Win Streak Bonus / Loss Streak Penalty
Prior to season 5 (June 1st, 2017), there was a substantial bonus to SR for winning many games in a row (about 4 or more), scaling all the way up to 150 SR for one win. To keep things balanced, penalties existed if a player lost many games in a row. This was removed because it lead to people who got lucky/unlucky being thrown far from their true rank (9, 10).
There is some kind of SR buff applied in some cases:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY3hAO7ifhX6sj_mxW2o68w
In recent streamer’s Tesla Bronze to Silver challenge with Moira, he gets clear SR buff up to 95. Here is the list of SR gain/loss:
Bronze (slightly after first placement matches on new account):
Silver:
Gold:
Plat:
Is it just applied for a certain number of competitive games with a new account or on any account? That has to be checked. It makes sense to reward someone drastic increase in skills if coming after a long break of training for example. It wouldn’t otherwise because it would facilitate boosters’ jobs.
In Tesla’s case, there seems to be a difference between the first 10 games studied (that are not exactly the first 10 after initial placement matches, since he has already 3 hours of play and 14 wins on his profile) and after the first two losses. After the losses what I think is more than 30 games after the first placement match, the SR gain is around between 30-33 for 4 games before increasing to 40 on the fifth. Same thing happens later in a 18 wins streak: the first 4 have a similar SR around 32, the next 4 are between 40 to 50 and then it increases again to a new plateau, wider, that goes from 78 to 95.
Thanks for the data. I’ll look through it in more detail, but my first impression is that Blizzard made a silent change. My data saying that there are no streak bonuses in low ranks is from season 6 (Stevo's Bronze to GM Analyzed - Google Sheets ). Streak bonuses still do not exist in diamond and above (recent data: Streamer Data - Google Sheets → NerfLucio 13), but your data makes it look like streak bonuses now exist in plat and below.
Once small divergence is that Stevo’s run was an established account, while Tesla’s is a newish account.