I was watching the ladder rankings and wondering the same thing about them. The first five people to finish 5 games included a third place guy with zero wins. Fifth place had 4-1 record. Since everyone had the same rating to begin with, it made me very curious.

The fact that someone could end up 0-16 with a rating above 1500 just makes it clear to me that the scoring system can't work for this type of ladder. I'm sure it works just fine for the 1v1 ladder (small adjustments and quirks aside), but that involves far more games and allows people to stabalize at a certain rating.

I understand the usefulness of giving less of a loss when facing harder opponents, but I don't think a person with zero wins can be rightfully placed above someone who won several games. You really can't say anything about the skill of the person with zero wins, even if all the losses were to really good players. Maybe they are good and just got paired against better players, but maybe they are simply really bad.