The new ELO-based ranking system

[Stucifer]

@MrRoboto Thanks for the detailed post, I don’t have much input at this time but love the presentation!

as @Martin pointed out, an annual or lower per month might be a better spot for decay if implemented. 3% would take someone at 2400 ELO down to a 2126 after a full year of inactivity, probably okay. 5% would be 1765 which feels quite low for taking a break. I know the floor would be 1500. Maybe 3% or at least no more than 5% in my opinion :)

[gamerman01]

Hi guys,

I am very excited with what MrRoboto has cranked out - he is very high energy and doing a lot of work to improve the league.

The final product of this effort is going to be awesome but it’s not going to be rolled out until I’m satisfied and also the majority of league players are happy. Or in other words, until we don’t have many dissenters. No one wants a change that a lot of people don’t like.

I’m only going to post publicly right now, that I have major concerns about an ELO system because I think you can only rise or fall a certain number of points per game, and few games are played by most players because a game of G40 takes a whole lot of hours as we all know.

It’s not chess, and it’s not a sport league where everyone plays the same number of games. This is what jkeller and farmboy have chimed in to say, also. That ELO doesn’t work very well when few, or varied numbers of games are played.

I am writing privately with MrRoboto a lot, in order to make sure I understand this beautiful ranking spreadsheet, before saying much more. We will work together and keep communicating to you guys so you are kept in the loop. There’s got to be a way to level things out for vast differences in number of games played.

[gamerman01]

I really like the idea of decay, especially because it reflects reality. Unless a player continues playing G40 somewhere else, and the same version of it, they are going to start getting some rust over time.

[AndrewAAGamer]

Personally, I don’t like the idea of the lifetime tracking to have any decay in it. If a person needs some time off why should their lifetime ranking be affected? Or, even if they stopped playing entirely, why wouldn’t we want their history to stay unaffected so we could go - “wow, look how good xxx was when he/she played here.”

I am all for a separate yearly ranking that would determine playoff position and of course affect the lifetime ranking.

The best thing I like about his system, as a high ranking player, is there is no detriment to playing anyone from any tier. Yes, there is a gigantic risk to your score if you lose, but there is no penalty to your score, just because you played somebody in a lower tier. I think everyone being able to play everyone will be good for the community.

[MrRoboto]

The concerns regarding the low amount of games played are all valid. I do agree with them actually!
That’s why I included the “K”-Factor in the first place. And I toyed around with the numbers, had them a lot higher for the first couple of games too. But this has negative effects too… If you are unlucky in one of your earlierst games, it feels frustrating to need 3 wins to offset an unlucky early loss.

All the more reason for lifetime rating ;-)
I will try to add in more results from before 2023 asap. You will see that the ratings are a lot more stable then and I’m confident that this will satisfy the concerns.

[MrRoboto]

I was being unclear with what I meant with 10% decay.
I meant 10% of the difference between current ELO and 1500.

So a 2000 player would lose 10%, aka 50. And then he is 1950, so the next 10% would bring him down to 1905 and then 1865…

But yeah, I agree - that’s still too harsh.

I’m inclined to go with AndrewAAGamer…
No decay for the overall lifetime ranking.

And for the yearly playoffs we only count results from the current year anyway, so decay is not really necessary in the first place.

[farmboy]

@MrRoboto thanks for all the work on this.

One concern. I like the idea of capturing a players’ current strength. But because we play a small number of games I would worry here that two or three games would have too much weight. So if a player that was tier 1 (with 5 games played) ends up beating 3 tier M players in a row, that is pretty good evidence that they are at the same level and they are going to be a top player according to either the existing scoring or the ELO. But if a tier M player (with 5 games played) loses 3 games in a row to other tier M players, with the current scoring they that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are no longer tier M and I am worried with an ELO, the drop might be more dramatic. So for that reason I like that the current league scoring that averages over a year.

One suggestion. This might be onerous, but could you score a year of play so that we could see how this ends up? That would both give us a sense of how well this works and also what might need to be tweaked.

[MrRoboto]

I absolutely can and will add that, farmboy.
I will also add an indicator, when a player is inactive (should 6 months of not playing be considered inactive or rather 12 months?)

But in my opinion, if a player loses 3 games in a row against other Tier M players, then that player shouldn’t be considered M for the moment. He would need to prove himself again with wins to reclaim M tier…

[MrRoboto]

To everybody: You can help me collect past results!

