Consistency of APA Ratings

Equal frequency for everybody is a pretty bold statement on your part as a definition of luck.

Here is a definition of 'luck' I got from google:
success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.

So it MUST be just a likely for everybody in order to be considered luck. You have a definition of luck that I have never seen before. You should probably keep that in mind when you use it.

If everyone did it 1 in 10, is it really luck by your view? It wouldn't be in mine, it would simply be a normal course of action, thus expected behavior, that occurs when you strike the rack 10 times. What is so "lucky" about expected behavior?

Everything is expected behavior with some probability. Flipping ten heads in a row is expected behavior (about 1 in a thousand attempts). People would consider it lucky if they were betting heads, unlucky if they were betting tails. But it is EXACTLY as likely as any other string of ten heads and tails. It wouldn't be 'lucky', of course, if I could manipulate the coin, so it happened all the time.

If making the 8 on the break often enough that it gives you a statistical game advantage over every opponent you play, then it should affect your rating.

As I said, it already does. Those games go in your win column, and affect your rating. Why should they do so twice?''

Thank you kindly.
 
Here is a definition of 'luck' I got from google:


So it MUST be just a likely for everybody in order to be considered luck. You have a definition of luck that I have never seen before. You should probably keep that in mind when you use it.



Everything is expected behavior with some probability. Flipping ten heads in a row is expected behavior (about 1 in a thousand attempts). People would consider it lucky if they were betting heads, unlucky if they were betting tails. But it is EXACTLY as likely as any other string of ten heads and tails. It wouldn't be 'lucky', of course, if I could manipulate the coin, so it happened all the time.



As I said, it already does. Those games go in your win column, and affect your rating. Why should they do so twice?''

Thank you kindly.

First off, I am not going to attempt to argue the word luck with your arrogance.

Secondly, we are talking about a handicap here so it is more than just a win when they are "lucky" enough to do it so consistently.
 
Love BCA. 8 ball on break is a re-rack or spot the 8 and continue shooting


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Things like me winning in X innings but my opponent scratched on the 8, made an early 8 or put the 8 in the wrong pocket should matter as it says nothing about my performance. Thus a win like that should be completely ignored by the system. I do not believe it is though as I have seen 2/3 get moved up the next week after winning a match that their opponent fouled on the 8 every time. That is silliness as you can't really rate anyone's performance at that point without seeing the match. For all they know they could have ran all the way out and legitimately missed an easy 8 they left hanging that the opponent accidentally put in or they could have broke dry and then the opponent ran all the way out to the 8 and accidentally scratched while making it with an amazing 8 rail shot they accurately calculated but missed on speed. :-) Both of those are the same on paper.

8 on the break is another thing. It happens so infrequently and is luck. Yes I call it luck when you try it every time but only do it maybe once every 10-25 breaks, if that, of the trillion+ possibilities for the table layout. It is so infrequent counting it probably has a negligible affect on the average person's rating but would affect the skilled breaker that pretty much spots themselves a game every match if they can do it every 4 or 5 games.

The computer program must have something like a red flag stat. I've seen a 3 player with an average record win a match in 3 innings. An 8 ball on the break and an easy run out with balls spread near pockets. The next week he went to a 4. I told the league operator to look into it and 2 weeks later he was back to a 3 and has been ever since. I think when the computer sees something unusual it automatically kicks the player up.

Just a couple of things, Making the 8 on the break, personally I believe that to be a sort of "lucky by preparation" type thing, That is, we try for it every time but it really is pretty rare, but luck or not it's still a game that you won in no innings same as a break and run or when your opponent knocks in the 8 out of turn or scratches when shooting the 8. There is a place on the score sheet to record all of these as statistical anomalies or something like that so you and me and every other APA player would like to believe that since we're recording these they are somehow accounted in the formula that generates our skill level, my personal belief is that they aren't.

They are just games won by someone in xx amount of innings and it really doesn't matter how you won, to the computer it's just a win in xx amount of innings.

