Just my 2 cents: if your efficiency % is hurt by playing in more tournaments and you will fall in ranking then that is not a bad thing. And not playing tournaments is the worst thing you can do.
It shows that you have areas that need improvement and the only place you can get it is in competition. If you want to be better than people who have played since the 90s you need to play a lot of pinball to get to the same level.
Thanks, this sounds reasonable.
Whichever the reasons are for a player to avoid some events and prefer others wasn’t my main point. The point was that after Eff% becomes a meaningful metric, some players may start doing that to try to keep their Eff% as high as possible. This may lead to some players not attending some events they used to, therefore some tournament organizers might see a reduced participation in their events due to this WPPR v6.0 change.
And I think this is perfectly fine, and about the only very minor drawback I can find from the change. My issue was with the tone of your original reply basically saying that it’s those players fault and they “should reevaluate why they play competitive pinball”.
Oh ok, I understand. I thought this was originally done only to nerf a certain super league and didn’t realize it’s still a potential exploit also elsewhere.
I’m curious why the rating (Glicko as I understand) isn’t a better gauge of player rank? Is there an isolation issue or just because the current #1 player isn’t still #1 using that?
IMO the Glicko stat is far too volatile of a statistic to be used for something like this.
The worries about Eff% now being meaningful leading to decreased participation would be like 100X if we went the Glicko route in terms of people being far more motivated to not play.
Eff% takes into account the value of events, so larger events (events players generally take more seriously) impact your Eff% far more than smaller events (events players generally take more casually) . . HOWEVER there’s no single event large or small that impacts your total Eff% that much. It’s a slow moving stat that generally moves up as you become a better player, or slowly moves down if you end up underperforming for an extended period of time.
Glicko values every competitive situation worthy of the exact same value. So losing to someone at the World Championship is worth exactly the same value as losing to someone over a casual game played at the local monthly tournament. The statistic in general also tries to find your new ‘correct value’ very quickly based on the most recent data, so you can see very wild swings in this value when you have a single good to bad performance.
I used @Potatoloco as an example when I joined the Triple Drain podcast. He played in both TPF events and finished 4th in the Main Tournament and 145th in the Classics event. The worry was that when combining these two results he negatively impacted his WPPR v6.0 standing. This was not the case as when combining these two events and the impact they had on his Eff%, he saw his overall Eff% INCREASE from this performance (he also added the second highest event on his top 20 WPPR card).
If we were using IFPA’s implementation of Glicko, Travis had his IFPA Rating DROP from his performance that weekend by 78 ratings points (from 21st to 74th in the world).
You think people worrying and over analyzing the impact of every event on their Eff% is big at the moment, it’s nothing compared to what you would see if any kind of Glicko metric was used.
Maybe for wppr7.0 then.
Given that eff% is a more stable value, would you ever consider having a given player’s eff% replace rating as one of the two ways they can add more point value to an event they play in?
Yes, trust the Math guy, Glicko is NOT for pinball. We have major variations in event format, event “depth” (e.g. number of meaningful games played), strength of field, etc. that would all render Glicko garbage. It’s not like Chess where a chess game is a chess game is a chess game and all that matters is the rating of you and your opponent and who won (or drew).
Eff % alone is flawed, too, since it’s easier to have a high eff% at a local league than at IFPA.
I wouldn’t count on it. It’s a bad statistic to use now, and will continue to be a bad statistic to use in the future.
We also touched on this in the podcast, but @TomGWI touched on my WPPR v7.0 notes already, which is that all Eff% isn’t created equally. There’s a strength of schedule at play here that makes this metric not the most accurate measurement of skill when judged on it’s own merits.
For example, my 34% is ranked 529th in the world, which is far worse than my WPPR ranking (even under WPPR v6.0). That’s because my competitive activity is made up of mostly high level events where there’s usually a murderer’s row of participants with respect to difficulty.
A deeper analysis into what makes up a player’s Eff% would make things even more accurate.
Using @TomGWI as an example, his Eff% is 23.28%, and that’s mainly due to the amount of high level events he plays in where the field is stacked with great players.
I find myself circling back to the Power100 stat, and maybe that’s something we expand to the top 1000 players players as well (it’s currently only calculated against the top 250).
Tom’s winning percentage against the top 250 is 43.47%. Adam Lefkoff is in a similar zone (Eff% of 22.64, but a Power100 percentage of 48.84%. There are players in that same zone of Eff% that have far worse winning percentages against the rest of the current top 250, and to me that stat is a meaningful indicator of skill.
As I told Tom, it’s not on the list now, but it’ll be on my list in the future if we need to dig deeper here.
No, because taken as it’s own metric without any context, Eff% is a terrible indicator of skill.
While I try to keep my own ego in check poorly, any metric that says I’m the 529th best player in the world is just WRONG 
Rating is a far better skill metric when looked at on it’s own, even with it’s shortcomings.
