Talk:Elo rating system/@comment-62.12.14.26-20120828155514/@comment-150.203.111.142-20120909193635

The team with the lower average Elo is expected to lose, and will gain more from winning and lose less from losing. Until you get to the very peak of LoL, you're matched up against roughly equal opponents.

Being on a winning streak will increase your elo and have you possibly face tougher players, but you will gain less elo from winning these than you would have if you'd faced them at the lower elo. There is no 'exponential' gain. Starcraft attempts to hasten your normalisation (while stabilising your visible classification) by pitting you against tougher opponents than your elo dictates when you were doing well, and worse when you're doing badly, but I don't believe LoL does the same.

Your Elo can be practically anything, at a 50/50 win rate. If you won every game you were on the Blue team, and lost every time you were Purple, you'd expect your Elo to steadily climb (there is a bias toward putting the better team purple, because it's a sight disadvantage)

Until you get to the very upper echelons, the matchmaking means you're facing people of similar elo, so it is expected that all players should have ~50/50 scores.