Me: "Do you get "playing exclusively weak players and winning 76% of your matches against them will result in a higher ranking than strong players playing other strong players" then?"
You: "No"
Are you quite sure you haven't said anything about playing weak players?
I know you started out arguing about your own experiences with playing strong players vs automatching. I was arguing that tat's ranking has been raised artificially by choosing to play exclusively weak players while refusing to play strong players, and that this choice has lead to his ranking being higher than what his actual skill reflects. To this, you responded "No" (proof: see above), and the only way to reconcile that with him being by far the highest rated player on the leaderboard is if he was the strongest player, as well. As you point out, you and I don't know him well enough to definitely say he's not, but it's extremely likely he isn't (proof: his refusal to play any high ranked players), and his incredibly high ranking has more to do with the unique method he chooses his opponents (=artifically raising his rating). Even if he actually is the strongest player, we don't know that as you point out, so a resounding "No" to the above question is still not logically consistent. An "I don't know" or "Possibly" might be more reasonable in that case. I do agree that he's almost definitely at least "quite good", fwiw.
Whether all this is important or not is certainly arguable. I'm not losing any sleep over it, to be sure, but I don't think that means I can't point out that I think it's somewhat lame, on a Dominion Message Board.
Finally, based on your last paragraph, you're missing the point about tat and his method of choosing players. It's not the automatching in itself that's the issue; to be honest I don't even know if he automatches. The "issue" is that he plays exclusively weak players, and refuses to play against strong players. I don't think there's any problem with automatching, at least not that I'm aware of.