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BCA Nationals 8 Ball - Fargo Discrepancy
- Thread starter banditgrrr
- Start date
The last time you asked the same question Robsnotes4u mentioned that the answer was already posted in post #74. It doesn't appear that you read it. You should, it answers your question.
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showpost.php?p=5631310&postcount=74
There is a misunderstanding
Cleary,
Evidently you think we did nothing to screen players all the past years. I guess I better tell Bill Stock that he didn't do anything the last 10 years or so.
I do read the forums, and I do believe most people want to offer positive suggestions. However some just want to complain, and in the process make statements that are way more fiction than fact.
Fargo has made a lot of impact on rating of players - and it will get better over time. Obviously, we don't have data from events that don't send it to us, but most promoters and TD will participate because it is better for the players, and the game.
I try not to respond to many posters who want to argue and have the tendency to get 'stuck' in a narrow perspective- and refuse to see the bigger (and better) picture. There are a few posters who 'think' they know best - but their facts are highly distorted. Maybe if they actually inquired they might get the facts.
Let's also remember the tournament ended on Sunday. Usually our office is back in order by Wednesday or Thursday. This year is different because our email server went south and we won't have email until next week. It is causing a lot if issues for us doing our job - but it is what it is.
What is not acceptable is some posters almost demanding an immediate answer to sometimes complicated topics. Until we get caught up, that just isn't realistic. We usually respond and I feel the AZ community should just chill a little. I am sure there are some legitimate complaints, but there are Also some bogus questions and misleading information being put out there. We do appreciate real constructive ideas. Once in awhile a real new idea is presented-and it makes reading all the crap worthwhile when you might find a gem......
Here's a news flash. FargoRate is possibly the best thing to happen to pool in many years. It is in its infancy and already has kept most players in their respective divisions. More data is the answer and we are getting more data on an ever increasing frequency.
So I really wish people would cut us a little slack - what CSI (and FargoRate) has undertaken is a monster task. No other billiard entity would or could do what we are in the process of doing. BTW, have the naysayers ever considered who is paying for all this development and implementation, at no cost to the players? Some people who 'get it' appreciate it because they see the future.
Others want to tell us what we should do 'if we were smart' .........
In the effort to make peace in the world of pool, please understand that I gave a huge passion for pool. And I know the players and the game deserve much better than what has been available. Fortunately, I have the tools available to undertake this very time consuming and expensive project. And I am now lucky enough to have a decent pair of lungs so I can torture all the people wanting us to fall short......
I don't want to argue with anyone, but I really cannot respect people who attack something because they don't understand what is really happening. I'm not calling anyone stupid or irrational - but some pretty stupid and irrational statements seem to show up on these threads.
So, onward towards better billiards
Mark Griffin
702-835-2000. Cell
(Oh yeah, if you really want a better glimpse of what's we are doing, you know how to find me. But please remember our email us down a few more days, and believe it or not, I'm pretty busy in opening the 'nicest pool room in America')
Cleary,
Evidently you think we did nothing to screen players all the past years. I guess I better tell Bill Stock that he didn't do anything the last 10 years or so.
I do read the forums, and I do believe most people want to offer positive suggestions. However some just want to complain, and in the process make statements that are way more fiction than fact.
Fargo has made a lot of impact on rating of players - and it will get better over time. Obviously, we don't have data from events that don't send it to us, but most promoters and TD will participate because it is better for the players, and the game.
I try not to respond to many posters who want to argue and have the tendency to get 'stuck' in a narrow perspective- and refuse to see the bigger (and better) picture. There are a few posters who 'think' they know best - but their facts are highly distorted. Maybe if they actually inquired they might get the facts.
Let's also remember the tournament ended on Sunday. Usually our office is back in order by Wednesday or Thursday. This year is different because our email server went south and we won't have email until next week. It is causing a lot if issues for us doing our job - but it is what it is.
