area around 1200 ELO where games are decided by luck truly don't exist, however the ELO hell I'd heard of, which is that it gets harder to get out the lower you go, may be true.

Now being good at math, I know what you math people are thinking, this is obviously impossible and no matter how unlucky you are, the luck always cancels out eventually. However my theory is that this isn't what ELO hell is actually based on. IMO, ELO hell is more based on the attitudes of the players at low ELO, than their skill levels. Let's put it this way: you have 3 different kinds of players that are essential to ELO hell, based on a combination of 2 factors:

How likely you are to get aggrevated or annoyed from a game and "throw" the game on purpose

How high your s.elo is

Obviously someone who is skilled and doesn't get aggrevated often won't ever get to ELO hell, because they'd be winning most of their games.

And also obviously, someone whose skill level is around their actual ELO won't be affected by my version of ELO hell either because due to the math they'd deserve to be there.

However, finally, there are the decent players that do get aggrevated easily. If, due to an unlucky streak where you get a couple games where a person on your team afk's in a row, you reach a low enough ELO, my theory is that the reason you'll stay there isn't because you're actually bad at the game, but because of all the people who are, or by the people who got there by aggrevating their teammates enough so that their teammates throw the game more often than the enemy team.

This means that although your actual skill level, or s.elo may be around 1300-1500 or something, because of how easily you get offended or annoyed by bad players or by annoying players, you'll end up throwing the game more often than the enemy team.

Some people may include this as part of what makes a player good, but IMO there is a difference between actual skill and how easily you get aggrevated. Basically, while you would be playing at a 1300-1500 s.elo range in a 1300-1500 ELO game, because of the bad or annoying players, you end up doing worse or simply losing the game on purpose, which keeps you at the same low ELO that is making you lose more.