Alabama Thread! (10/26/2016 update)

[Jake The Preacher]

With people always complaining about the ranks it looks like the closest thing to agreeable we can get would be a tier list. Maybe garner a couple people interested in it and then divide into squads, one person for each tier in the list and that person keeps a record of X amount of players for their tier on the list then. Does that sound okay at least? We definitely should just do a tier list though I think

 

[Mahgnittoc]

@ Keet
If your talking about a purely math based way to rank people then I don't like that. If you look at last HASL Spade had to use a bad controller. Now how do you factor that into his placements? There are things we need to look at besides just placements and achieving points. But I do agree your placements should effect getting onto the PR, things like that should not be the only factor

@ Jake The Preacher
I see what you're saying but I don't like a tier list format. The way I see it, something like 3/4 is differentiable because people have good days and bad days. People struggle with different match ups too. Unless you truly can't say who #1 is then I'd prefer a ranking

 

[Jake The Preacher]

@ Mahgnittoc I don't care what you like :o Kidding. Yeah it's all a buncha complicated read between the lines kinda stuff so I just show up and play the game, I think the most viable strategy would be to take a proposed top ten and round robin them, maybe have 5 honorable mentions and put them in there too. How's that sound?

 

[Saki-]

beating people like Tasya

With like a 0-3 or 4 record, I don't think this will matter at all rofl.

 

[Jake The Preacher]

I wish I'd known you were there yesterday Tasya, seems I never get to meet my Smashboards friends when we're at the same place and I don't know it

 

[Saki-]

No biggie we've got plenty more chance. I've balanced my work schedule to have Sat/Sun's off. There shouldn't be an event in the state that I shouldn't be able to make unless school homework gets ridiculous.

 

[Mahgnittoc]

@ Jake The Preacher
I like the idea of a committee of a few people making a top 10 list and comparing them. The list should be based on results, people beaten, and consistency. There's bound to be a few differences which will make up the honorable mentioned list.

@ Saki- you're still one of the few people willing to travel and you've beaten or outages people who will be rounding out the bottom 5.

 

[Jake The Preacher]

You'll be at Birmingham this Saturday?

 

[theONEjanitor]

I was a fan of the old school panel of respected judges who got together and voted on the best players
then the smash community got super scrubby and everyone complains and everyone wants to avoid hearing people moan so we just dodge the issue.

Anyway just out of interest and boredom I used an ELO rating program to calculate elo in Smash 4 based on HASLfest 8, HASLfest 9, and Birmingham Brawl. That's not a lot of matches, so the ratings are very volatile right now, so don't take this super seriously at the moment.
Adding HASLfest 10 and 11 will almost certainly provide a much different picture. i'm not sure if I should add hidden power since smash 4 isn't big in mobile and the rest of AL doesn't travel there really.

In case you don't know how ELO works, You start at an arbitrary rating, I started with 1000. This is arbitrary, but you have to start somewhere. When you win, you gain points. When you lose, you lose points. If you win against a good player you gain more points than you would if you win against a bad player. Likewise, if you lose against a good player you lose less points than you would if you lost against a bad player. So if some random kid shows up and takes out Spade, Mahg, and Reflex, his ELO is going to skyrocket. and if a top players loses to some random they are going to lose a lot of points. It will take many matches to normalize what a "good" or "not good" player is, which is why i said don't take this current image too seriously. Everyone started at 1000 elo, so winning round 1 of the first tournament considered gave everyone the same amount of points regardless of the opponent. The actual mathematical formula is complicated and can vary, but that's how it works. ELO does not give a damn what you placed in the tournament, all it considers is who you beat. Obviously if you make it far in a tournament though, that means you beat more people meaning you get more points and lost to less people meaning you lost less points.
The issues with ELO system are as I mentioned, intangibles. It doesn't take into account if someone is sick or tired or has a broken controller or was distracted or accidentally SD'd or got DQ'd etc. If you lose you lost points, period. Another issue (maybe) is that losing match is worse than not playing a match. Reflex for example has by far the highest ranking by winning HASLFest 9. If he never attended anymore tournaments, it's likely he'd still be ranked very high just from that one tournament, since he's not losing any points (although he'd eventually be surpassd).
Other stuff: Airboystool should be airboysteel obv
If someone entered two tournaments with two different names, they will have two different ELOs. I can't be bothered to try and keep up with that ****.