What is not acceptable is some posters almost demanding an immediate answer to sometimes complicated topics. Until we get caught up, that just isn't realistic. We usually respond and I feel the AZ community should just chill a little. I am sure there are some legitimate complaints, but there are Also some bogus questions and misleading information being put out there. We do appreciate real constructive ideas. Once in awhile a real new idea is presented-and it makes reading all the crap worthwhile when you might find a gem......
Here's a news flash. FargoRate is possibly the best thing to happen to pool in many years. It is in its infancy and already has kept most players in their respective divisions. More data is the answer and we are getting more data on an ever increasing frequency.
So I really wish people would cut us a little slack - what CSI (and FargoRate) has undertaken is a monster task. No other billiard entity would or could do what we are in the process of doing. BTW, have the naysayers ever considered who is paying for all this development and implementation, at no cost to the players? Some people who 'get it' appreciate it because they see the future.
Others want to tell us what we should do 'if we were smart' .........
In the effort to make peace in the world of pool, please understand that I gave a huge passion for pool. And I know the players and the game deserve much better than what has been available. Fortunately, I have the tools available to undertake this very time consuming and expensive project. And I am now lucky enough to have a decent pair of lungs so I can torture all the people wanting us to fall short......
I don't want to argue with anyone, but I really cannot respect people who attack something because they don't understand what is really happening. I'm not calling anyone stupid or irrational - but some pretty stupid and irrational statements seem to show up on these threads.
So, onward towards better billiards
Mark Griffin
702-835-2000. Cell
(Oh yeah, if you really want a better glimpse of what's we are doing, you know how to find me. But please remember our email us down a few more days, and believe it or not, I'm pretty busy in opening the 'nicest pool room in America')
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Just how do you expect FargoRate to get all those results of all those tournaments Ron plays in? Clairvoyance? The answer is people. League and tournament directors have to submit it. And to make that happen, the players have to request it of them.
As with any system including your own personal judgement, you can't make a good analysis with little or no data whether it be in clocking someone's speed or anything else. FargoRate is no exception. It can't make a super accurate analysis when it has little game results on someone to work with. I couldn't tell you for sure who the better player is either if all I knew was that Craig beat Allen 3 to 1 in a race to 3. Being inaccurate due to lack of data is not a problem with FargoRate, it is a problem with a lack of data, which is a people problem.
I agree that some people with little data in FargoRate were incorrectly rated at nationals, a few fairly significantly so. That problem existed under the old "system" too though. The question is, did it get better with FargoRate? I think the answer is a clear yes. Far few players slipped into the wrong divisions, and the ones that did almost always went into the division next to the one they should have been in instead several divisions off like in the past where pros and masters players were often getting into the open division. It was already better this year but as more players and more games go into FargoRate this problem with continue to decrease and if we can get most of the tournaments out there submitting their match results the issue would all but disappear.
Going back to the players this year that were inaccurately rated because they had few or no games in the system, what could have been done about it? I think it is a good discussion to have. One way it could have been done differently is to have someone research all the players with low robustness, search the internet for their tournament results and such, and based on that as well as the results of their matches in FargoRate use some subjective judgement to then place them into the division that seems most appropriate. One obvious problem with that though is just that, that it has a degree of subjectivity to it, which ideally you want to get away from for obvious reasons. Another problem is that because this is the first year that FargoRate has been public, lots and lots of players (maybe the majority?) did not yet have a sufficiently robust rating. Is CSI supposed to do all this manual research on 1,500 different players or however many it was that had a low robustness (under 200) this year? That doesn't sound very practical and would take a whole lot of man hours.
The fact that FargoRate can't be as accurate as we would like for someone with little or no robustness isn't a problem with FargoRate, it is a problem with people. FargoRate isn't clairvoyant. It isn't an all seeing god that knows everything that goes on in the pool universe. Without people submitting the information, the information won't be there. For the most part it can only get its information when league and tournament directors submit it. If we want FargoRate to be more accurate, it is up to us to make league and tournament directors aware of FargoRate and request that they submit their tournament or league data so that we all benefit from it. Obviously nobody has any obligation to do that, but if they don't IMO they lose their right to complain about people with few games in the system being rated incorrectly.
