I rate Bo as a better player than me, so in that sense the ranking adjustment is accurate. He also has 10 years active (and a shit load of machines) vs my 4 years active, incl Covid, and 0 machines. Many players in Denmark are better than me, and continuously beat me as well. The difference is I go to bigger tournaments and deliver (most of the time and def at a higher rate now than previously.)
The other players might fall drastically in eff% if they go to big tournaments and bomb. And in his case not even playing at the moment but still going up.
My eff rating for this year alone now is 20,4 (raising it by 33% vs my total eff% at 15% start of 2023.)
And like I wrote in one of my earliest comments if I played to my exact level of 82nd strongest ranked player my eff% would be severely damaged. I was the only player ranked 100+ to make the last 16 at EPC (besides Roy Wills who once was ranked 10th worldwide and obviously is a top player).
So it’s kinda loose loose for me, if I suck my eff% goes down and if I play well more points are taken away end of year. I understand I rose in ranks after the week in Fulda and if I continue to play like this I’ll end up where I am now anyway - I guess I’m just bummed out to actually feel like I belong where I am now comparing myself to the play of people ranked at a similar position, and at the same time feel punished for sucking a competitive pinball the first few years.
You aren’t the only person who believes they are playing better ‘now’ compared to 2-3 years ago. Every other person who feels that way is being compared in the same fashion.
There are other rankings metrics out there that rank you far worse than WPPR v6.0 does:
MatchPlay Rating → 2,530th best player in the world
IFPA Rating → 728th best player in the world
WPPR v6.0 → 233rd best player in the world
If anything both Ratings metrics focus far more on how well you’ve been playing ‘lately’ compared to your peers. Activity from 2-3 years ago have no impact on those metrics, yet they rank you far worse than WPPR v6.0 does.
IF your ranking means anything to you, which a lot of people on here are saying it doesn’t, even when questioning their ranking, you must surely want to be compared against the best in the world?
Let’s say you are the 32nd best player in the world and ranked as such.
By being 32nd in the world, you are entitled to enter a ‘best of the world championship’ with the other top 31 players.
If you play to your rank and finish last, you’ll get minimal points and take a hit on your eff%ge. BUT isn’t the whole point of achieving a higher ranking the fact that it gets you entry in to these type of comps, or is the ranking to boost your own ego?
As I’ve said earlier, if you want to just focus on your eff%ge (and to a lesser degree Rating) just play in smaller comps where none of the best players compete and youre guarenteed a win - but that will also limit the no’ of WPPR pts you will earn so you won’t climb the Rankings.
If you want to climb the rankings, you need to play well (to your level) at the majority of comps you enter - outliers - good or bad - will even themselves out, and eventually give a more accurate overall representation of the rankings. You need to be entering the larger competitons against the best players to give a true reflection of how you compare to them.
Those players who are currently ranked lower than they should be (because they don’t have the opportunity to play 100s of comps) will rise, as those players who are currently ranked higher than they should be (by playing 100s of tournaments and cherry picking their best 20) will start to fall.
One thing that is certain with any change to a ranking system is that initially there will be big swings in the rankings as the changes take affect, before settling down.
The question is will they have the chance to settle down to an equilibrium before the metrics are changed again?
This is actually a really good point.
We’ve seen a lot of major changes affecting the rankings significantly the last 3 years or so.
That being said, I’m amazed to see a positive post from you on a new change.
But you are right.
It takes some time for the changes to level itself out and people still need to play to keep their ranking fresh and relevant.
This screenshot was sent to me last night. Is this accurate? The Pro rankings and the adjustments that come with it are now for the top 250 and not the top 1000?
Lol yep. I’ve been convinced after some internal discussions on our side that this WPPR PRO thing is best served for this elite subgroup of players.
The stress the rankings swings seemed to cause in that 501-1000 range was hurting people far more than it was helping serve the goal of creating a more accurate system.
This allows even more people to just keep playing as much as you want without worry of needing to be compared against this top group of the world’s best.
These details and more will be announced officially on our site ‘soonish’.
I think this is a great improvement over the previous plan.
