I agree that those are real problems that need to be dealt with. I don't think suppressing the effects of a loss against a lower-rated player solves them very w

I agree that those are real problems that need to be dealt with. I don't think suppressing the effects of a loss against a lower-rated player solves them very well, though. The suppression could just be applied in those cases instead of in every case where there's a large rating disparity. There are plenty of cases where a highly-rated player loses to a low-rated player fair and square. In those cases there should be significant rating adjustments -- at least more significant than a normal game between similarly-rated opponents -- but this system removes those to combat edge cases. I think it would be more effective to deal with those edge cases directly.