Competitive is a comparison based system . You don ' t ' trade ' SR with your opponents . It comes from an entirely different pool . Scott Mercer says when we do put you in a match that we know isn ' t a 5050 , we adjust your SR gain or loss based on your calculated ~~ change ~~ chance of winning . So if you did get placed into a match with only a 20 % chance to win and then you lose , you shouldn ' t lose much SR . the amount of MMR and SR you go up or down isn ' t simply a matter of whether you won or lost , and what was your predicted chance of winning . There ' s a couple of other things at work . One is the matchmaker ' s confidence in what your MMR should be . Play a lot of games , it gets more certain . Don ' t play Overwatch for a while , it gets less certain . You go on a large win or loss streak , it gets less certain . The more certain the matchmaker is about your MMR , the less your MMR will change in either direction based on a win or loss . The entire competitive system and where people end up within the system is dependent on the ' pool ' of players who actually participate in Competitive . If only ' pro players ' participated . There would be no ' tiers ' in use except for Gold and Platinum . The player pool simply isn ' t big enough . nbspYou yourself have likely seen all the posts about ' ELO hell '. And people absolutely desperate to rankup and yet never being able to . You educate the users about how a ' comparativebased ' system works You make it very clear that they gain less points when they ' re favored to win and win You make it very clear that they lose much much more points when they ' re favored to win but losenbspNoone would willingly sign up to a 20 min competitive game knowing Win Gain Zero SR Lose Drop 100 SR