I'm continuing to win more than half my matches, but just barely, so my win percentage is still only 36.1%.
On the other hand, I'm playing 1) better players and 2) fewer matches, and I'm playing fewer matches because I'm playing better players.
When I first started playing at Backgammon Galaxy, I was anyone's partner who'd dance with me. I'd just post a game and accept the first responder to the invitation. And with a low rating (mine occasionally pops up to 1000, sometimes even 1100, but mostly lower), most of the people who click on my games also have low ratings.
Now I'm increasingly responding to other players' invitations, and I usually look for players with win percentages of higher than 50%, or (if I'm in a hurry and don't want to check) ratings of higher than 1600.
Many of them decline, but some of them accept, and sometimes I pull off the win, and sometimes I even get past the "error rate" algorithm (which favors slot machine "land on any single and hope for the best" play) to pick up ratings points.
That's probably half my matches, and I'm certainly winning less than half of them, keeping above 50/50 on average by playing people closer to my win percentage / ratings points the other half of the time. But being choosy means I'm also playing fewer matches (two to three a day instead of three to five a day). If it was weight-lifting, it would be fewer reps with heavier weight, I guess.
I'm considering closing my account and starting a new one for the sole purpose of being back at a 1500 rating so that I can get more of matches with better players. But that would feel kind of like cheating.
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