Anyway, i find this very interesting and will probably keep it up for my own amusement at the very least.
ELO is not a Power Rankings list. It updates and changes after every tournament. So if you guys wanted to put together a more general, "who are the top players" list that lasts longer than a month, that would also make sense.

 

[Keet]

@ Mahgnittoc If you look at my original post, I'm saying we should absolutely account for multiple variable, placing, number of entrants, and the skill level of people played or other entrants in the tournament. This can all be accounted for with a reasonably simple equation. Things like broken controllers cannot, however. And honestly I don't think that has much bearing at all. Sure that may be why Spade didn't get a higher placing at this HASL, but he's still undoubtedly in the top 3, and it's a very easy situation to remedy if your controller breaks mid tournament, simply ask to borrow someone else's.

 

[Saki-]

@ Jake The Preacher
I like the idea of a committee of a few people making a top 10 list and comparing them. The list should be based on results, people beaten, and consistency. There's bound to be a few differences which will make up the honorable mentioned list.

This is the plan. I like the plan of
@DanGR
@ Mahgnittoc
@Pudding009
@ Keet
@ Saki-
@TheReflexWonder

and if/when Mobile develops a sm4sh scene, I'd like two from there.
Regardless, there will be a skype group made after Birmingham Brawl to get this done. I'm already looking up results for 20/30 players that I can add to the discussion for when it happens.

@ Saki- you're still one of the few people willing to travel and you've beaten or outages people who will be rounding out the bottom 5.

outages? Outplaces?

If I'm on bottom 5 I'd be surprised but eyy

Also at that traveling remark. I'm more then game to gather people in the direction of the event I'm going to. Just hit me up here/fb/or by cell.

Yeah Jake, I'll be at Birmingham Brawl

 

[Keet]

@ Mahgnittoc If you look at my original post, I'm saying we should absolutely account for multiple variable, placing, number of entrants, and the skill level of people played or other entrants in the tournament. This can all be accounted for with a reasonably simple equation. Things like broken controllers cannot, however. And honestly I don't think that has much bearing at all. Sure that may be why Spade didn't get a higher placing at this HASL, but he's still undoubtedly in the top 3, and it's a very easy situation to remedy if your controller breaks mid tournament, simply ask to borrow someone else's.

edit: after reading Janitor's wonderful comment above my opinion has been swayed. ELO being so fluid would be very difficult to keep up standard PRs. Props to Janitor for making this, I'm extremely impressed.

I agree that perhaps a committee could come together and talk about PRs then as that seems to be the consensus, and as long as the committee is pretty well diversified regionally there shouldn't be too much bias to account for.

Edit 2: well ****, making a whole new post isn't exactly how an edit works now is it....

 

[Mahgnittoc]

But whos going to be on he comittee for the other games? I know it might not happen but I'd like it if all of the PRs got updated

 

[Saki-]

Free Zylo, if he's down for not being bothered by the heat of Mikeyy he should resume that up. With help from Joot and Moogle from NorthAL. I'd say Keno from B'ham but he'll be so busy with other things that I'm almost certain that he won't travel outside of Birmingham. If you aren't wanting notable gods, I'd say Sweaters. I think he's wanting to push the melee scene hard enough from the B'ham standpoint that it'd be a welcome opinion.

PM it'd be critical to get Levi and M3T on board. But if they think it's too much of a hassle then there won't be much to do to try and bring the bottom half of the state together.

PR aside, I want this state to have a sort of community that we had when ASL became a thing. Not split, and family

 

[Mahgnittoc]

One unit until sakurai says **** yo game

 

[Anime]

Levi loves to hear himself talk. He'll be fine.

 

[Shenanigan]

Is Levi Alias?

Also @ Metmetm3t it's happening again lol

 

[Zonderion]

I was a fan of the old school panel of respected judges who got together and voted on the best players
then the smash community got super scrubby and everyone complains and everyone wants to avoid hearing people moan so we just dodge the issue.

Anyway just out of interest and boredom I used an ELO rating program to calculate elo in Smash 4 based on HASLfest 8, HASLfest 9, and Birmingham Brawl. That's not a lot of matches, so the ratings are very volatile right now, so don't take this super seriously at the moment.
Adding HASLfest 10 and 11 will almost certainly provide a much different picture. i'm not sure if I should add hidden power since smash 4 isn't big in mobile and the rest of AL doesn't travel there really.

