Questions for Mike with FargoRate

[easy-e]

Well I’m hoping to get to derby. I have the week off from my night job already. But if there is snow in the forecast that week I have to stay home and run a plow.If there are still some openings and no snow in the forecast I will be there.

Plus I’ve said this before. I always play 600+s for cash-even. I lose more than I win playing them. All the low to mid 500’s I play want a spot from me if they play me at all. There is one guy. He is a legit 600 on the money with 2-3000 robustness. Half the time he asks me for a game. It’s not saying that I am better than him. It’s the fact if we play we usually just split sets and he is trying to guarantee himself a win(which doesn’t always happen). I’ll give him the spot as a challenge to myself occasionally.

500 might be an avg player. But out this way 600 would be considered avg. An avg player should hit the money occasionally and being a 500 won’t normally cut it out here. When you have 15-20 600+ fargorate players consistently joining a $20 tournament the bar for avg player goes up

What part of the country are you in?

 

[easy-e]

They say my known ability is 550+ and won’t let me play at my listed. So me saying I’m a 550-600 isn’t just my opinion. It’s also others opinions of my level. Then I come on here and everybody tries to roast me saying I’m inflating my skill.

It's an interesting situation. You've only shown a screenshot with two matches for you, but you have almost 400 games in the system. If all of your matches were like the ones you showed us, your rating would be much higher. I'd like to see all of the matches where you're getting tortured by those players, because those matches are the reason your rating is where it is. Fargo doesn't care about your skill, it cares about your win rate.

People are implying that you're inflating your ability because you seem to be judging your speed from your best performances, not your average performances. Your TD not letting you play has nothing to do with Mike Page or FargoRate.

 

[Justaneng]

Maybe you’re saying you’re 30% BnR playing the ghost 8-ball on a 7 ft table. I could see a good 475-500 doing that regularly, maybe not all the time, but it would happen.

Most of my pool is played against the 425-525 range on bar boxes [Diamond tables, 4.5" pockets, Simonis-like cloth speed but a knockoff]. No one in that range is coming close to a 30% BnR rate on 8-ball. Closer to 525 they are likely to get out first time at the table if the opponent breaks, makes 5 balls, and then scratches, but even that's not a guarantee if there are still 2+ problem balls on the table.

Issues:

Cluster busting is still a problem at this level.
Bar boxes are harder for pros than 9 footers for 8-ball, since the number of clusters and problem balls will be higher
People in the 475-500 range are still good for tanking about 1 in 10 "easy" shots.
People in this range know they have to solve their problems, so they end up likely to miss when they have to try to 3-rail power follow a shot

Also:

A 20% BnR rate is in the Fargo 700 range on a bar box. Maybe 650. One reference: I play with a Fargo 519 who has only 7 BnR in APA with over 300 APA matches (so over 1500 APA racks). Granted he was an SL-6 a few years ago so it may be more heavily weighted toward his earlier years.

In the old APA app, we used to be look up people from other areas, but I guess the APA got tired of us cross-checking Fargo ratings so they took that away from us! (I was going to check Parks and others).

That said, anyone 400+ "Can" make every possible shot on a bar box, can put together a good highlight reel, and is likely to have at least 1 BnR on the books (either in practice or in a match).

EDIT: Found another comparison - A Fargo 600 with 250 lifetime matches (more than 1250 APA racks) and only 28 BnR in APA (2.2% BnR rate).

 

[Coos Cues]

I am by no means a Fargo hater but having used their other primitive, poorly thought out, feature poor and buggy softwares and apps extensively. Brought to you by the same software engineers. One has to wonder about the entire project's integrity and validity.

 

[fastone371]

Everyone knows that when pros play a barbox tournament they are FAR more susceptible to an upset. That should be proof enough to sustain my point.

If Mike Page opened up his data, we’d have real verifiable data to prove my point.

Mike Page has already covered the 7' vs 9' debate a year or 2 back right here in these forums. The results were that the size of the table made very little to no difference at all.

 

[fuggles]

For Fargo Rate playing BCA 10 point handicap, does Fargo Rate consider the game score? If a player wins 10-0 vs 10-7 is there a difference in the Fargo Rate calculation? What about BR and TR?

 

[David in FL]

For Fargo Rate playing BCA 10 point handicap, does Fargo Rate consider the game score? If a player wins 10-0 vs 10-7 is there a difference in the Fargo Rate calculation? What about BR and TR?

The answer to both is no.

Fargo only cares about individual games won/lost

 

[fuggles]

The answer to both is no.

Fargo only cares about individual games won/lost

I figured this would have to be the case. In tournaments this type of information is lost. But in my local league there are many rumors about these questions.

 

[JPB2]

Most of my pool is played against the 425-525 range on bar boxes [Diamond tables, 4.5" pockets, Simonis-like cloth speed but a knockoff]. No one in that range is coming close to a 30% BnR rate on 8-ball. Closer to 525 they are likely to get out first time at the table if the opponent breaks, makes 5 balls, and then scratches, but even that's not a guarantee if there are still 2+ problem balls on the table.

