Improved Ranking System ???

Really you’ll left convincing us that someone like you deserves the WC spot over someone like Mainwaring . . . at the end of the day.

In the last 20 months you’ve played in the DPM outside of the UK, and that’s it. No EPC? No BOP? No GPO? At some point I want to motivate you to travel to the biggest European events, as a way to qualify yourself for the biggest international events.

Feels like a little bit a cheap hall pass to me. Remember, there’s also the path through the ECS Final to advance to the IFPA WC. You can win the UKCS, earn the ECS Final spot, and play well enough at that one event to advance to the IFPA WC every year.

At some point my push for you is to PLAY, PLAY, PLAY, PLAY! You’re clearly NOT doing that now, so rewarding you for that through the qualifying system seems a bit off to me.

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Fixed . . . you’re #1 now . . . relax :wink:

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Done: https://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/power100.php?type=nl

Also I realized I left the “only met 5 times” filter on, to limit the records in the normal comparison pages. HungarianPitbull’s reign is over.

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So you’re rewarding people by playing.

There isn’t a reward for not playing , as you say. The reward is for playing well in the comps you do enter - rather than entering lots of comps, and doing well in some of them.

I believe that if you enter 20 comps and win 5 of them - you have the right to be seen as better than someone who enters 200 comps and wins 5 of them.

With respect to Craig specifically, I meant playing in “high level/prestige tournaments” as part of your resume.

I just find the discussion odd over the interest of players that don’t travel, who seem to have a high level of interest on participating in the IFPA WC as if they will only travel for JUST THAT TOURNAMENT.

We run into that with players in the US as well. There are players disappointed they didn’t qualify for Denmark due to our qualifying system, but meanwhile refuse to travel to Pittsburgh twice per year in a trip they could make by car. It’s like, would you really FLY OUT TO DENMARK FOR THIS, but won’t drive a few hours in the car for an event just as prestigious.

I don’t want to bash my own event in any way, but is the IFPA WC that much MORE PRESTIGIOUS than the other Majors? The other 3 Majors are open for anyone to participate in regardless of any ranking system. Why not just go to EPC or PAPA or Pinburgh? If I lived anywhere in Europe and was really into trying to win a Major . . . I’d make sure the EPC was on my calendar every year as my “one pinball trip”.

If you just want an ego boost, Craig can have it with the Power 100 Index. I think it’s great actually, and I do plan on trying to incorporate it more into the lexicon of what the IFPA talks about. He’s the 32nd most skilled player in the world at pinball . . . tell your friends :slight_smile:

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if those 20 comps are big time events I’m pretty sure you’d be ranked higher than the 200/5 guy, no? Only 20 of the 200 comps will count, so it comes down the the caliber of comps the 200 guy played in compared to the 20 guy.

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No no, David is clearly more deserving of his rank, he has worked hard for it, travelled a lot and has earned his points.

Is he a better/more skilful player than me? According to the rankings, yes. According to the rating/eff%/h2h/POWER100 rankings then no, he isn’t.

Is he more deserving of an IFPA WC spot, that’s the question. I guess you feel yes (in honesty, I probably feel yes too, maybe I am just trying to get a cheap hall pass! :slight_smile:) . But it does go back to the question of what you think that the IFPA WC should be…

I don’t feel like inviting a bunch of players to the IFPA WC who won’t attend because they’ve proven with their actions that they don’t travel for pinball tournaments :slight_smile:

Ultimately we end up with the same players in attendance, you just go further down the list to fill the spot. In the end, David and Peter end up representing the UK because they are the only two guys that travel, whether they are the “most skilled” or “not most skilled players” in the UK ends up becoming a meaningless evaluation.

If you were planning on accepting the invitation to IFPA15 in Toronto next June if we switched to the POWER100 qualifying system, do yourself a favor and book a ticket to Pinburgh instead :slight_smile:

We can only fill the IFPA WC spots with players that want to travel to wherever the IFPA WC happens to be located. Switching the qualifying process to accommodate people that don’t travel anyway seems like a giant waste of time to me personally.

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Absolutely, I completely agree. Work/Life commitments have made it more difficult to travel in the last few years, which has had a knock on effect of a lack of passion for it all. And no, I don’t put the IFPA WC on a higher pedastul than PAPA/Pinburgh (one day I will make the pilgrimage), it just so happens that it’s sometimes in Europe which makes it logistically more viable, that’s all.