Over a calendar's year worth of sessions and matches a while back I recorded the stats of at least one player on every team in our division (a five team division) and my entire team with their permission, knowledge, and cooperation of course and calculated every week. Without accounting for any of the statistical anomalies like an 8 ball break, or a foul on the 8 ball, things like that. My results were dead on.

It could have been coincidence but I had a reasonably large sample size. I got to thinking about it and the only thing that could have varied were the amount of defensive shots recorded. Defensive shots are largely subjective and they don't always agree.

I know that Skippy says an LO can "lock you in", I, with all due respect, would disagree. It's a phrase that some APA players like to use every so often to explain a lack of movement when they think a player should be rated differently, but I don't think you can be locked in. You have what The APA calls a "Lowest Attainable S/L" and that's the S/L you played in and exited from an HLT (Higher Level Tournament) as, something at the National level of The APA and you can never, without some kind of special permission or circumstance fall below that, but I don't think you can be locked into anything. Why would they want to lock anyone in?

and lastly, these players that you say you've seen, the 3 with a 2 inning avg, and stuff like that, were these players on your team or did you have access to your league database? How did you see them?
 
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Here is a definition of 'luck' I got from google:


So it MUST be just a likely for everybody in order to be considered luck. You have a definition of luck that I have never seen before. You should probably keep that in mind when you use it.



Everything is expected behavior with some probability. Flipping ten heads in a row is expected behavior (about 1 in a thousand attempts). People would consider it lucky if they were betting heads, unlucky if they were betting tails. But it is EXACTLY as likely as any other string of ten heads and tails. It wouldn't be 'lucky', of course, if I could manipulate the coin, so it happened all the time.



As I said, it already does. Those games go in your win column, and affect your rating. Why should they do so twice?''

Thank you kindly.

Not all luck is created equal - chance has its own chances. Nowhere in that one definition does it say anything about luck being fair.

Defensive shots get marked, win or lose, but they can also affect a game.
 
Lemme see...
He had a good night and you had a bad one?
I know you'd never just let him win...
He won the lag and just never really gave you a clear shot at anything?
The scorekeepers were doing other things?
He was finally using the force?
He cheated?

...any of those sound right?

All of the above....j/k :grin:

Like i said ...i. Over 20 odd matches during the last 5 years he has never beat me. Then he night he does happen to win its the most lopsided loss I have ever had. 19-1

The reason he he beat me at all much less the lopsided score was due to I had not shot a ball the last 2 weeks and he had just finished playing 3 master league matches right before we began our match.

I was cold as ice and he was in dead stroke. My lo who is on my team was playing 8 ball at the time and later upon seeing the score of my 9 ball match said ....wow ! ..what happened ? So I told him the above reason. He replied I should not make that much difference.

I replied ..yes it does. I said ....remember I play master also but could not make it today. I said remember after the last master match i played I went on to beat a 7 ..4-0 Iin 8 ball and beat a 9 by 15-5 in 9 ball the same night and them was raised to a 6. He said I zee what you mean...that makes sense.

On e a month on Sundays we play 2 master league matches and them immediately after double jeapordy starts. Every time I pls masters I go on to simply beating the crap out of who ever I face I. Double jeopardy. This time it happened fo me lol .
 
No it is not. Every league is free to use whatever rules and/or handicapping system they wish. And there are no points or handicaps at the National tourney in Vegas.

You quoted part of my statement. I did state bcapl 8 ball is a points based game at the local level.

I also stated I. The same post exactly what you said.....every lo is free to run their area as they wish..

So where did I dis agree with your reply ?

Our area was points based and j think if you took a poll on here from bcapl players...past and current ...i think you would be surprised to find that most areas play that way.
 
I know that Skippy says an LO can "lock you in", I, with all due respect, would disagree.

That came straight from not 1, but 2 people that work in the APA office. So yes, the LO can lock your rating so you dont move at all or they can raise you. They can never lower you.

They did not give a reason, but I would imagine the only reason they would do it is if they suspect you are purposely trying to lower your rating thus they will prevent you from doing it. I can't imagine any circumstance they would ever lock it to prevent you from getting raised.
 
