From my own Elo to EGF rank conversion estimate, I estimate the gap between me and a typical 5k to be about 600 Elo, which would imply a win% of about 5% for them (1 in 20 games).And wrote:@gennan
Let's suppose, in theory, that you are playing against 5 kyu, playing at full strength every game. do you agree that he will never win? but if you calculate the probability, it is not equal to 0. If you are not sure about 5 kyu, then 10 kyu
And I would estimate the gap between me and a typical 10k to be about 900 Elo, which would imply a win% of about 0.5% for them (1 in 200 games).
I don't know if those estimates are realistic, but I don't intend to play very long matches against 5k and 10k players to accurately determine their winning probability.
I did lose an online game last December against a player with an OGS rating hovering around (2021) OGS 3k. And in the past 25 years I have lost several tournament games against 1k players. I just looked up my score against 1k in the EGD and it is 25-7, so 1k has about 20% winrate against me (suggesting a 250 Elo gap, though it might be a bit biased, because I usually only play against 1k in tournaments when they have a good day and I have a bad day).
I think there is always some probability that my opponent wins, no matter how weak they are. Yes, at some point the probability becomes less than 1%, but it's never going to be 0.
For example, I could get a stroke during the game. I don't know the exact odds for such a thing happening, but I think it's at least something like 1 in 1,000,000 games.
That probability is small, but clearly bigger than your example of throwing balls at the moon, because it's physically impossible for even the strongest humans to throw a ball with a velocity close to escape velocity (11.2 km/s) and then I'm even ignoring drag from the atmosphere.