FoG Rankings 2008 is now online

[hammy]

I suspect that the IWF will want to do some sort of Glicko type system. Personally I have lost all interest in Glicko because while it is scientific and with all the work done regarding international weightings produces IMO quite sensible rankings it doesn't produce much in the way of player interest.

Politely, that's because whoever implemented it in the UK frankly made a right pig's ear of it. All you had was the "dull as watching
paint dry" long term rankings as far as I could tell. I'm not surprised nobody was interested in it. Railway timetables are
more interesting. As Dan and Marc point out, the player of the year race is as variable as the current BHGS ranking system,
plus you get all those stats on player's arch-nemesis, who-played-who, army results, etc etc.

Rgds,
Peter

The problem was that the rest of the world seemed to want the UK to use Glicko but the UK could not use their software because most UK comps are doubles and the rest of the world Glicko didn't understand the concept of doubles. This may have eventually been recticfied but the fundamental problem is that UK players experience of Glicko has been very bad and I don't think more than a handful of players even care about their rating.

Most active players in the UK know who is good and who is bad, they don't need a scientific system to tell them.

There are definitely issues with using Glicko in a wargaming environment and not all of them have IMO been resolved. I am sure that if someone wants to go to the effort to work out FoG Glicko they would be supported in their efforts but I can categorically say that it won't be me.

I am happy enough to look at producing a world FoG ranking based on the BHGS style system and think that if each country had one major event, the WIC was the grand slam and everything else a minor we might get more international travel as a result.

[peterrjohnston]

Actually all those are quite dull as well after the initial interest wears off - much more fun is wild speculation based on unscientific opinion that leads to trash talking and grudge matches arranged over too many beeers

Relatively interesting compared to what you had is the point Frankly, the current rankings aren't
more interesting are they? A quick glance maybe. And back to trash-talking

Rgds,
Peter

[peterrjohnston]

The problem was that the rest of the world seemed to want the UK to use Glicko but the UK could not use their software because most UK comps are doubles and the rest of the world Glicko didn't understand the concept of doubles. This may have eventually been recticfied but the fundamental problem is that UK players experience of Glicko has been very bad and I don't think more than a handful of players even care about their rating.

Be that as it may, but my point was a moderately interesting set of stats was replaced by an incredibly dull one.

Most active players in the UK know who is good and who is bad, they don't need a scientific system to tell them.

The same world over...

I am happy enough to look at producing a world FoG ranking based on the BHGS style system and think that if each country had one major event, the WIC was the grand slam and everything else a minor we might get more international travel as a result.

Why make it complicated? Assume the statistical population is the same for everyone (dodgy I know) and just
count any singles meeting/pool with more than say a cutoff of 20 to 25 players, take best 5 or 6 results as the average
as you do now. Add majors and grand slam if you want, as long as they meet the cut-off.

Avoid doubles, as only the UK plays this and Mr A Genius can unreasonably hike Mr A Incompetent.

Having a cutoff means you're going to include most important meetings, and avoid small pools at
big meetings distorting results.

Rgds,
Peter

[nikgaukroger]

I think a bottom line is that if somebody wants to set up and administer a set of gecko ratings for FoG I'm sure Slitherine will host them.

However, I understand it is quite a lot of work so something quick and dirty may be more sustainable in the long run as you won't get adminstrator burnout (DBM ones have tended to die on their feet due to lack of updates). I'm not convinced that cost:benefit is on the side of gecko I'm afraid.

[hammy]

I am happy enough to look at producing a world FoG ranking based on the BHGS style system and think that if each country had one major event, the WIC was the grand slam and everything else a minor we might get more international travel as a result.

Why make it complicated? Assume the statistical population is the same for everyone (dodgy I know) and just
count any singles meeting/pool with more than say a cutoff of 20 to 25 players, take best 5 or 6 results as the average
as you do now. Add majors and grand slam if you want, as long as they meet the cut-off.

Avoid doubles, as only the UK plays this and Mr A Genius can unreasonably hike Mr A Incompetent.

Having a cutoff means you're going to include most important meetings, and avoid small pools at
big meetings distorting results.

I think that there should be a minimum qualifying level for a comp but to be honest I don't think it should be that high. In some ways 8 players would be enough. I think there is some mileage in only counting events with more than so many rounds but perhaps for the moment inclusion is better than exclusion.

Not including doubles would be rather an issue in the UK as I am not sure there are actually 6 non doubles comps during the year.... I accept that Mr A Wargaming God can improve the results of Mr A Wargaming Numpty but to be honest good players rarely stay with a bad partner for a long time.

At the moment I am leaning towards:

The FoG tournament at the WIC is a Grand Slam event
Any comp with more than 50 players is also a Grand Slam event
Each country gets one Major event in addition to any Grand Slams
All other events that the results of are reported to the FoG Hall of Honour are minor events

I might introduce the concept of very minor events for one dayers but that may be a bot too much complication.

