Heh, I went 7-3 yesterday, beating a few higher level opponents, and my rank only dropped. I'm actually satisfied at ever reaching level 40 and don't care much anymore, but sometimes I'm puzzled by TrueSkill's wiles.
That's my thought too... if I hit 40, I'll probably stop caring about ranking. I know I'm not nearly good enough to compete with the 50s, and I don't quite want to invest the time it would take to get there. Just finished going about 4-5 for the day.
I'm pretty sure 40 is my ceiling and very happy with it. I mean, there are ~8000 registered users on the leaderboard - all active since Iso removes inactive accounts - and being in the top 50 or so is quite an achievement for me.
What makes getting a high ranking even harder is the fact that you have to sidestep so many mine fields. I mean, I accept pretty much any registered match and even lvl 1's can beat me if they open 5/2 Witch over my measly 4/3.
And then there are diminishing returns. Going from lvl 1 to lvl 10 is super easy, from 10 to 20 so-so, from 20 to 30 you need to at least know which cards might be good, from 30-40 increasingly difficult and so on. And because the higher you get, the more opponents are below you, the more difficult it gets to increase your lvl.
Since I had a good run yesterday I'm even at lvl 41 now, woohoo!!
And just in time, too. I don't think I will be playing on Goko much when it goes live, so at least I've had a good run.