I know you don't agree but FargoRate actually works pretty well with enough data. Even if you don't agree on that, we all agree that it works better with more data, so either way it makes sense for us all to ask league and tournament directors to submit their data so that it will improve. For those that don't have the ability to fully understand FargoRate the proof will be in the pudding once there is enough data in there on most people. Then we can truly answer the question of just how accurate it is. Lets get the data in there and find out, and we are all going to have to ask our league and tournament directors to submit it to make it happen and to make it happen more quickly. Then let the results speak for themselves.
Very good post
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Which is why I said it's not there yet. I believe that's on fargorate to be in contact with these regional events. The predator pro-am tour is pretty big, they record the match score for every match. Ron plays in A LOT of these.
See, that's kind of the problem. It's so hard to get all of this info. I think, in time, it will come together because people will want to use the fargo rate to handicap players... get the wire on new players to a tournament ect. I've repeatedly said it's a good thing. But, I'm a hater because I have ANY sort of issues...
Sorry Mark but the last "system" you had was an absolute joke. I tried to tell you several years ago it was a clusterf*ck but you didn't seem to care. You gave me one of your famous lines, "no matter what we do, someone will be upset". Well, at least with Fargorate, you're trying to have some sort of system... So, at least you are sort of moving in a better direction. Cheers to that!
No. funny this just came up in conversation. You don't understand the math and statistics.
You don't need all the data to be statistically correct
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You don't need "all" the data to be 'statistically correct' but you need A LOT of data regular correct.
Then we finally agree it works.
That was round about but we got there
You may step down.
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Did you eat paint chips as a child?
To be fair, you have been arguing that FargoRate as a system is inherently inaccurate itself even when it has enough data on players, not just that it is inaccurate in cases where it doesn't have enough data. But also to be fair, it sounds like you are backing slightly away from that some now and are now starting to have a more mind about it and for that I commend you. The math and concepts involved with FargoRate are complex and above most people's ability to fully comprehend, and you are in that boat. That isn't a slight as it involves a lot of pretty complex concepts that while absolutely correct are very counter-intuitive to most people, not just a few people.
The math and concepts behind FargoRate are a lot like this very famous math/logic/probability problem where the answer is also very counter-intuitive to most people and no matter how much you try to explain the answer to them most will still fail to comprehend it.
"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?"
Most people say it makes no difference to your odds of winning if you switch doors. They are wrong. Your odds of winning go up by switching doors. And even the people that can see that the odds of winning go up by switching doors still often get the amount that your odds of winning go up by wrong (you will win twice as often by always switching doors as you would have by never switching doors).
I bring up this famous problem because it can help illustrate how easily the average person can be wrong and not be able to see it. The reason that this is a good example for that is that for those who think that the idea of switching doors increasing your odds for winning is stupid and ridiculous and makes no sense and just can't possibly be true, you can easily prove without doubt just how wrong you are no matter how much you can't see it or understand it. Just run the "game show" experiment with somebody else a few dozen times to see. Get three coffee mugs or something (that are not clear) and put them upside down on a table, have the other person turn around, and put something under one of the mugs. Now have them turn back around and try to pick the mug with the item underneath. Do this like 25 times and see how often they pick they pick the right mug. Then do the same thing again 25 times, but this time after they choose, lift up one of the mugs that has nothing under it, and tell them that they have to switch their choice to the other mug, so this time they are switching their answer all 25 times after you have shown one of the mugs that has nothing under it. See how many times they picked the mug with the item under it this time. It won't even be close.
So now those people who would have sworn it made no difference can see without doubt the proof that they were wrong even though they still don't comprehend it, still don't get it, and are still completely baffled by it, and maybe now they can have a more open mind that the principles involved in FargoRate that they don't get and have argued against just might be another case of something that that seems so obvious to be one way but that they were wrong about because it was just beyond their ability to understand.
