I know I sure enjoyed tracking my progress when Wizards was good enough to make our game. While I looked at my national rankings, I especially enjoyed the state-level information. Is it possible that one day we might have such a tracking system (perhaps on this site) to track rated constructed games, etc.?

We have all the records, the database, the Calculators just no way to make an it happen in an automated fashion that does not require tedious amounts to figure everything manually. Aaron copies of my work to try to make something but since it seems RL is crazy for him right now the project is just in the air.

I have a friend that I can ask if he can make one but we may have to start over with ground zero on the stats.

I thought someone had all the stats saved (although I guess it doesn't matter)

I do have all the stats and even if we had a program that was empty as long as we could enter the values I woultake the time to make that happen. I have everything.

The only problem with saved stats is there are many people that are no longer in the game for one reason or another and they should not be included in any new system if indeed there is ever one. They would clog the rankings for no reason as they are a non-factor now. Perhaps a day one system could be implemented that would add in and count players whenever they reported a game for the first and each successive time they played.

Really, I am cool with any system new or adapted from the previous one because it is nice to see how you measure up against everyone else. I would guess that since the game has no doubt shrunk over the last 1-1/2 years it might no be too hard to plug in players as they report played games. I do think it important to be sure that a ranked game have at least 4 participants however to be sure 2 players don't go back and forth against only one another. Also, an independent (store owner) person should report the results if possible and be identified to be sure the results are legitimate and not simply players wanting to pad their records.

Many systems include "decay" which is a method by which your rank drops the longer you go without playing. This prevents people from just sitting on a high ranking.

I don't know if this helps, but here's how we do our rankings in the Save11 group in NZ.

We have abouts 20-25 folk who compete in tournaments and leagues that we organise here (as well as the fun stuff around all that) and we rank those games we deem "official". Our system is loosely based on the ICC Test Cricket format (there is nothing in this world better than a forward defensive shot...) which is all the teams play each other over a matter of a coupl'a years (or so) and every result they have against a particular opponent replaces the one you previously had against that opponent. In that system, there are 10 Test Teams and you will always have 10 results to draw on, and you're only as good as your last result.

We do the same, although its never actually possible for all 25 of our guys to play each other, so we average it out. We assign points per game similar to the 3-2 scoring system, so, in effect, we simply take the in-tournament result and plonk it in our rankings spreadsheet. Our only difference is that we - for all our games/tournaments/leagues - run a 3-2-1 scoring system. The 3-2 as per SWMGPA stuff, but we also award a point for the loser getting half the stated victory points (200pt game, you get 100 or over and lose, you get a point). (We find it works well in our Tournaments too.)

Once we have our points, we enter it into my uber-spreadsheet and the magic of excel calculates away. If I play theHutts (whose in our group) and win 3-0, I'd get 3pts to add to my averaged out score, and he's get 0. In our next game, he beats me 2-1, my 3pts is replaced by the new 1 and that win of mine is gone. For him, however, his 0 loss is replaced by a 2 and his ranking points go up!

We have two extra systems that effect results. First is Depreciation. If the result is within the last 6 months, your result retains its full value. If, however, it is in the next 6 months, it begins to reduce towards a zero weighting a year after the game. My 3pts against theHutts is worth the full amount for the first 6 months, at 9 months its only worth 1.5pts and 1 year after the game, its worth nothing. Since we're dealing with averages, my total result points is divided by the amount of games I've had, but – of course – if some of those games are in the depreciation zone (or gone altogether), they weigh less. The second system that effects our results is our 5 game limit. You can't stroll into our league, win one game 3-0 and then exit finding yourself on top for half a year... no, your score is a fraction of what it should be until you hit 5 games. (At 1 game, its 20%, 2 its 40% etc.)

Once excel tells me the score, I multiply it by 100. Reason: 1.5 looks a little bizarro as a ranking score... 150pts looks decidedly cooler.

Here is our current Save11 Rankings as of today!
[1] Aaron - 223 pts (10-3) 13 gp - days/last:22
[2] Graham - 209 pts (10-4) 14 gp - days/last:22
[3] Bevan - 203 pts (9-2) 11 gp - days/last:21
[4] Kezza - 196 pts (12-5) 17 gp - days/last:22
[5] Bob - 190 pts (8-3) 11 gp - days/last:83

[6] Mike - 164 pts (6-3) 9 gp - days/last:21
[7] Alan - 150 pts (4-4) 8 gp - days/last:22
[8] Ian - 140 pts (5-4) 9 gp - days/last:22
[9] Robin - 125 pts (3-5) 8 gp - days/last:22
[10] Dave - 107 pts (5-7) 12 gp - days/last:93

[11] Dee - 100 pts (2-2) 4 gp - days/last:93
[12] Andrew - 78 pts (3-6) 9 gp - days/last:22
[13] Kurt - 77 pts (3-4) 7 gp - days/last:246
[14] Dan - 72 pts (1-7) 8 gp - days/last:22
[15] Danny - 63 pts (2-6) 8 gp - days/last:22

[16] Matt - 40 pts (1-1) 2 gp - days/last:97
[17] Oli - 40 pts (1-0) 1 gp - days/last:120
[18] Rich - 26 pts (1-6) 7 gp - days/last:246
[19] Henko - 0 pts (0-6) 6 gp - days/last:93
[20] Lloyd - 0 pts (0-5) 5 gp - days/last:22
[21] Jordan - 0 pts (0-2) 2 gp - days/last:136
[22] Jack - 0 pts (0-1) 1 gp – days/last:271

(I am Kezza, Graham is theHutts, Bob is KFC is waiting for you, and Aaron is Sharron on BlooMilk)
[Rank] Name – Ranking pts (W-L record currently recorded) Total gamesplayed – days since our last ranking game

My details are thus:
[4] Kezza - 196 pts (12-5) 17 gp – days/last:22
I'm 4th (suck) with 196pts. I have 12 wins and 5 losses that are current, even though my overall record is quite different. (I'm actually 19-9 over the last year.) That's a total of 17 games that are being counted in my record. Our last tournament was the Hutt100 22 days ago (and the final was 21 days ago) which you'll see 12 folk attended.

