I've been wondering what percentage of the world top players (5x5 boxes DnB) play here on LG or, put in another way, how many world top players do not play on LG. If there was a universal world ranking, where would the #1 on LG be ranked? And the #10? And the #30? Does anyone have any idea?

I have absolutely no idea about that question. I know several mathematician friends who are very strong dots and boxes players but don't play on the internet at all. Who knows how many of these there are, and who knows how to find out!

So how good are those guys? And how did they get to their level of play?

As far as I know there isn't really any live tournament stuff going on, and it's hard to imagine someone getting really good at this game by just playing against friends every now and then.

My thoughts exactly, flipster. If you play only the same opponents all the time, the has to be a ceiling in how good you can get.

These people might not be as good as us. They are people who have contributed to the theory in the past, or at least learnt it. There was a tournament at MSRI once, for example, before this sort of site existed on the internet (it got written up in one of those “games of no chance” books). I remember looking at one of the final games though and thinking that actually these people weren't playing particularly well. When I went to visit Berlekamp I was keen to play him a few games but he was keen to avoid playing me because he said that I'd surely be better (I wasn't so sure, but there you are). So maybe my comments aren't relevant. But who knows. There might be kids playing on pencil and paper at school somewhere—it's very hard to know.

no worries, by my joining lg is now most elitist dots community for sure