Ever wondered what exactly those little symbols next to peoples' names are in Gears of War 2 lobbies? Well, you have probably worked out that they are rank icons, but the fact that you've played loads of matches and it hasn't changed is probably bothering you. It seems to have bothered a few people, which is why Epic has had to explain it.

The little symbol by your name is based upon your TrueSkill rating. TrueSkill assesses your wins and your losses and then decided how adept a player you are. What it also does is use statistical history to predict who should win and who should lose a match. 

"TrueSkill is like the chess ELO system, which tries to predict who should win the match based on the skill of the players," explains Epic rep SixOkay. "If you were predicted to lose and your team wins, then your TrueSkill goes up more than if you won and you were predicted to win. This holds true for the inverse scenario: If you were predicted to win and you lose, then your ranking drops more than if you were predicted to lose."

That's pretty cool. I'd quite like to see one's personal stats indicate how many matches were won against the odds and how many were lost that shouldn't have been. SixOkay points out that the ranking system is not like an RPG and won't keep increasing with experience. It will change or remain the same depending on performance, your rank can move up or down and it could take many tens of matches before a suitable skill ranking is decided. 

... I hate only being rank one.