I don’t think Dan Dolney will mind me using him as an example. He was quite a formidable playing in his Minnesota days, was one of our better players. He moved, and he took a break from pinball for a while.
I think he’s a good example of someone who had played only close to home (his new home) and has dominated his way to a rating that’s 72nd, a Eff% of 64, but is only ranked in the 1200s because there are no high point local events. He’s the big fish, and would he do well at D82? Give him a bit of experience there and I’m sure he would.
So those of you who think they can keep a high RANKING by only staying home and playing smallish stuff, you can’t. Not really.
I think it’s less that they win and more that there is an easier path to make top 4/top 8 etc and snag some big WPPRs in classics. I don’t recall seeing too many Jared/Jason/Zmac/Escher final groups in classics.
Another question: (pardon if it’s already been asked tried to read my way through all the comments:)
For this years EPC there will be a ton a good players competing. So in reality I’ll be like (on paper) the 100th highest ranked player even ranked 170 currently. If I over perform and end tied 40th my eff% will be roughly 10% based on wpprs calculated at last years EPC. (last year at EPC i was tied for 24th with eff% 21,3)
-so this will also affect my whoppertunity and I’ll actually end up loosing more points even though I in reality played over my level?
That week in total could really damage a players like mines whoppertunity even if playing at my actual level? (Or am I mistaking here?)
EPC is a major. If you don’t play, you have a 0% chance of winning.
The WPPR distribution formula is not linear, so there is a chance based on the difficulty of the field that where you’re estimated to finish based on position does not correlate to how WPPR’s are distributed and the impact that has on your Eff%.
Everything with respect to this change is all relative to other players, so if you’re finishing in 100th, that change in your stats has to be evaluated against those that finished ahead of you and below you.
We will be making a change to the dynamic distribution formula to coincide with the v6.0 change, and that’s removing the player cap where this dynamic distribution stops. In the current rules dynamic points are awarded to the top 50% of players as long as the field is 128 players or less. Any event that has more than 128 players simply had the dynamic points shared among the top 64 finishers.
This change will make the rate of WPPR’s awarded not as severe as you move down position to position at bigger tournaments.
I only have results from The Open this year that I can look at, but here’s some quick comparisons:
1st place → 294 WPPR’s both ways
11th place → 130.27 WPPR’s the old way (44.25%), 181.52 WPPR’s the new way (61.74%)
30th place → 46.66 WPPR’s the old way (15.85%), 98.62 WPPR’s the new way (33.55%)
40th place → 31.83 WPPR’s the old way (10.81%), 73.71 WPPR’s the new way (25.07%)
70th place → 21.89 WPPR’s the old way (7.44%), 33.84 WPPR’s the new way (11.51%)
100th place → 18.60 WPPR’s the old way (6.32%), 19.91 WPPR’s the new way (6.77%)
There will be bigger opportunities for players that finish in that upper 25% of the field to really pad their WPPR’s earned with much larger WPPR payouts for ‘good play’. This should help combat any minor hit on the Eff% that this result could have on a player.
I wouldn’t say you would “really damage” yourself by playing at your existing skill level. Finishing 100th would hit your top 20 card, your Eff% would decrease by 0.7%, and your ranking position change would be impossible to know without also calculating the other top 1000 players that also played in the EPC.
This was great and I think it helped address some of the questions around the new rule changes.
This is probably the biggest issue and was also brought up by Travis Murie on that podcast. I have a direct example of this. A D82 tournament that was 4 fair strikes, I took a strike in the first 3 rounds. I gave myself a little pep talk before round 4, Ok time for a little run don’t take a strike for 4 or 5 rounds and it will still be a decent finish. Round 4 gets called and Ironically, you Bob (Ranked 61st in the world) and Bill Mason(65th in the world) are both in my group. I took a strike and it was the end of my tournament. Match Play Events To take 3 straight losses and still face 2 of the top 100 in the world is an extremely difficult tournament.
I would say the same with how you compared Joel’s 4000 games of Godzilla to Travis’s 1. That’s not realistically what is happening in the rankings. You also used 200 tournaments played as an example. The most important year for EFF% is the current year and I don’t think anyone has come close to that number. I liked the idea of the “Keith Elwin test” and I think I could use it as an example of why the new system still has flaws. In 3 years he has a TOTAL of 17 tournaments on his card, yet he moves up 10 spots in ranking to number 8. At what point do you put some responsibility on the player to play more events if they want to move up in rank. I believe it is better for pinball to have your top ranked players showing up to play and infusing more buzz and excitement in to the event
I agree that there is a lot of hearsay from both sides of the argument with this one. However, imo the stats will eventually show a player where their EFF% is best (modern, classic, unlimited entry, strikes etc…) and the reality is sticking to what they are best at and playing less pinball will be a decision they have to make. I think Travis also alluded to the fact that sometimes it is just nice to sit back have a few beers and just have fun.