In case you don't know how ELO works, You start at an arbitrary rating, I started with 1000. This is arbitrary, but you have to start somewhere. When you win, you gain points. When you lose, you lose points. If you win against a good player you gain more points than you would if you win against a bad player. Likewise, if you lose against a good player you lose less points than you would if you lost against a bad player. So if some random kid shows up and takes out Spade, Mahg, and Reflex, his ELO is going to skyrocket. and if a top players loses to some random they are going to lose a lot of points. It will take many matches to normalize what a "good" or "not good" player is, which is why i said don't take this current image too seriously. Everyone started at 1000 elo, so winning round 1 of the first tournament considered gave everyone the same amount of points regardless of the opponent. The actual mathematical formula is complicated and can vary, but that's how it works. ELO does not give a damn what you placed in the tournament, all it considers is who you beat. Obviously if you make it far in a tournament though, that means you beat more people meaning you get more points and lost to less people meaning you lost less points.
The issues with ELO system are as I mentioned, intangibles. It doesn't take into account if someone is sick or tired or has a broken controller or was distracted or accidentally SD'd or got DQ'd etc. If you lose you lost points, period. Another issue (maybe) is that losing match is worse than not playing a match. Reflex for example has by far the highest ranking by winning HASLFest 9. If he never attended anymore tournaments, it's likely he'd still be ranked very high just from that one tournament, since he's not losing any points (although he'd eventually be surpassd).
Other stuff: Airboystool should be airboysteel obv
If someone entered two tournaments with two different names, they will have two different ELOs. I can't be bothered to try and keep up with that ****.

Anyway, i find this very interesting and will probably keep it up for my own amusement at the very least.
ELO is not a Power Rankings list. It updates and changes after every tournament. So if you guys wanted to put together a more general, "who are the top players" list that lasts longer than a month, that would also make sense.

I would be super happy if you did keep this up.

I played Table Tennis for a while, back in my college days and I was apart of the National Table Tennis League. I believe they used the ELO system, or a variant of it, and started all players at 1500. To put this in perspective, the Olympic players were rated between 2700+. There were players that would win AL table tennis tournaments that were rated around 2100. The system they used would actually award points based, not only wins and losses, but actual points scored.

I only played in two tournaments and here is how I finished up:

Spoiler

My first "sanctioned" tournament was in 2005. I started off not having any points and I ended up with 918 points. I actually won the lowest class division of the 14th Annual Decatur Open. I played in a bunch of other tournaments, but they were not sanctioned. Because they weren't sanctioned by the USATT, they didn't count. The same could be said tournaments here in AL. The committee could determine what counts as a sanctioned tournament, such as the tournaments in Child Star's basement.

If you look closely at the 2010 tournament, I only won 1 game and lost the other 7, but my ranking still went up by 16 points, because I was playing a much higher rated players. In table tennis, your rating can go up, just by scoring points against a higher rated player.
So for example, if I played a 2000 rated player and lost every match, but I scored 5 points on him each game, my score would go up, even though I didn't win a single game. The same could be done with Smash, involving stocks. However it adds a level of complexity.

Just my 2 cents. I vote for the ELO system. A quick google search provided this:

1. The Elo system was originally invented as an improved chess rating system but is also used as a rating system for multiplayer competition in a number of video games, association football, gridiron football,basketball, Major League Baseball, competitive programming, Magic: The Gathering, esports, and other games.

Edit: And being ranked 21st after only attending Bham Brawl is really sweet.

 

[.Hook]

**** the math. PRs are meant to stir up people to argue and play better. You wanna go up a spot? Beat that person and don't lose to the people they beat.

 

[Mahgnittoc]

But that would give them more points in he ELO system too

 

[.Hook]

**** that, stay raw.

 

[Sweaters]

But that would give them more points in he ELO system too

I also played table tennis competitively for a bit and I remember the ELO ranking system also being based on how high the person you beat or lost to ELO being a factor on how much ELO you lost or gained.

 

[.Hook]

Who is managing this ELO business? WHo is determining which tournaments get authorized? If it's just a choice number of people in a tribunal, then a PR is the same deal. Also, I'm in the camp that doesn't think Alabama is strong enough, nor are we enough of a singular region for the ELO system to be worth it.

