Hi All,
First off, the suggestions Josh posted/quoted were suggestions I made. I’m grateful that he has posted them here to gain other peoples opinions (which seem to be far more considered than on Pinside where everything becomes a drama so quickly!)
The suggestions are certainly not trolling - just ideas or suggestions which I feel could do with investigating. Just because you don’t agree with another persons post doesn’t make them a troll.
I’d like to expand a little more on the ideas behind my suggestions.
Firstly: Standardised Tournaments
This is not designed to inhibit innovation. The more different formats the better. The reason behind it, is that the ranking for each tournament which currently follows a set template does not always reflect the challenge required to win, reach the latter stages.
By having standardised tournaments, which have a set pre-determined value, this value can more accurately reflect the skill required. it will also stop formats being created which are long-winded and boring for the lesser to average players as they are not involved for the majority of the tournament due to the back-loading of games.
Secondly: Number of Games
I may not have made myself entirely clear here originally.
There are many tournaments, which have either a league style qualifying over a period of time, or a number of games played over a number of machines, where I have seen a player play just a single game in qualifying (usually a players partner or child) just to boost the numbers. That player is then counted as having played in that comp, with the same worth as the player who finished second.
What I am proposing is that the total number of games played by everyone, is then divided by the total number of players, this would give a more accurate representation. This can be submitted at same time as the results to the IFPA, meaning that no further work is required by them.
As for pump and dump tournaments, you only count your best score on any machine anyway, so it would make no difference if you played 1 game on a machine to qualify, or 200 games. it would count as 1 game.
Most contentious point? Last 20 results
The idea behind this is not to punish those players who cannot attend 30+ comps a year.
To keep the maths simple.
Let’s say 2 players of equal ability have a 50% chance of winning a tournament.
Player 1 enters 40 tournaments a year, therefore they will have 20 winning contributions
Player 2 can only enter 20 tournaments a year they will have 10 winning contributions and 10 minor contributions
Player 1 will always be ranked higher, despite them being of equal ability, purely because Player 2 can’t attend as many comps - for whatever reason.
Bring in a 3rd Player, who wins every tournament, but can only enter 10 comps a year.
They will be ranked 3rd in this scenario.
Ranking is awarded by attendance, as well as skill.
These figures are obviously taken to an extreme to show the point, but the numbers hold up in any scenario. (I have investigated this to some point in the current rankings already)
By changing it to the last 20 tournaments it gives a fairer indication of consistency of results over time rather than just picking out the peak performances.
Who is the better player? A player who finishes top 4 every tournament, or a player who wins 1 in every 10 tournaments they enter?
As for players not entering tournaments because they fear lowering their ranking. I doubt this would happen to any large scale degree anyway.
The best players would win the lesser tournaments anyway, and with the suggested tournament value change above there wouldn’t be such a large discrepancy anyway.
I (and the majority of people I know) enter tournaments for the fun, socialising and competition. WPPR points are an additional minor factor, I certainly wouldn’t not attend any comp for fear of lowering my ranking.
There would also still be degradation of points, so a win 3 years ago would be worth considerably less than a recent win. You’d have to still compete regularly to maintain your ranking.
Last one Tournaments gaining extra value based on the players present
The reason behind trying to minimise this is that if the top ranked players don’t compete, it’s minimising the opportunity for other players to earn more points. The fact that the vast majority of the currently top ranked players compete in the USA means players outside the USA are at an unfair advantage.
(In answer to the comment about the opposite of a vicious circle being good - yes it is, IF you are in that circle).
I hope that clarifies a few points. In no way am I suggesting that if these changes were implemented that everything would be perfect, but I feel that they could produce a more accurate system - even if the suggestions were tweaked somewhat.
Having spoken to a lot of people, currently the feeling in the UK (and other parts of Europe) is that the ranking is only really workable for the players in the USA who compete in large numbers of events.
