I find a lot of players are actually clueless on how the game works or think the matches are totally random. Folks this game is not a lottery unlike some other pbm games nor is this game a simulator like others. If you think the stock market is luck then you might think this game is luck because they have some similarities. Here's an example Magnum TA is 112 wins & 4 losses, eithier he is extremely lucky or picks on week dudes (actually he does beat up a lot of noobs) or he actually knows how to pick moves.

Here is the skinny on how moves values are calculated. At the end of the server cycle the move picks are tallied and then sorted from least picked to most picked. The move with the least picks will be ranked with a pick rank of 1 and since there are 100 moves the highest will have a pick rank of 100. Now the move with a pick rank of 1 will usually go up the most unless it cannot because it's at it's maximum and the move with a pick rank of 100 will go down the most.

There is one other important deciding factor that you will not be aware of because I wanted to keep the forumla a secret for players to find out for themselves, that is the move's disposition. You can find out the moves disposition when you click on the move in the move values chart or the question mark by the move selector. The disposition will either be "Volatile" or "Dormant". This will tell you the degree of how much a move will fluctuate. A "Volatile" move will have a greater chance of going up or down in value by a large amount, where as "Dormant" will be much less or not even at all in some cases. Now if you study the move value chart you will see evidence of this especially if you do your own tracking. If you do not want to go that in depth the general rule of thumb is if you have a choice of moves worth a high value pick the one that is dormant because it probably go down less. On the other hand if you pick a move that is not worth so much pick a volatile one because it has a better chance to sky rocket.

I know some players are too lazy to pick moves and leave it up to the computer (including me at times) but you are just cannon fodder for the players that do pick moves.
You can check the ratio of players picking vs. players having there moves picked for them (random moves) here:
http://www.mastersofthemat.com/Main/MoveStats.aspx 

UPDATE:

It used to be that the moves were not ranked from 25-100 but now the moves are ranked, so it is impossible to crash the move market. From now on there will always be 1 move worth a 100 points and 1 move worth around 97 and it goes on down the list. The calculations work exactly the same as they used to but the highest rated move will be forced to be worth 100 and so on down the list, so the move values will always look similar as the previous cycles except the moves worth the most will change.

Sorry if your brain hurts, come back and read it again it will eventually make sense :)

Once you get it you will win more matches or atleast be on the same level as players that do well.

I thought that I had posted that this was a great read. Anyway. Thanks for the info

Hey deevo, I didn't know if I should ask this here or to message you privately but when clicking on the question mark for the move infos, like you mention about the volatile and dormant moves. There's also the cycle life and it shows a percentage. What does the percentage mean? I'm guessing it means how volatile or dormant the move will be next cycle...? Let me know here or even message me on the main site. Thanks!

This is the best place to post it. To answer your question the cycle life is how long a move will stay on its pattern of dormant and volatile.

For Ex:

D = Dormant Server Cycle and V = Volatile Server Cycle.

D,D,D,D,V,V,V,V = 1 Round or 1 Cycle of Dormant and Volatile States

Now a move will stay on this pattern for X number of Rounds could be 4 rounds, 6 or 8. Once it reaches its maximum of cycle rounds it will then switch its pattern and start over. So a move with a cycle life of 50% will only be half way through this process and a move with a cycle life of 100% is complete and is on it's last pattern.

What does this mean to you, well if you figure out the cycle patterns by looking at the charts and the the cycle life is fairly fresh like 25% or 50% then you can predict the move for a fairly long time before a new pattern starts.

Hope this helps.

So if it's at 50% or more it's going to more volatile? I base that on the cycles you were talking about.

It has nothing to do with how Volatile or Dormant a move will be its just a count of how long a pattern has been running for. You don't need to worry about it, it has no bearing in how moves are calculated.