ELO Rating System

[ice-]

I was just wondering if any rankings where every generated based on the ELO Rating System, rather than opinion. Chess uses this rating system as does most TCGs, and I was thinking that this would be a good unbiased way to do regional and if standards could be set, a national ranking system. Anyway food for thought.

 

[DtJ Jungle]

care to explain for those that dont know what this is?

 

[ice-]

No, but I will link you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Not too complicated

 

[Wind Owl]

Well, if MLG were still hosting tournaments this would be viable, but every tournament nowadays is player-run and it would be extremely difficult to solicit the cooperation of every Tournament Organizer in the United States. Even if you could get a few to cooperate, it wouldn't be enough to make the number mean anything.

 

[Bailey]

It would be insanely complicated to try and start something like this now.

I know how it works for TCGs you get a card with a number on it that you present to the people you sign up with and they put you in the system. Magic had DCI and YGO uses Mantis or something like that

 

[ice-]

Yeah I agree about it being hard on a national level, but it would be rather easy to use this to judge create standings for regional circut events, which I was thinking would be rather helpful. I think this would be much better for power rankings and the like

 

[Ja]

Problem is, there's no central authority to verify and maintain the ELO rankings. Plus, if ELO starts mattering then it makes more sense to do swiss tournaments, but people prefer double elimination.

 

[AlphaZealot]

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=61239

Basically, I have all the good ideas!

With all this talk about tournament rankings once again, I decided it was time to actually have some data to back up opinions.

I wen't through the BOMB3 results from back in April. Not the results rather, but the ENTIRE bracket. Why? Simple, I wanted to use the ELO ranking system that Chess and a few other organazations use. Yet again, why? Because people have stated and thought in the past that this would be the best way to accurately rank Smasher's. Even I thought this, until I actually got around to working on it. (It is not the best way which I will now show).

My first point is time. It took me around 5 1/2 hours to go through the BOMB3 bracket that contained a little over 70 names. I had to individually calculate the result from each matchup. There were, in total, 279 matchups. Each player I gave a base rank of 1200. Then I entered in their number, the opponants number, and their score (1 for win, 0 for loss) into a Chess Calculator. I then had to reverse things to get the results for the opponant. This was not a fun process to say the least. It would be VERY unrealistic to think a database could be created by a single person, or even a group of people, to keep track of these things. The time alone it would take to run through a BOMB4/GS2/FC3 size bracket would be at least 10 hours for each one, or in GS2's case, closer to around 20 hours (lets see...120ish X 8 matches a person then double elim for top 22...thats alot of matches to calculate). Anyways, you get my point, no one has the time commitment, the savvy, the data, or the will to actually get the Chess Rankings working.

My second point is the accuracy I thought the Chess Ranking would produce did not meet my expectations.

Results from BOMB3 (real top 25)
1. Chu Dat (Ice climbers)
2. Dark Rain (falcon)
3. Husband (marth)
4. Wife (peach)
5. Chillin (fox)
5. Azen (link, yl, pikachu)
7. KM (marth, fox)
7. Mow (fox, mewtwo?)
9. Aho (marth)
9. Tejo
9. Tink
9. Inha (fox)
13. Ricky (link)
13. Steve W.
13. Oro (samus)
13. AlphaZealot (peach)
17. Gots
17. The Muffin King (mario)
17. Rickr (link?)
17. COMP (peach?)
17. Philly
17. Special K.
17. Mega
17. Mew2Matt (fox)
25. SJ
25. Meep
25. Rick V.
25. Ding
25. Shep
25. Mike P.
25. G-Regulate
25. ZorkFanDM

Results from Chess Ranking (top 25)
1: Chu Dat 1367
2: DarkRain 1326
3: Inha 1302
4: Mow 1296
5: Azen 1295
6: Wife 1280
7: Husband 1277
8: Tejo 1275
9: Steve W 1274
10: Chillin 1273
11: KM 1258
12: Tink 1255
13: Sleepy jack 1252
14: SS4Ricky 1251
15: Oro 1248
16: AlphaZealot 1232
17: Aho 1228
18: Special K. 1227
19: Mew2Matt 1224
20: Shep 1221
21: Philly 1209
22: Mega 1206
23: Muffin 1205
24: Comp 1204
25: RickR 1204

So, wheres the problem? Very simple, because many brackets run with bye because of double elim and an uneven number of players, some players will play way more matches than others, thus inflating their ranking to an unrealistic level (Inha/Mow for example). The same works for deflation, like the case of Husband and Chillin, they played less matches and as a result, their Chess Rankings did not accurately reflect their tournament performance.