Thoughts?

[nikgaukroger]

I think a bottom line is that if somebody wants to set up and administer a set of gecko ratings for FoG I'm sure Slitherine will host them.

However, I understand it is quite a lot of work so something quick and dirty may be more sustainable in the long run as you won't get adminstrator burnout (DBM ones have tended to die on their feet due to lack of updates). I'm not convinced that cost:benefit is on the side of gecko I'm afraid.

[Malidor]

Another idea; perhaps all points reset to zero when a new world champion is crowned. Alternatively players retain a moderate percentage (25%) to keep them committed to the game over the long term. I believe some sporting leagues work in a similar way so as to retain pro players but not exclude amateurs.

OK, including club level games is a nice idea but the BHGS style rankings system doesn't really support individual games. It is designed to work on how players fare in tournaments or at least a series of games. Club competitions or ladders could be included but I can't think how you would include single games.

That's a fair compromise - accept club level events that consist of a minimum number of games and a minimum number of participants. One-off games are still useful in that they keep your skills sharp while you're waiting for your next points-earning event

[Malidor]

All other events that the results of are reported to the FoG Hall of Honour are minor events

Make sure there is some control over who can post results, a trustworthy organiser from the con or a club secretary

I might introduce the concept of very minor events for one dayers but that may be a bot too much complication.

I like it the way it is, with just the three value levels. A one-day event probably qualifies as a minor event, although you could stipulate that three rounds are needed as a minimum (a serious one-dayer would probably be looking at morning, afternoon and evening rounds anyway). If you include your earlier thoughts about minimum number of players you get a nice threshold for what level of event is worth bothering the effort of submitting.

[peterrjohnston]

I think that there should be a minimum qualifying level for a comp but to be honest I don't think it should be that high. In some ways 8 players would be enough. I think there is some mileage in only counting events with more than so many rounds but perhaps for the moment inclusion is better than exclusion.

Not including doubles would be rather an issue in the UK as I am not sure there are actually 6 non doubles comps during the year.... I accept that Mr A Wargaming God can improve the results of Mr A Wargaming Numpty but to be honest good players rarely stay with a bad partner for a long time.

At the moment I am leaning towards:

The FoG tournament at the WIC is a Grand Slam event
Any comp with more than 50 players is also a Grand Slam event
Each country gets one Major event in addition to any Grand Slams
All other events that the results of are reported to the FoG Hall of Honour are minor events

I might introduce the concept of very minor events for one dayers but that may be a bot too much complication.

Thoughts?

Well, my point of about the doubles and having a decent sized cutoff is your making it sound like UK rankings with
a bit of international flavour. You did say you wanted International rankings, with a side-benefit of encouraging
more travel. UK doubles just doesn't meet that criteria from an international point of view. We tried a doubles
meeting here once, nobody was interested, too individualistic I think there's one doubles meeting (it was DBM) in
Paris. Outside of that, nothing...

Most non-UK competitions are one or two larger pools, singles only. That's to date anyway, perhaps it'll change
to more narrow themes in FoG and smaller pools. But, for example, I note the UK counts Rollcall as a major.
Now I know Rollcall is a very fine competition, and it's a UK rankings, but for an international rankings, having
the players spread in many small pools, it'd be a bit cheesy when compared with big singles competitions like
say the Challenge. Hence my point about not just total numbers, but how many are in each pool (you'd probably
want to take average pool sizes for a meeting, obviously).

So if you're doing a 50 cut-off for Grand slams like you suggest, perhaps a pool size averaging at least 15 or 20?

That all said, I really think it's a good idea and great if you're prepared to put in the effort required. Obviously I'd
be happy to forward any Italian meetings results as well (I was doing the DBM results this year, as it spiralled to
a slow oblivion). I know from experience one of the hassles is getting results from meeting organisers...

[peterrjohnston]

Another idea; perhaps all points reset to zero when a new world champion is crowned. Alternatively players retain a moderate percentage (25%) to keep them committed to the game over the long term. I believe some sporting leagues work in a similar way so as to retain pro players but not exclude amateurs.

Excellent idea. From after this year's Helsinki FoG world champion would be an ideal starting point, as
you'd be leading to a overall "yearly" champion at the end of the next.

[hammy]

Another idea; perhaps all points reset to zero when a new world champion is crowned. Alternatively players retain a moderate percentage (25%) to keep them committed to the game over the long term. I believe some sporting leagues work in a similar way so as to retain pro players but not exclude amateurs.

Excellent idea. From after this year's Helsinki FoG world champion would be an ideal starting point, as
you'd be leading to a overall "yearly" champion at the end of the next.

Having the rankings run from world championship to world championship is a good idea.