And for those that do understand the game show door problem and got the correct answer and comprehend it, it still serves as a reminder how counter-intuitive things can seem at times and that maybe just maybe FargoRate is one of these things for you, absolutely correct in its use of math and principle but just beyond your ability to comprehend it.
What I would say to people is that once there is enough data on enough players in the system, it will be crystal clear just how accurate or inaccurate it is. The results will speak for themselves. Until then try to keep an open mind. We will all have our proof soon enough.
Thats why I asked if it was minis.However I dont know if minis are really a good judge of speed.I dont make the rules and I did win those games.Do u get judged off the games u lose or just your win?Those just look like winning matches.Thanks for the response.
It didnt answer my question but thank you for your concern.
I probably shouldnt even say this because I do enjoy just getting to play now that I dont play pool or gamble for a living..I dont want any hard feelings at all because I do believe this rating system will work out in the long run.But that comment in bold right there is pretty harsh shot at those that played this event.
ex. Mens 8 ball Gold division
Roughly 430 entries 400$ entry each team
Around 170,000$ in entry money received for this division
Payback to the teams that placed Roughly 90,500
That means in this one division alone roughly 80,000 dollars was taken out.Not to mention these guys pay league dues every week to be faithful to your organization and then spend another 1000.00 to 1500.00 in hotel/flight and food to go to Vegas for a week and play.You really dont think they deserve a little credit on helping fund this?
Why wouldn't mini's be a good judge of speed? FargoRate essentially measures a person's average speed, which is overall what is most useful and accurate. To get a person's true average, you have to count all their games you are aware of. If you pick and choose which games and matches to count it is no longer a true representation of their average.
It did, you just didn't understand it I guess. No problem, you should have just said so. I will try to explain it a little more.
Your question was essentially that you couldn't think of any possible reason to explain how after the team event your FargoRating could have gone up while a teammates went down. Post #74 gave you two possible reasons.
One of the reasons that could explain this that was in that post is that FargoRate doesn't rate you based on whether you win or lose your matches against opponents, and it seems that you have the impression that it does. Whether you win or lose the match is immaterial. It only rates you based on how many games you won, compared to how many games you were expected to win based on your's and your opponent's ratings.
For example, lets say you play Shane Van Boening a race to nine. According to your current rating level (697) and Shane's current rating level (822) you are only supposed to get to 4 games by the time Shane wins the match. But lets say you lose 8-5. Well you won more games than a person rated a 697 is supposed to (you were only supposed to win 4 on average), so your rating is going to go up. It will probably only go up a minuscule amount since you didn't perform that much better than expected but your rating is going to go up none the less (although it may only up say .2 points, which after you round off you are still a 697).
Now say you lose to Shane 9-8. Now you won twice as many games as a 697 is supposed to win against Shane (you won 8 games but were only supposed to win 4) so your rating will go up even more than if you had lost 8-4 like in the first example. This time your rating might go up .8 points, and after you round off you are now a 698.
Now lets say you were to lose that match to Shane 8-2. Well then your rating would go down because you did not win the 4 games that were expected of a 697 speed player.
Now lets say you actually beat Shane in the match, and the final score is you won 9-6. Well you rating will go up even more than in any of the other examples. It isn't because you won that match though. That part doesn't matter. It is because you even further exceeded what you were supposed to do on average, which was only win 4 games. So you go up when you do better than a guy your speed was supposed to do, and you go down when you under perform how you were supposed to do against your opponent. So whether you actually won or lost a match is immaterial, it is by how much you exceeded or fell short of how a 697 would have done on average that makes the difference.
Something to keep in mind is that the more games you have in the system, the less difference any one match makes. If you have only ten games in the system and are a 697, and you lose 9-8 to Shane, your rating is going to go up, and go up a lot. But if you have a thousand games in the system your rating will only go up very slightly. Same thing when you perform lower than your rating.
