Actually, if you studied the formula closer, you would see that there is NO WAY you can LOSE points in a victory. The least amount of points you could gain is 0. How did you come to the conclusion that this system is just like GameLeague's? I have all the equations spelled out. You can do the math yourself and see for yourself.
Also, note the example table of Winning Expectancies. We can SET THESE VALUES to what we would like them to be. You want a victory over a guy with 10 billion points less than you to give you 50 points? Sure, we can do that. The question is, would you really want to? Of course we would come to a decent compromise - for example, perhaps we can make the scale so that people with even 4000 points less than you will still give you 50 points if you win in a match against them.
The key here is to study the system. I've laid this all out. The system is highly customizable - we can change the values in the table. Note that in the example table, if you have 2300 or more points than your opponent, you will gain 0 points. You WILL NOT LOSE points, but you will not gain any either. If you have a problem with that, we can adjust the scale to whatever you want. We can make it so that you could have 5000 more points than you opponent and we would still give you 50 points.
Heck, we could even set the system so that for matches where the point difference between the two players is over a certain amount, the winner will always receive a certain minimum amount of points. I could delete all the lines in the sample table past point differences of 700. We could then say that for all games where the point difference is 700 or greater, set the winning expectancy for the higher-ranked player to 80 and the winning expectancy for the lower-ranked player to 20. That way, ALL games with differences greater than 700 would result in a decent amount of points for the higher-ranked player.
I don't see how you can just suddenly come to the conclusion that this system is exactly like GameLeague's and that it doesn't work. In fact, the original CivFanatics Ladder had a system that was not too different from this system. The fact of the matter is, many ranking systems that weigh difficulty and take external factors into account (such as relative strengths of the players involved) will use a system similar to this. They just either tweak the formula or tweak the Winning Expectancy table. Either way, they will eventually figure out a combination that will make the system work for the application involved.
Trajan