My full results (last 6 months):
Kezza vs. Aaron (5/6/2011) 126-78 3pts
Kezza vs. Mike (5/6/2011) 52-113 1pts
Kezza vs. Andrew (5/6/2011) 115-20 3pts
Kezza vs. Bob (5/4/2011) 26-65 0pts
Kezza vs. Bevan (26/3/2011) 55-190 0pts
Kezza vs. Ian (26/3/2011) 229-15 3pts
Kezza vs. Alan (26/3/2011) 214-28 3pts
Kezza vs. Dee (26/3/2011) 206-62 2pts
Kezza vs. Oli (27/2/2011) 118-128 1pts
Kezza vs. Lloyd (10/2/2011) 52-15 2pts
Kezza vs. Jordan (27/1/2011) 220-91 3pts
Kezza vs. Dan (22/1/2011) 210-27 3pts
That's 24pts divided by 12 games.

My results in the 'next' six months following that:
Kezza vs. Jack (29/9/2010) 135-9 3pts... actually worth 1.54pts at a 0.51 weighting
Kezza vs. Kurt (24/10/2010) 165-0 3pts... actually worth 1.95pts at a 0.65 weighting
Kezza vs. Dave (24/10/2010) 38-34 2pts... actually worth 1.3pts at a 0.65 weighting
Kezza vs. Rich (24/10/2010) 44-8 2pts... actually worth 1.3pts at a 0.65 weighting
Kezza vs. Graham (30/11/2010) 54-150 0pts... actually worth 0pts at a 0.85 weighting
That 10pts over 5 games is now 6.09pts divided by 3.32 games.

My results older than a year:
Kezza vs. Robin (6/4/2010) 100-17 3pts
Kezza vs. IanF (23/1/2010) 115-10 3pts
Kezza vs. Katherine (17/7/2009) 100-7 3pts
These 9pts are gone. They're worth nothing.

In total, that's 30.09pts I have divided by 15.32 games. That comes to a grand total of 1.96, or 196 ranking pts.

Check me out.
kez

Interesting to add: My game against Dave is in the 6 month depreciation zone. That 2pt win (a depressing drawing out affair, I remember!) is now worth 1.3pts, but I play him on Wednesday night in our recently begun Vassal league. Whatever the result of that, it will replace this one and my score will either go up or down! Up, I hope.

(Can I get a high 5?! Anyone...?)

No offense, but that sounds incredibly convoluted, confusing, and complicated!

My suggestion for the ranking system is this: whenever a player is recorded in an official SWMGPA Tournament for the first time, someone pulls up ALL of their rankings from the old database and adds it to the new ratings. That way, our database doesn't have to be unnecessarily bogged down by people who don't play anymore, but if they do decide to come back to the game, we've got all the old info we can throw into the database when they come back.

None taken! It works for what we do and is pretty accurate as to how we stack up at the time. I'm mostly sharing as I just wanted to talk SWM for half an hour instead of doing the washing (I love being on holiday!)...

Haha, I can certainly appreciate the reasoning. I've ignored my chores all weekend...

It maybe be a bit convoluted in explanation, but their system it quite simple to maintain once it's set up in a computer.

And it solves several common problems with small player volume ranking systems, like people beating up on the same bad player over and over to gain rank and people avoiding playing once they get a high rank.

I suggest that if a new ranking system be set up, it only be used for 'sanctioned' events. Regionals, Gencon, maybe a few others, but that'd be it.

It may seem a little unfair to keep people who are still playing frequently in tournaments from recording those games, but if the reporting gets spread over the entire country + international in some places, then your going to need to teach many people how to submit the results (and then basically run IT for them if/when they mess something up), or have someone be the dedicated Results Inputter to whom all tournies must be reported.

That is the issue we face today and why we looked for an automated method. IF we used the existing strucutre it looks like this.

Take submitted report, Look up each persons ranking

Run the ELO Calulator against each person matchups and opponets rankings, (which is manually taking each person putting them in there and their opponets scores to come out with an outcome.) This has to be done for every person in the tournament.

Then manually input each person information into the Database and resort rankings.


Then there needs to be someway to host the results, and while the database can spit that out into HTML, a full list is 167 pages. It maybe that a hosted excel file may be the way to go. Regardless of all that we are still looking at for a tournament input of 12 players to take at least 1-2 hours to input by hand

I would agree that a ranking system should only be used for Regionals and GenCon. That would make keeping something like this a little easier and more accurate. I have been entering in each regional so far with the people's names and they're placing in a just a basic Excel spreadsheet. I love stats and records and since I can't make it to GenCon, I was going to use this to make a Top 8 Prediction in a few weeks. Just for the fun purpose of getting people talking about who might place and if there will be any wildcards. But in doing so...there are a couple of regionals that have taken place that haven't given decent breakdowns and placings. (california and the northwest for instance) So until everyone can give accurate results at the regional level, I don't foresee a believable ranking system for the community...at least for this year. Although I would love to see one happen. I'll be the first one on board to help.

Oh and I still plan on giving my Top 8.

Ha! Thanks Nickname... I am always being told I need to be more succinct... I can send anyone my spreadsheet if they wanna see it.

Please do so.