What about having some % of tournaments get thrown out? If “luck” is a big contributing factor to these changes than a certain percentage of your worst AND best tournaments should probably be thrown out to find your true EFF%. I don’t think anybody will like their top finishes not counting but maybe being able to throw out at least some of your worst play would help. Our current most popular tournament in Minnesota is a monthly, 2 fair strike tourny that consistently gets 60+ players. It is a very high variance tournament but also one of our best opportunities to try and make state
In 17 tournaments Keith has earned the 19th highest amount of WPPR’s for his card IN THE WORLD. Keith only plays in big events, so he’s playing a significant amount of WPPR’s worth of events even if that event count is small. Even in those 17 tournaments Keith WPPRtunity amount is above that of an average player, so he’s playing enough to be judged accurately IMO.
I can’t create a system that is focused on judging who the best players on the planet are and actually worry about the intentions of players to sit back have a few beers and just have fun. I would encourage TD’s to organize non-sanctioned tournaments if they really want to focus on the having fun part. I know that team leagues for example are a GREAT way to enjoy yourself without worry of the IFPA judging that sanctioned play activity.
As I’ve been pulled into the world of speed cubing through my 11 year old son, this is what the World Cubing Association does. You get five attempts, your best one is thrown out, your worst one is thrown out, and you advance or don’t advance based on the average of your middle three attempts.
What is someone’s “best” and “worst” result? Is that based on WPPR’s earned? Is that based on Eff% for a given event? Some of my best WPPR hauls were events where my Eff% certainly wasn’t the best.
For educational purposes let’s arbitrarily assign these as your 3 best and 3 worst results and see how that changes things for you:
| D82 Winter 3X Progressive 10 Strike Knockout | Main Tournament | 21st | 17-Feb-23 | 20.75 |
| D82 Summer Pinball Classic Event #3: Target Match | Main Tournament | 15th | 13-Aug-22 | 19.61 |
| Blainbrook Strikes | Main Tournament | 3rd | 26-Apr-23 | 19.07 |
| — | — | — | — | — |
| D82 Super Series Event 5: 4 Strike Group Knockout | Main Tournament | 147th | 8-Oct-22 | 0.29 |
| D82 Winter 3X Fair 8 Strikes Classics Knockout | Main Tournament | 126th | 18-Feb-23 | 1.21 |
| D82 Summer Pinball Classic Event #1: Main Classics | Classics | 109th | 13-Aug-22 | 0.58 |
WPPR’s earned → You go from 212.66 down to 168.74
EFF% → You go from 9.11% down to 8.54%
That obviously makes things even worse for you (Both stats were better when those events were NOT removed).
So let’s say, screw it, we’re going to have you throw out your worst 3 just because.
Your Eff% goes from 9.11% to 9.71%. You would be 856th in the world instead of 911th.
At some point it sounds like you’re looking to throw out enough ‘bad stuff’ to somehow get back to being ranked 500th? It obviously would take throwing out ALL of your ‘bad stuff’ to get there, and the whole idea of this adjustment is that you’ve clearly benefitted from the opportunity of playing through all those ‘bad events’ to be able to post your ‘good event’ totals that had you ranked 500th in the first place (12 of your best 20 WPPR results are from ‘large’ D82 weekend events).
There isn’t a silver bullet here where removing some good and some bad will impact things much. I know it feels like that isn’t the case, but the reality is that using ‘all’ of your play is a pretty good indicator at your overall level of skill.
You have 4 finishes at these large D82 events in the top 25 of the field (usually those fields are ~150 players). You also have 6 finishes of 100th or worse at those. Your average finish across the 30 ‘big’ events you played in was 69th (out of roughly 150). At some point those ‘good and bad’ have to balance out with respect to trying to gauge how good are you at competitive pinball in the world.
The word “luck” getting thrown around as a “big contributing factor” just isn’t something I believe in strongly. Formats/player groupings/game choices . . . all of these things tend to balance out when looking at everything IMO.
Your best WPPR haul is a 21st place finish in a Progressive 10 Strike Knockout. Your worst finish is a 147th place finish in a 4 Strike Group Knockout. In theory both of those formats are roughly valued the same with respect to variance, so I’m trying to understand why this isn’t both “good luck” and “bad luck” or actually just a fair representation of your overall skill at playing pinball.
Sheez Dan… play better!
Well im bowing out of the conversation. The narrative keeps getting pushed towards me just whining about my rank. That sucks for me but is not my top concern here. I think making sure there is incentive to keep opening large venues around the world and encourage more new players in more areas to start playing pinball and in turn creating more wpprtunity around the world should be top priority. I dont feel this change does that but it is only my opinion and im sure @pinwizj can go back retrospectively and find some of my stats to redirect the narrative
So in 2060 can he post this and say sorry guys but the stats show im still top 10 in the world? Your argument that im using hyperbole and then posting this is comical