P.S I’ve signed up for the BOP and EPC this year. Watch out Europe the 32nd most skilful player in the world is coming for you :wink:

WHEN you sweep Main and Classics at both of these events, based on last year’s WPPR totals as an estimate, you’ll jump to being the #1 ranked player in the UK, and 47th ranked player in the world by WPPR.

It’s all there in front of you . . . now go take it :slight_smile:

And can you imagine what my Power100 ranking will be when that happens too!! #imcoming4uHungarianPitbull

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Did you recalculate but not resort the list? :grinning:

Fixed.

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Are these power rankings linked from the main website anywhere? Maybe add to https://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/custom.php ?

Nah, not yet. This is the behind the scenes look ONLY FOR TILT FORUMS :slight_smile:

We have to figure out a few things first:

  1. Do we think it’s an accurate metric as it lies right now?

  2. What do we do/how do we market the metric? Does it just sit there in the resources tab of our site, or do we market it as something more “meaningful” to the world in some way?

  3. If the metric is to be taken more seriously, there has to be a tangible value attached to it. Do we go down the road of holding the POWER 100 CHAMPIONSHIP and setting that up as something “important”? 100 players, $500 entry, $50K prize pool . . . Feel The Power!

  4. Do I reach out to all the Power 100 radio stations in the country for sponsorship? There seem to be quite a few :slight_smile:

For now I’ll stew over the metric like I stew over everything else the IFPA has ever done. We haven’t seen how volatile it is after a ‘big tournament’ gets submitted. Do players move faster than WPPR or slower? Do they move faster than the Rating/Eff% metrics or slower? Is the 3 month window too long, too short? Is the comparison of the top 250 players too few, too many?

I welcome any opinions on whether that metric seems useful for society, both philosophically on how and why that kind of comparison is meaningful (comparing the ‘best to just the best’), and the actual results themselves.

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It will be at some point soon. I put this together really quickly and want to pretty it up, add some language that will upset Pinside, the usual.

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Relevant to me this weekend: I am able to get to NWPC qualifying for only a couple hours. I’m going to go and try because hopefully I can qualify, but who knows. In a world where the power rankings “matter” in any significant way, I might not. I don’t know if there’s any way to adapt the power rankings system to account for this, but I consider it a strength of the “achievement” system.

Also relevant: events that have lower TGP should have less weight in a system like this. The Wednesday three strike add a ball event which can have many top 250 players shouldn’t count as much as a full TGP event IMO. Frankly I would say the stat would be best if it only counted multi-day tourneys, but maybe that narrows the data set too much or you don’t have that data readily available. A statistician might be able to argue better, but I might say a half TGP event might only count as a quarter weight in a power ranking system if they are to be included, the tourney format just isn’t good enough to give meaningful enough information. Maybe use TGP^2 as the weight?

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Yep . . . it’s the biggest problem that’s already popped into my head. The MOMENT we make a non-positive only system meaningful, I’m not naive enough to think that we’re now actively motivating people to choose to NOT PLAY PINBALL . . . and that sucks.

Another great point. If I’m playing Zach for beers at our monthly tournament, or playing him at Pinburgh . . . are those actually comparable matches.

Right now every Ratings system (Glicko, ELO, PARS, IFPA’s) says YES. If you guys play a game against eachother, that’s as meaningful of a game of pinball as any other. I don’t particularly believe that is the case by a long shot.

Tying each individual match-up to the TGP value of that event makes for an INSANELY COMPLICATED calculation. I remember going down the same path with the IFPA Ratings calculation, and tying that movement to the TGP value of the event . . . needless to say the sheer amount of work it would take to make that happen just wasn’t worth pursuing.

You still do have a problem with this metric regarding “strength of schedule”. If the pinball equivalent of Boise State goes undefeated because they didn’t face anyone in the top 125 of the top 250, is that a fair comparison to the pinball equivalent of Notre Dame who only played people in the top 125 all season?

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Is it hard conceptually or just hard to implement in your system?

If you win a 50% TGP event against someone, you would get 0.5 win and they would get 0.5 loss. Or am I missing something?

Implementation. Instead of whipping through head-to-head records wherever the system sees that two players played against eachother, now the system has to pull the event that was played, lookup the TGP value, apply the TGP value to that win/loss.

@Shep would be a far better person to explain how much more a challenge that would be to run, but I imagine it wouldn’t be trivial.