A few points would make a difference in a lot of scenarios. As for high up in the prs, it could make the difference between yay and lozr who in past rankings have been absurdly close. The main place it matters is lower in the prs, where there isn't as much data (because the players get out of the tournaments faster).
If you incorporate things like attendance and losses, then it becomes something more than just a point system, and something more like what we have now. We don't actively think about attendance the way we do it now, but if players don't attend, they don't get data and thus can't be ranked. We currently incorporate wins and losses. The only 'bias' that comes into play is when the data between two players is ambiguous. If we adopt a point system, there would be a clear cut difference between players, but that difference, while objective, wouldn't necessarily be any more accurate than it is now. In fact, the problems that I have brought up already would probably make it less accurate, though more definitive.
And PP losing to an unranked player would matter for him a lot. While his other data is so good it probably wouldn't make him not #1, it theoretically could if other players also did well vs. him and didn't lose to ocean.
To sum everything up, we already consider everything that the proposed point system does, without the negatives. I think that if people were aware of all the data that we use to determine the power rankings, people wouldn't be as surprised as they are when they come out. Sometimes the lower spots are relatively ambiguous and we are forced to make a judgement call, and it is possible that our decisions are wrong. However, when we have more data, the rankings are usually much more clear cut. Perhaps next time, if we do indeed wait for four tournaments, PP and I will write up an explanation for why each player gets the spot they get. In reality, it is much more objective than most of you realize.