My case in point: For everyone that wants to use a more complex ranking system than the one I proposed in the middle of the summer, good luck. You are simply being unrealistic. The data does not exist, the time commitment is too extravegant, and the results do not produce the accuracy that you think it would.

If you only want one reason: The data does not exist and will never exist in a form that can be easily compiled in a manner that could suite a more complex system. BOMB3 & BOMB4 are the only semi-large to large tournaments that I know of that still have brackets in their origanal form. I think the TG6 bracket was posted online awhile back, so I guess that makes three tournaments. If anyone has a hundred or so hours to spare, I guess you could get to work on it.

 

[jugfingers]

if melee ever went online in the future an online rating system similar to chess ratings would be interesting.

but as for a tournament rating system it seems az has discovered some definite flaws.

 

[slartibartfast42]

that wiki article makes me sad...

I'm only in Class E for chess

 

[person701]

Ewww, math >.< Not my favorite.

Since we're on the subject of ranks, what's the ranking system MLG uses for Halo3 (if anyone knows)? Maybe that can show us something. I dunno, thought food =)

 

[Ja]

that wiki article makes me sad...

I'm only in Class E for chess

Chess MM?

(joking)

 

[ice-]

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=61239

Basically, I have all the good ideas!

While you bring up some good points they all can be addressed. First, Swiss Perfect can calculate ELO rankings automatically, which would cut down on the time by a large margin.

Also, I could be wrong, and I will actually try this when I have some free time, but you can change the K value to account for the distance in tournaments. You can lower the K value of the Pools and first rounds of the losers bracket and increase the K value as it goes on.

To be perfectly honest, I a national ranking is rather hard to start but for Regional Circut events, this would be the best way to do rankings and set the bracket.

Thanks for the post :D


ninja edit: I read you're thread and rating system, and it doesn't account for who they play against at all, which I feel is a major flaw. Also, you are much more ambitious than I am, I see this being used at the Regional level for power rankings and circuts. At least it takes the bias out of it.

2nd edit: I also wanted to make it clear that unlike chess, it should not define the rank, but just use for power rankings and maybe some seedings.

 

[heatran15]

Hey you can't triple post ice

 

[ice-]

Hey you can't triple post ice

What the **** are you talking about?

 

[puckgood]

Your three posts - first post, ninja edit, 2nd edit = triple post.

 

[ice-]

Your three posts - first post, ninja edit, 2nd edit = triple post.

no its not :/

 

[AlphaZealot]

I read you're thread and rating system, and it doesn't account for who they play against at all, which I feel is a major flaw. Also, you are much more ambitious than I am, I see this being used at the Regional level for power rankings and circuts. At least it takes the bias out of it.

Yes it does. Each player started the tournament at 1200. If you win you rank goes up immediately, if you lose it goes down. By round 5 you will be playing someone who could be 1300 and you are like 1280.

That said, the thread is quite old, and came a time when most tournaments did not post brackets, instead all you knew was usually top 8, and rarely but sometimes the final placement of everyone. The system could probably be refined/changed to be applicable to our more modern tournaments, which have substantially more data because of TIO.

 

[ice-]

Yes it does. Each player started the tournament at 1200. If you win you rank goes up immediately, if you lose it goes down. By round 5 you will be playing someone who could be 1300 and you are like 1280.

That said, the thread is quite old, and came a time when most tournaments did not post brackets, instead all you knew was usually top 8, and rarely but sometimes the final placement of everyone. The system could probably be refined/changed to be applicable to our more modern tournaments, which have substantially more data because of TIO.

No, I was talking about the alternate you purposed, not your attempt at ELO rankings.

 

[Chum]

actually this wouldn't be that hard to do if the ranking system was online based. By that i mean you have a website, that people with permission can generate brackets on it, then the braket is submited to a data base which then calculates the rating of the players and updates the site. The only thing is that all the people in the tournament would need to be registered on the site and use the same name everytime they entered a tournament.

A friend and I started a website for brawl rankings a while ago, and it will eventually do this.

 

[ice-]

actually this wouldn't be that hard to do if the ranking system was online based. By that i mean you have a website, that people with permission can generate brackets on it, then the braket is submited to a data base which then calculates the rating of the players and updates the site. The only thing is that all the people in the tournament would need to be registered on the site and use the same name everytime they entered a tournament.

A friend and I started a website for brawl rankings a while ago, and it will eventually do this.

yeah many magic websites do this already.

 

[Bailey]

if melee ever went online in the future an online rating system similar to chess ratings would be interesting.

You are dumb. Melee won't go online because Melee is too good of a game