I don't want to get into this discussion too much, but if anyone thinks that playing bad players is a good way to boost your level, I would encourage you to try it. It is much, much more difficult than it seems to consistently beat randomly-selected bad players.
I will second this. I'm guilty of caring about my rating too much, but the advent of automatch has killed me. I've been as high as 42... and now i'm stuck down at 36. Previously I always challenged the highest ranked player.
I think the "problem" is that the win probability between levels can vary quite a bit, and varies significantly based on the cards on the table.
Some tables have very obvious or limited strategies. Those games are likely to be "flatter" in terms of the relationship between win% and player skill. Other games might have cards with significant variance.
Using treasure map as an example. Without help, treasure map is usually a bad play. If I played 100 games with theory, and he went un-assisted treasure map every time, I would expect to beat him about 60-70% of the time. However, when it hits on turn 5 - its going to be very tough to beat. I don't remember the exact % of the time, but it is very far from zero.
Lets assume that it's 30%. There's the "good" strategy... that theory and tat know... and there's the "buy only treasure map strategy", that anyone can see. If the true skill model looks at theories level, and then a lvl 5 guy (we'll call him "chump", and assumes that the Chump only has a 12% chance to win against the great and all powerful theory, then all Chump has to do is play treasure map every time, and he'll gain levels while theory loses them.
So - by putting some control over the table, you can influence your ranking. Ideally - if you're a good player, you want to bias the table to cards that reward skillful play with minimal variance. If you're a bad player, you want to increase the variance as much as possible, to make the game result much closer to a coin flip.
You can look at the logs of folks out there to see what constraints they put on their games... and come to your own conclusions.
One final leaderboard gaming tip:
Because isotropic assigns starting player advantage based on most recent result, any time you lose, you should make sure you use that advantage on as high ranked opponent as you can. The first player advantage is anywhere from 2-15% (its 8% for tat, and 12% for theory), and you want to cash that in for as much as you can.
I agree with most of the comments that the leaderboard should be fully random (seat order chosen randomly, you don't know who your opponent is, what cards are chosen, no constraints). Maybe this should be a separate leaderboard, but as long as you can control your the shape of your game and your opponents, there will be people who will game it. I'm half tempted to intentionally throw 50 games in a row to someone just to skyrocket them to the top.
Then, you gotta remember that its just a number, and of the N thousand people playing dominion on isotropic, there are probably only 50 really care about the topic.