Each country should have at least one event that counts as a major regardless of the size of player pool.

Having more than one grand slam event would be nice but it would need to be decides how the extra grand slams status events are selected. For example I think that it is likely that Britcon this year will have 70+ players, the BHGS Challenge had 40+. The reason I suggested 50 was to get Britcon to count but not the Challenge so there was only one grand slam in the UK. Perhaps an alternative would be to allow national bodies from countries with more than a set number of players to nominate one event as a grand slam for the world rankings. Either that or we just make something up and have say Britcon, Historicon, Cancon and one mainland European comp as grand slams.

Interesting discussion anyway.

[babyshark]

A very interesting discussion. I agree with Hammy that the cutoff number of players needs to be lower than 20-25. In fact, as he points out, 8 sounds like a good number to me.

I want to renew my call for the recording and dissemination of the oddball stats. Nothing gets the trash talk flowing like the player nemesis rankings. For instance, Dan Hazelwood (aka "The Great White Whale") gets endless enjoyment from reminding me that he is my DBM nemesis. I would hate to take that away from him. Stats of that sort get people coming back to the rankings pages again and again.

Marc

[hazelbark]

The problem was that the rest of the world seemed to want the UK to use Glicko but the UK could not use their software because most UK comps are doubles and the rest of the world Glicko didn't understand the concept of doubles.

Which is not accurate as the international glicko software does have a whole provision for retaining and reporting doubles scoring. We choose not to use it in the US as we only have 1-2 doubles events. I haven't heard of other doubles events else where. But the software has whole pages of instructions how to enter double scores.

[hazelbark]

The FoG tournament at the WIC is a Grand Slam event
Any comp with more than 50 players is also a Grand Slam event
Each country gets one Major event in addition to any Grand Slams
All other events that the results of are reported to the FoG Hall of Honour are minor events

I might introduce the concept of very minor events for one dayers but that may be a bot too much complication.

This has a lot of Bias against a whole truckload of countries based on player density, gepgraphy, competing rule system etc.

How many countries had a single event with 50+ players of any ancients rule system?

[hazelbark]

Excellent idea. From after this year's Helsinki FoG world champion would be an ideal starting point, as you'd be leading to a overall "yearly" champion at the end of the next.

Well with only 11 people signed up according to the website, I think Helsinki FoG is a demo which is sort of the intent. So i think post-Helsinki is the starting time frame.

[peterrjohnston]

Excellent idea. From after this year's Helsinki FoG world champion would be an ideal starting point, as you'd be leading to a overall "yearly" champion at the end of the next.

Well with only 11 people signed up according to the website, I think Helsinki FoG is a demo which is sort of the intent. So i think post-Helsinki is the starting time frame.

That's what I was saying, in agreement with OP. Start at zero post-Helsinki, run to next FoG world championship.

[peterrjohnston]

Having more than one grand slam event would be nice but it would need to be decides how the extra grand slams status events are selected. For example I think that it is likely that Britcon this year will have 70+ players, the BHGS Challenge had 40+. The reason I suggested 50 was to get Britcon to count but not the Challenge so there was only one grand slam in the UK. Perhaps an alternative would be to allow national bodies from countries with more than a set number of players to nominate one event as a grand slam for the world rankings. Either that or we just make something up and have say Britcon, Historicon, Cancon and one mainland European comp as grand slams.

Isn't there the European Championships?

[robertthebruce]

Hi Guys.


I think, we need a vounteers group and became to work in the Ranking system. It´s not necesary to make a new Ranking System, we can only agree on a system for national and international tournaments, grand slam ... ect to use it in the FOG zone.

If we need the support of national organizations, I don´t think that is a problem, almost in Spain.

Cheers

David

[philqw78]

The new FoG Rankings 2008 section is now available in the "on the field of glory"

Where is this??

[WhiteKnight]

At the moment, the whole concept of FOG rankings confuses me...the rules have only been out since Feb time, before that it was only open to a restricted no of people who were beta-testers?

As far as the UK goes, there have been a few comps since publication, mainly "doubles"(?) but I dont think I would know which were important to attend if I wanted to be on a FOG ranking system. That may well be my ignorance of how it all works!

Through this forum, it seems there is a growing FOG community across the world which consists of people who've converted in part or wholly from other rule-sets (in only four months, a real achievement!), some who haven't played "ancients" for a few years, some new to historical gaming. It would be good to set up a ranking system that was as inclusive as possible, that started from scratch on date "x" and that gave as full a listing as possible of which tournaments in each country were ranking ones, with dates etc to allow people to plan ahead, especially if the thought is to encourage "international" match-ups.

Apologies if this is revisiting a well-trodden path but I do get a sense from this forum of a large, international group of wargamers who want to support and learn from each other at the same time as playing competitively and it may be timely to put past differences of system to one side and start with a fresh structure?

Martin