I have one piece of feedback following a conversation I had with a TD of one of the larger weekly leagues. This particular league is run as a season of 6 weeks, each week comprising 5 rounds of matchplay; players’ 2 lowest-scoring weeks are dropped to determine their season point total.
The TD told me that normally, players would need to attend at least 3 events in order to be included on the IFPA submission (50% of 6). However, starting this year (?), if a player in the top 250 plays in just one event in the season, they must be included in the IFPA submission. And this would apply if the season was 8 weeks, 10 weeks, or 52 weeks. Please correct me if I’ve summarized this incorrectly.
I’m disappointed in this rule in 3 ways:
As a member of the league with friends in the top 250, I’m far less likely to invite them to league if they’re traveling from out of state. In fact, I’m far MORE likely to encourage them to stay away from the league, to avoid tanking their efficiency score. This feels wrong; I want my friends at league, I want to compete against them, and I feel they should not be penalized for raising the competitive bar at a single night of league, which is already quite competitive.
As a top 250 player that travels often (for pinball and other reasons), I will absolutely not participate in any recurring league, because I don’t want to tank my efficiency score by playing 1 night out 6 or 8 or however many weeks are in the schedule, and winding up dead last on the IFPA submission.
As a tournament director, unless Matchplay changes to align with the rule and automatically add top 250 players into the league results submission, these players must be manually added to the results with a note that their inclusion is due to the top 250 treatment. Unless this is being ruthlessly enforced by the IFPA, it’ll be inconsistently applied, which is essentially unfair.
This rule — as it applies to leagues — is anticompetitive, and as we all know, it’s more fun to compete. My sincere wish would be for this rule to not be applied to leagues; or if it must, increase the threshold of number of sessions (e.g., 2) that must be met before a top 250 player is mandatorily included in the IFPA submission.
This is also a good point, but I’d also argue the other side — just because a rule has nuances making it difficult to codify doesn’t mean it’s a bad rule. It just means you need to deal with the nuances and help the enforcers enforce. I’m still disappointed by the rule, just not for this reason. I’d suggest a solution for this, but I don’t think that was the aim of your post
even that has room for issue with players right on the line with lag time in reporting and or say I check list see that player X is not in the top 250 but by the time I check the league logs put in my submission. an other event get’s posted and they move up. Making your one missing what should be in their.
and then you also have the $1 issue who covers that when say an 1 time player does not need to pay the IFPA $1 when they play their one time but by the time of the end of league they are now in the top 250 so now the league owns the IFPA $1 more?
Now while this may never happen but an league can be on the hook for say an MAX of $250 more now some may not have the funds to cover that at the last minute
IMO if I’m having a competitive league season within my community and Escher comes into town and plays in one of the league sessions, you now have this elite player significantly impacting the competition between this community of players.
If was in a group and ‘stole’ a bunch of 1st place games for the week, I could see players within that group being like WTF, this sucks, this dude who isn’t even in our league just cost me qualifying, etc.
I would encourage these top 250 players to show up to league and ‘hang out’, or even do what they do for bowling leagues. This is from the United States Bowling Congress 2022-23 rulebook:
I don’t know why anyone would be allowed to play in a league that they didn’t intent to actually participate in for the required amount of weeks. That’s not what leagues are for imo. Just have them play for fun and not have any impact on that groups scoring for that week if they just want to come hangout and play.
Basically I agree with what Josh is saying. Haha
This way they aren’t included in the IFPA submission.
In this particular league, groups are randomly assigned every round, so a single person would be unlikely to face the same opponent more than once. Even so, I would suggest the onus is on the TD to have a rule about guests rather than enforcing this at the highest level.
Again, I think this rule for top 250 makes absolute sense in the context of a single tournament.
SFPD has had the idea of guest participation for as long as I’ve been involved in pinball. In that league, groups are assigned at the beginning of the night and stay the same for every round — sure, a group might get absolutely shafted when a ringer comes in. But if you’re a good player, you’ll still have a decent night, and it might be your drop week. If you’re an average player, you’ll still have an average night, and it might not be your drop week.
I’d say a “pinball league” should consist of a set group of the same players over the duration of league time. If you’re inviting outside people to play, it’s now an open tournament. Trying to combine the two doesn’t seem to be a good idea.
