Points

Diplomacy is a game that takes no time to learn, but ages to master. Because phpDiplomacy is user friendly it gets many Diplomacy novices, but there are also lots of very good players.

Points are what let experts play with other experts, and novices play with other novices, so that everyone is challenged to the right amount.

When someone creates a game they can select how many of their points they want to "bet" on the game.

Only people who can bet the same number of points can join the game.
An expert player will have more points and so only other expert players can play in high-stakes games.

Once everyone who wants to join has joined the game has a large "pot" of points. If there are seven players the pot size will be seven times the size that each player bet.

Once the game is over the pot is paid back to the players depending on how well they did.

The amount of points you get depends on how many units you have at the end. If you have the 18 units needed to win you'll get most of the points, but if you have more units than you started with at the end you'll still win something. If you get defeated, or have to leave the game, then all the points you bet are lost.

Minimum points

New players get 100 points to start out with, and if a game ends and a player has less than 100 points they get their bet back.

Discipline!

As players win more points they can enter games that cost more points, and climb up the ladder towards the expert players. But in high stakes games you can gain and lose lots of points very quickly, so be careful about betting all your points!
If you're getting a good collection of points try to limit yourself to betting half your points at a time, especially against the expert players, or you could be back to playing with novices!

Draws

Sometimes a game can't go any further; two or more players have arranged their units so that the other players can only hold their position. In these cases the game is a draw, and the points are split equally among all the surviving players, regardless of how many supply centers each player has.

Winner-takes-all vs Points-per-supply-center

For expert players who have over 100 points there is a "Winner-takes-all" mode, in which the winner of the game gets all the points from the game, and the runners up get nothing. This mode is for expert players who think that winner-takes-all is more true to the board game.
But remember that you are less likely to get any points back in a winner-takes-all game; even if you play well you might get no points back, so try to bet less on winner-takes-all games than points-per-supply-center games!