It’s 3 am here and I have 3 kids, including a 3months old baby. It’s past time I go to bed haha.

Go to the Sheet that’s named “Results before 2023” and enter the data.
There are only 6 cells required and I named them so I think it’s self-explanatory

The last entry I made myself is on Page 109 of the Post results thread, I was working myself backwards…

[Stucifer]

@MrRoboto I can help with this shortly

[farmboy]

@MrRoboto so I just opened the spreadsheets. That is very impressive. I won’t have time to help now but didn’t realize you had already done so much work.

[Stucifer]

@MrRoboto sent you a PM as well, look for an email with a link to my spreadsheet for copying data over. I rearranged the columns on my end for faster entry the way brain reads the posts.

Got back to early november 2021 (page 93 fully completed)

[gamerman01]

Nice, a group project to get more years recorded. After personally and manually entering every game result for years, I have quite a strong grasp on how good each player is, in a way that can’t really be quantified with bare numbers or a formula.

So I am hoping to see how the numbers will fall with 1/1/22 to date, 1/1/21 to date, or however far we can go back. To the beginning of G40 is the dream. Shouldn’t matter much that the rule sets changed dramatically (especially balanced mod) at some points, since was even competition between many of the same players anyway.

I hope the lifetime ratings will pretty much line up with my experience and memory, and it will be fascinating to see players from years ago stack up in the same rankings against contemporaries.

[gamerman01]

So with a lifetime… no K factor adjustment for sensitivity, right?

[MrRoboto]

I would keep the K factor. It will help new players joining the community finding their correct spot in the ranking faster.

If someone really weak comes, we need that player to fall quickly otherwise the first couple of wins are overrated.
And if the next I don’t know, Napoleon or Sun Tzu, suddenly joins, we need that player to climb super fast otherwise the losses will hurt the respective players more than they should.

[farmboy]

@MrRoboto if the k factor is considered over lifetime (and is too sensitive) an issue might be that players that are strong now, but weaker in the past will have their past games weigh down their current ELO. If I’m right on that, instead of it being a factor in one’s first games, can it be more sensitive in one’s most recent games? That might allow new players to move up more quickly without penalizing players that have been around for a while.

[pacifiersboard]

@MrRoboto

mega! At first I thought like “may it be fun to play the league games whatever the ranking (system)” - but at this moment I find the project even more thrilling than going on with my games (:) mainly because you gently propose it as a matter of community! And by this you are doing great in keeping @gamerman01 's style!! It looks to me as what you @gamerman01 have fostered dearly is coming of age rather than plotting

[gamerman01]

@MrRoboto said in Proposal for a new, ELO-based, ranking system:

I would keep the K factor. It will help new players joining the community finding their correct spot in the ranking faster.

Ah, of course this is right.

[gamerman01]

@farmboy said in Proposal for a new, ELO-based, ranking system:

If I’m right on that, instead of it being a factor in one’s first games, can it be more sensitive in one’s most recent games? That might allow new players to move up more quickly without penalizing players that have been around for a while.

Or both?? Sensitive at beginning and also recent?
Or K factor that adjusts to total number of games, where the adjustment is high in the first few games, but if that player continues on to play 15 or 50 or 500, then automatically eliminates those first few game k factor and enacts the later game? MrRoboto, we think you can do anything now. :D

I suppose after 50 or 500 whatever games, the k factor being applied to the first few would be practically nil, so maybe could be applied to both beginning and more recent.

Look at those formulas. Look at that automation. We’ll figure it out.

[MrRoboto]

@farmboy and @gamerman01
This is not possible since that would mean to retroactively adapt the ELO change of past games when you play more recent games.
That contradicts the whole idea and is actually not even possible to implement since that creates circular references again - the biggest problem the old system had.

It’s also not necessary at all. As you, gamerman, already stated: At a certain point the first few games are completely irrelevant. That point is FAR earlier than 50 games.

Just an extreme example:
Dawgoneit is currently 5-45, with an ELO of 1059
With only 4 wins against some of the current top5 players, he can increase his rating to ~1600 even though he still is only 9-45 at that point.
The system accurately shows the current strength.

Thanks to Mr_Stucifer we now have the data of 2022 too. I think the system already looks extremely solid.

Everybody can create a copy for themselves with
File -> Make a Copy.

You can then play around and add some results as you like to see how the system behaves.