Do what you will, though, I'll probably either be in Mobile or in butt**** Georgia for the next while, so yeah.

 

[_Keno_]

if you want a mathematical ranking system, the only logical approach is an ELO style ranking. This is based directly on who you won or lost to. it ignores tournament placings and opinions, its based directly on individual matches, so it doesn't matter if you attend some 8 man local or a national, just depends on who you beat/lose to. and it also rewards people who attend tournaments more often than others (unless they always lose). can't really be argued with since it's math and not subjective to what event you went to. the number of entrants in a tournament doesn't matter if the tournament is filled with scrubs. it's an irrelevant factor.

I always like a good challenge system, where you can only move up/down by challenging/being challenged by someone within three places of yourself.

 

[Zonderion]

Who is managing this ELO business? WHo is determining which tournaments get authorized? If it's just a choice number of people in a tribunal, then a PR is the same deal. Also, I'm in the camp that doesn't think Alabama is strong enough, nor are we enough of a singular region for the ELO system to be worth it.

Do what you will, though, I'll probably either be in Mobile or in butt**** Georgia for the next while, so yeah.

We could create criteria for what qualifies as a sanctioned tournament. It would take the guess work out of it.

It's not hard for someone to keep up with it.

 

[Metmetm3t]

Is Levi Alias?

Also @ Metmetm3t it's happening again lol

Oh jesus. The whole thread is at it this time. Guys we just went through this like 2 months ago.

To add my 2 cents to the whole elo business. It's neat, but elo is only as accurate as the amount of data you feed it. It really needs LOTS of data, (like not gonna happen levels) to work out all the kinks otherwise you get some good stuff and other ranks that are just bonkers.

 

[Jake The Preacher]

We should try appointing a board for the PM PR so it doesn't come up every couple of months and start a huge dispute

 

[Keet]

I'm of the mind that a certain number of players from each game open a dialogue of potential power rankings and kind of go from there.

Although I think this ELO business should definitely continue. I'm still reading up on it, but I'm very curious as to what the ELO rankings would look like in a few months.

 

[Sweaters]

Oh jesus. The whole thread is at it this time. Guys we just went through this like 2 months ago.

To add my 2 cents to the whole elo business. It's neat, but elo is only as accurate as the amount of data you feed it. It really needs LOTS of data, (like not gonna happen levels) to work out all the kinks otherwise you get some good stuff and other ranks that are just bonkers.

I think with how many tournaments that are going on now there will definitely be enough data for most of Alabama the only problem is the most part, because for a lot of people it's really hard to go to Mobile and it's really hard for Mobile to go to other tournaments in Alabama cause it's so far away.

 

[rolfcopter]

Mobtown represent

Lean in my cup!!'

 

[Child Star]

Just put me at the top of the tier list.

 

[Saki-]

0.ChildStar
1.PhantomThief
2-10. Irrelevant

 

[theONEjanitor]

as if there are a ton of tournaments in alabama to choose from

 

[Mahgnittoc]

I've been in the tall grass on Route 205 all day and I've still haven't found a PhantomThief. Is he even in this game?

 

[Shenanigan]

as if there are a ton of tournaments in alabama to choose from

Starting this weekend there's going to be a tournament every weekend until at least October 10 - 11th if you're willing to drive

Edit: Changed to October 10 - 11th because I forgot Mobile is a bimonthly

 

[Zoma]

Come to BIO, guys.

 

[Shenanigan]

Come to BIO, guys.

It's even on Labor day weekend, so no school / work johns allowed

http://smashboards.com/threads/sep-6-2015-bring-it-on-8-melee-project-m-tuscaloosa-al.411421/

 

[Saki-]

It's even on Labor day weekend, so no school / work johns allowed

http://smashboards.com/threads/sep-6-2015-bring-it-on-8-melee-project-m-tuscaloosa-al.411421/

If anyone from Birmingham wants to go to this but can't get a ride I can help out.

 

[Child Star]

If anyone from Birmingham wants to go to this but can't get a ride I can help out.

There you go guys you dont even have ride johns. If youre in birmingham and not at the next BIO you are a big Johns baby thats stupid, and ****s their pants . . . and the bed.

 

[Mahgnittoc]

Should we announce to the plebs who don't use smashboards were about to make the states official Sm4sh PR/tier list?