That came straight from not 1, but 2 people that work in the APA office. So yes, the LO can lock your rating so you dont move at all or they can raise you. They can never lower you.

They did not give a reason, but I would imagine the only reason they would do it is if they suspect you are purposely trying to lower your rating thus they will prevent you from doing it. I can't imagine any circumstance they would ever lock it to prevent you from getting raised.

Many years ago LO's had the capability to set or unset two different limits - a "highest attainable" limit and a "lowest attainable" limit. The high limit was supposed to be a temporary thing, to keep weird stuff like two 8-Ball scratches from causing a 2 to go to a 3. APA found out that some LO's were using it more than they should have to keep skill levels artificially low, and that capability was taken away from the LO's control. We can now mark the "total default" matches, and for the most part it prevents the movement like the previous control did. Nowadays, "locking a player in" means setting the lowest attainable skill level so the player cannot go down.
 
Many years ago LO's had the capability to set or unset two different limits - a "highest attainable" limit and a "lowest attainable" limit. The high limit was supposed to be a temporary thing, to keep weird stuff like two 8-Ball scratches from causing a 2 to go to a 3. APA found out that some LO's were using it more than they should have to keep skill levels artificially low, and that capability was taken away from the LO's control. We can now mark the "total default" matches, and for the most part it prevents the movement like the previous control did. Nowadays, "locking a player in" means setting the lowest attainable skill level so the player cannot go down.

How is a "default match" defined?

That is interesting. I've always assumed games you win because of a fatal error (scratch on 8, early 8 ...)by your opponent wouldn't affect your S/L.
 
I can't tell from your information. There are some misconceptions out there about game win/loss as the basic measure.

First, people confuse it with "I played 100 games this month and won 60 so I am at 60%." That is a win-loss record. No we don't use that at all. You can win 90% of your games and have your Fargo Rating go down or 10% of your games and have your Fargo Rating go up. Our game win/loss is at the level of an individual game against a specific opponent.

Suppose I play a single game of 8-ball against Robsnotes4u. Who is going to win?

Well there are a number of things that may contribute

--how well we rack
--how well be break
--how well we pocket balls
--how well we control the cueball
--the quality of our patterns
--the quality of our two-way shots/risk management
--the quality of our safeties
--the quality of our decision making
--whether we are prone to distraction.

You can imagine collecting a lot of data on Rob and me that gives us scores on each of these measures. Then you can imagine weighting each of these factors for their overall importance in determining the game winner and constructing a complex rating function to comparing Rob to me to find each of our chance of winning the game.

But wait!

If we look at the 300 or so games Rob and I have played in the past, you will see that I have won about 200 and he has won about 100. So basically we are given the final answer. We know all the things I listed--and some I didn't list-- contribute to this. And this final answer knows that. Moreover, this final answer knows what we don't know: the proper weighting of each factor.

So when we say I am 100 points above Rob and have a 2/3 chance of winning an individual game against him, it would be wrong to say this doesn't consider how we bank or cut balls or jump or kick or our ability to run out or play safe. It absolutely considers all of these things in the right relative mix.

If in a misguided attempt to "improve" Fargo Ratings we added an accustats score for the game or a measure of the number of innings or anything like that, we would be just double counting these factors with weights we just have to guess.

It would be like taking the Vegas spread on a football game and then adding in your own knowledge that a quarterback performs well outside the pocket. You can be pretty sure your knowledge is already baked into the Vegas odds.

The notion that GAME WIN/LOSS + OTHER FACTORS is somehow better than just GAME WIN/LOSS for predicting game win/loss is just nonsense. The exception to this is unusual current information.

For my game with Rob, perhaps you know I just heard my dog died or you know I am drunk.

Or you saw the quarterback limping into the stadium on game day.

Outside of that, the best way to predict game win/loss is...well...game win/loss.

