Hello everyone, We’re all familiar with the fact that the Codeforces rating system is quite sophisticated. It takes into account a variety of factors, such as:Your current rating, The ratings of other participants, Your expected vs. actual performance,The number of rated participants And more subtle variables behind the scenes

I fully understand and agree that the rating change (delta) is influenced by all of the above.

The Pattern We Usually Expect From my experience and observation, the following pattern tends to hold true in most contests: 'For the same rank, a lower-rated person usually gains more rating A higher-rated person gains less, or may even lose rating, at similar ranks'

This makes intuitive sense. If someone with a low rating performs well, it means they exceeded expectations. For someone with a high rating, performing as expected doesn’t change much.

A Case That Breaks the Pattern However, I recently came across an example that doesn’t seem to follow this logic. Here are two users from a recent contest (image shared above shows the full context):

EVOLUTIONARY: 1275 → 1334 (+59) AhanaDatta: 1360 → 1454 (+94)

Both are listed at the same rank — 3357.

Yet the lower-rated user, EVOLUTIONARY, gained only +59, while the higher-rated AhanaDatta gained +94. That’s a 35-point difference, which seems to contradict the usual trend.

What Could Be the Reason?