Issues:

Cluster busting is still a problem at this level.
Bar boxes are harder for pros than 9 footers for 8-ball, since the number of clusters and problem balls will be higher
People in the 475-500 range are still good for tanking about 1 in 10 "easy" shots.
People in this range know they have to solve their problems, so they end up likely to miss when they have to try to 3-rail power follow a shot

Also:

A 20% BnR rate is in the Fargo 700 range on a bar box. Maybe 650. One reference: I play with a Fargo 519 who has only 7 BnR in APA with over 300 APA matches (so over 1500 APA racks). Granted he was an SL-6 a few years ago so it may be more heavily weighted toward his earlier years.

In the old APA app, we used to be look up people from other areas, but I guess the APA got tired of us cross-checking Fargo ratings so they took that away from us! (I was going to check Parks and others).

That said, anyone 400+ "Can" make every possible shot on a bar box, can put together a good highlight reel, and is likely to have at least 1 BnR on the books (either in practice or in a match).

EDIT: Found another comparison - A Fargo 600 with 250 lifetime matches (more than 1250 APA racks) and only 28 BnR in APA (2.2% BnR rate).

People consistently overrate the B&R% in various contexts. IMO/IME. I have been responding with the suggestion to watch matches on YouTube between really good players on stock Valleys. Yes, the B&R percentage is better than on a tougher table, but it is pretty much always lower than people think. Between position errors and flat out misses….. it isn’t that easy to run out for people.

 

[soyale]

i have a strange question. If 2 players without ratings played, say, a race to 200, is there a way to know what their ratings would be based on the score? for example if the score was 200 to 100 what would be the fargo difference and where would the higher ranked player be?

 

[DeadStick]

i have a strange question. If 2 players without ratings played, say, a race to 200, is there a way to know what their ratings would be based on the score? for example if the score was 200 to 100 what would be the fargo difference and where would the higher ranked player be?

The difference would be about 100 points, but there’s no way to know how strong they both are. They could be 200FR and 300FR, or 700FR and 800FR, or anywhere in between. Only by playing 200+ games against ranked players can you know your actual, established ranking.

 

[BasementDweller]

The difference would be about 100 points, but there’s no way to know how strong they both are. They could be 200FR and 300FR, or 700FR and 800FR, or anywhere in between. Only by playing 200+ games against ranked players can you know your actual, established ranking.

Maybe if you did it enough and kept track of how long it took to complete you could venture a guess.

Let's see ... 700 vs 800: couple of days.
300 vs 400: around 2 and a half years.

 

[soyale]

The difference would be about 100 points, but there’s no way to know how strong they both are. They could be 200FR and 300FR, or 700FR and 800FR, or anywhere in between. Only by playing 200+ games against ranked players can you know your actual, established ranking.

it makes sense that there is no way to calculate their actual speed based on only one opponent, but surely there must be some calculation for what the fargo rates would be?

 

[DeadStick]

it makes sense that there is no way to calculate their actual speed based on only one opponent, but surely there must be some calculation for what the fargo rates would be?

No, there’s absolutely zero information given to know what their FR would be going off a match score of 200-100.

They both could be terrible, or they both could be elite.

 

[soyale]

No, there’s absolutely zero information given to know what their FR would be going off a match score of 200-100.

They both could be terrible, or they both could be elite.

totally, i fully understand that. There might be something about the system that i dont understand, but what i’m asking is what would come out if you punched the numbers in to fargo.

 

[DeadStick]

totally, i fully understand that. There might be something about the system that i dont understand, but what i’m asking is what would come out if you punched the numbers in to fargo.

You can’t put anything into Fargo without a player first getting a “starter rating” (a guess based on observed speed) by a LO or TO.

 

[mikepage]

You can’t put anything into Fargo without a player first getting a “starter rating” (a guess based on observed speed) by a LO or TO.

Everything you've said in recent posts is right except for this. There is no need for a starter rating, and in fact more players don't have one than have one. FargoRate would have no information to place them other than that they are 100 points apart. Yes they would have numbers, and yes they would be meaningless. I can't even say what the numbers would be--just an artifact of the calculation process.

Importantly, though, once one starts playing new people, the other will still be tethered and will stay 100 points away.

 

[DeadStick]

Everything you've said in recent posts is right except for this. There is no need for a starter rating, and in fact more players don't have one than have one. FargoRate would have no information to place them other than that they are 100 points apart. Yes they would have numbers, and yes they would be meaningless. I can't even say what the numbers would be--just an artifact of the calculation process.

Importantly, though, once one starts playing new people, the other will still be tethered and will stay 100 points away.

Interesting, thanks for educating me.

So if those two “zombie” players stayed in the system and did nothing but play one another (Salotto perhaps?), they would have meaningless ratings but could both become established over time? And there would be no signal in FR about their strange unknown strength status?

Is there a minimum number of ranked opponents any player must have to become established?

Or do you just not worry about edge cases like this?

 

[Flakeandrun]

I'm curious how I can work toward developing a rating here in China? The only people who've heard of it here, are either ABC that have visited, or hardcore, full-time professional players who have played ranking events internationally @mikepage

 

[Bob Jewett]

Everything you've said in recent posts is right except for this. There is no need for a starter rating, and in fact more players don't have one than have one. FargoRate would have no information to place them other than that they are 100 points apart. Yes they would have numbers, and yes they would be meaningless. I can't even say what the numbers would be--just an artifact of the calculation process. ...

Well, you could say that on average they're average, so one is 50 points above the median of all FR ratings and one is 50 points below.