If wins and loses were the only info baseball used for pitching match ups analytics wouldn't be needed
There are other factors that only the people collecting the numbers are privy too that could be used to better predict the winner of a match

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Not all luck is created equal - chance has its own chances. Nowhere in that one definition does it say anything about luck being fair.

Defensive shots get marked, win or lose, but they can also affect a game.

Who ever claimed luck was fair? What I said was that if the probability isn't even, then it isn't luck, something else is involved, like skill.

I am really not sure what you are arguing. 'chance has its own chance' is nonsensical to me. If you are saying that random things happen at random intervals, I would say that that is tautological. If you mean something else, (as seems likely) I have no idea.

Thank you kindly.
 
First off, I am not going to attempt to argue the word luck with your arrogance.

Secondly, we are talking about a handicap here so it is more than just a win when they are "lucky" enough to do it so consistently.

It wasn't MY definition, it's Google's. Argue with them.

So person who drops the eight on the break gets more points, than one who wins the regular way? If both count the same, win/loss covers it. Every time someone wins a game by sinking the eight on the break, there handicap needs to be adjusted, why should it be adjusted by more than the equivalent of one game?

Let's take the example of three people who win EVERY game they play (thousands of games). One breaks and runs every time, the other sinks the eight every time, the third plays a safety once a game. To which should we assign a higher probability of winning? Why?

Thank you kindly.
 
How is a "default match" defined?

That is interesting. I've always assumed games you win because of a fatal error (scratch on 8, early 8 ...)by your opponent wouldn't affect your S/L.

Not "default match", "total default match", a match where the winning player never made the 8-Ball. And like I said, the system today does handle them. Not perfectly yet, but close, and we're constantly updating to get closer.
 
It wasn't MY definition, it's Google's. Argue with them.

So person who drops the eight on the break gets more points, than one who wins the regular way? If both count the same, win/loss covers it. Every time someone wins a game by sinking the eight on the break, there handicap needs to be adjusted, why should it be adjusted by more than the equivalent of one game?

Let's take the example of three people who win EVERY game they play (thousands of games). One breaks and runs every time, the other sinks the eight every time, the third plays a safety once a game. To which should we assign a higher probability of winning? Why?

Thank you kindly.

The one that breaks and runs every time since breaking and running indicates a win every time ,, making the 8 does not always guarantee a win nor does playing a safe

Your Welcome

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Who ever claimed luck was fair? What I said was that if the probability isn't even, then it isn't luck, something else is involved, like skill.

I am really not sure what you are arguing. 'chance has its own chance' is nonsensical to me. If you are saying that random things happen at random intervals, I would say that that is tautological. If you mean something else, (as seems likely) I have no idea.

Thank you kindly.

Some people are lucky, some are unlucky, while everyone else falls somewhere in between. It has nothing at all to do with even odds.
 
How is a "default match" defined?

That is interesting. I've always assumed games you win because of a fatal error (scratch on 8, early 8 ...)by your opponent wouldn't affect your S/L.

That default match control of the LO makes sense but I don't think all league operators use it. That's why you still can see fast movement sometimes when E8, 8S, 8WP or 8OB occur on players with lower skill levels.
 
Not "default match", "total default match", a match where the winning player never made the 8-Ball. And like I said, the system today does handle them. Not perfectly yet, but close, and we're constantly updating to get closer.

That's fine but there are times when the winning player may have made one 8 ball and had several games won by default, then what?
 
Not "default match", "total default match", a match where the winning player never made the 8-Ball. And like I said, the system today does handle them. Not perfectly yet, but close, and we're constantly updating to get closer.

A player that wins by any method other than them actually shooting the 8 ball in should be completely ignored by the system, PERIOD.

Why it would ever have been included is beyond me as it has absolutely nothing to do with them and/or their skill.

Bad players will scratch on the 8, make the 8 in the wrong pocket or make an early 8 more often then good players so it should have no reflection in their opponents rating when they do it. I don't even think these should be reflected in the player's rating that does it, if it even is. Otherwise it would be another tool sandbaggers use to manipulate the system by purposely doing it.
 
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