When it comes to matches where you only won one game against an opponent (as in the team play at nationals) it gets kind of complicated to explain, but it essentially works the same way. You are generally going to go up when you win that one game against the guy, and how much you go up depends on how good he was. Since it was only one game it will generally only be a minuscule change in rating, again, depending on how many games you have in the system, but it probably won't even be enough to change your rating after you round off. It is the reverse if you lose the one game. All of the above (that was in post #74 just not spelled out nearly as detailed) leads to an answer to your original question of how after the team event you could go up and your teammate could go down, and one of those ways is because you could have performed better than you were expected to for a 697 (maybe you beat several 750 players, or maybe you beat all the players rated around your speed instead of just half of them, etc). That would be one explanation for you going up. And maybe your teammate perform slightly worse than he was expected to do for someone of his rating against the level of opponents that he played and therefore he went down.
Another reason that was in post #74 that could explain how you could go up but your teammate could go down is that you are re-rated every single day and your rating can change even if you have played no new games in the system. Basically if the ratings of the past opponents you have played against ends up going down on average, then your rating is going to go down too. And if the your past opponent's average ratings go up, then yours is going to go up too. And if they went up a lot, then yours will go up a lot.
What could easily have happened is that you beat a lot of players who were very under rated because they had no games in the system, or few games in the system. Lets say one of the guys you beat had a starter rating of 525, but as he played more matches and more singles and more mini's his rating went up to a 610 to closer reflect his true speed. Well part of your rating was taking into consideration that you beat this "525", but now that FargoRate knows that he is actually a 610, your win against a 610 is more "impressive" and means more or counts for more than when it was a win against a 525 and so your rating is going to go up to. And if you beat several of these significantly under rated players during the nationals whose ratings ended up going up quite a bit after they got more games in the system then your rating could see a pretty significant increase too. And being that there were lots of people with starter ratings, this is very likely a part of why you went up so much. Maybe your teammate didn't face as many of these unrated players, or if he did half of them were under rated but half of them were over rated so even after their ratings changed after they got more games in the system your teammate ended up staying about the same.
This was not mentioned in post 74, but while we are at it another reason you could have gone up while you teammate went down is that you could have won more games that he did during the team matches. How many games you won and how high your opponents are rated both make a significant difference to your rating.
And then as was already mentioned some time after you had asked the original question, the mini tournament results (where you did really well against high quality opponents) had already been entered and that certainly had a large affect on your rating too. In the mini's you way outplayed your previous rating and so your rating went up.
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I don't think you are switching doors when you should be. Some people? A few people? Far fewer? I don't think 27 unestablished players sweeping 27 out of 32 top spots is "a few." I don't think moving 7 Gold level players who are known to be Gold level players before the tournament into sweeping 7 of the top 8 spots in the Silver division is "a few." I think it's a lot. And I think it is easily corrected by setting starter ratings at the TOP of one's known bracket rather than at the bottom so the weighted average formula doesn't pull them into a lower division. Really easy. But it's behind both doors #2 and #3 and people appear to be holding onto door #1 ("continue as is" "there really wasn't a problem" "if there was it will go away eventually").
This is not an issue about data entry or data collection. Sure, if everyone has established ratings and no new players enter the system then this problem goes away with time. But everyone doesn't have established ratings and may not for several more tournaments, and, hopefully, new players will come online every year with a best effort at setting their starter rating and division correctly. Let's not let some formula arbitrarily reassign them to divisions we know they should not be in.
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Much of the scrutiny Fargo is under is directly due to the Fan boys as well as Mark Grifin himself. When you tout something as the greatest thing to happen to pool you're setting expectations very high. Then, when questions/concerns/problems arise now Fan boys wanna say "give it time", or "its in its infancy", or "it's better than it used to be". We were told its the greatest thing to happen to pool, not that it'd simply be better than it was. And then, expect leniency on what they painted as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Fan Boys made their bed, now get to lay in it.