Fargo Caps = The dumbing down of pool

[The_JV]

While I'm no fan to Fargo's silence to every inquiry other than when they feel the need to validate their algorithm. I do have to say that you can't expect that system, or any other system for that matter to capture all that's seemingly relative to a player's actual spd. It's not Mike's or Fargo at large's fault that people actively avoid reporting events to manage their rating. Mike has no power for those in action to force them to report.

All in all, fargo is the best system we have available. That said, if someone uses it solely to gauge an unknown's spd, that's their fault.

 

[Badpenguin]

While I'm no fan to Fargo's silence to every inquiry other than when they feel the need to validate their algorithm. I do have to say that you can't expect that system, or any other system for that matter to capture all that's seemingly relative to a player's actual spd. It's not Mike's or Fargo at large's fault that people actively avoid reporting events to manage their rating. Mike has no power for those in action to force them to report.

All in all, fargo is the best system we have available. That said, if someone uses it solely to gauge an unknown's spd, that's their fault.

Yes, I agree. I'm not out trying to make an easy buck on capped fargo tournaments, I make a comfortable living and have no need to do so. By far the best, and most accurate, system available. Fargo can't help if garbage is coming in.

 

[easy-e]

I stopped reading responses after page 3, so forgive me if I missed anything important. I also hate the Fargo caps. In my area they usually only discriminate against MAYBEEEEE 10 players? I mean 10 players who would actually even think about going to a weekly tournament. We have a weekly 643 and under... WTF is that?

All of these capped tournaments are already handicapped with something like "one game on the wire per 40-50 points. I'm not sure any of the regulars would be scared of letting in some of the better local players if the handicap system was still in place.

One of my favorite tournaments is the "balls only" event they run in conjunction with the Arizona Women's Billiard Tour (AWBT) events. They usually get 25-30 players, bar table 10-ball, and race to the first number of your Fargo. It's not super "fair" when a 405 plays a 695 a 6-4 race, but the entry fees are cheap and it doesn't seem to stop people from playing!

 

[SUPERSTAR]

Fucking this!

There is a handful of players in my area that are near my fargo or lower then me with an established robustness that I have no chance at beating in a race to 7 for $100 on a random night at the poolhall.

Edit to add... this bring up another good point. This new rating system isn't only used in tournaments now. People are using it to try an gauge a player they may be unfamiliar with. People match up for money all the time and that doesn't contribute to Fargo at all. A player being underrated has the opportunity to make more money that way and not just cashing in the larger tournament making even more incentive to keep your level lower.

Exactly.
I’ve heard people arguing over their Fargo vs someone else’s Fargo, and why they deserve this, or should have gotten picked for that, and others using it to try and negotiate a spot. It’s kinda insane.

Fortunately, most of the people that gamble around here just flip a coin and play. Win or lose, and that’s it.
None of this you are 50 points higher than me so I need this spot that the motherf*cking SISSIES want!

I don’t care about Fargo and never have. The only reason fargo is in my mind is because now this number is the reason why I can’t play in certain things and similar sentiments and discussions prompted this thread/discussion.

My robustness will never be high simply because i don’t play league and there are very few tournaments I play in around here because I don’t play barbox, scratch tournaments that are worth going to in my area are rare, and everything else is capped.
I mean, why not just give me all the incentive I need to quit? Lol

How they think that bar tables are the same as big tables and how 9ball is really the same game as 1pocket just completely blows my mind.
ELOs in chess have different ratings for different formats and time controls such as Rapid vs Blitz. If they want have an ELO type rating system for pool, they should do it right and make a distinction between 9ft and bar tables and have separate categories for different games such as rotation vs 1pocket. I’m sure that the powers that be will come up with some mathematic number showing how the elites all perform blah blah blah such and such when playing all games at the highest of levels to not do that, but I’m sure, that’s cause there is a financial interest in all of this and keeping it all under one roof.
Flush that garbage down the toilet where it belongs.

 

[Icon of Sin]

All in all, fargo is the best system we have available. That said, if someone uses it solely to gauge an unknown's spd, that's their fault.

That is exactly what capped and handicapped tournaments are doing lolol.

 

[Texas Carom Club]

I stopped reading responses after page 3, so forgive me if I missed anything important. I also hate the Fargo caps. In my area they usually only discriminate against MAYBEEEEE 10 players? I mean 10 players who would actually even think about going to a weekly tournament. We have a weekly 643 and under... WTF is that?

All of these capped tournaments are already handicapped with something like "one game on the wire per 40-50 points. I'm not sure any of the regulars would be scared of letting in some of the better local players if the handicap system was still in place.

One of my favorite tournaments is the "balls only" event they run in conjunction with the Arizona Women's Billiard Tour (AWBT) events. They usually get 25-30 players, bar table 10-ball, and race to the first number of your Fargo. It's not super "fair" when a 405 plays a 695 a 6-4 race, but the entry fees are cheap and it doesn't seem to stop people from playing!

I see strange ones out there like that, a doubles with 1120 cap lol
a 599 and under went to a 575 and under here locally

some of the 590s have been seen out in the wild beating 700s in non-reported opens
race to 7 sooooo
discussions were had!

 

[The_JV]

That is exactly what capped and handicapped tournaments are doing lolol.

Well sure, if you want to split that hair.

The point in a cap is to create a field within relative skill range. Those signing up know going in that there "shouldn't" be a world beater in sheep's clothing. Someone say like myself who "should be" a mid 680 isn't going to blow up the field in a <675 event because I went on a bad run, dipped to 674 and snuck in.

You can go to extremes and claim +700 players continually sandbag to poach a <650 event. That's the kind of differential that you would need for the 'wolf' to crush a lesser field. However, I don't believe that's a rampant problem. Sure players are deceitful. It's pool for God's sakes. Of course there are those looking for an angle. None of that is a falling of Fargo however.

 

[mikepage]

[...]

How they think that bar tables are the same as big tables and how 9ball is really the same game as 1pocket just completely blows my mind.

FargoRate never said bar tables are the same as 9-foot tables or that the different games are the same. The reason combining the data is not only good but essential for good ratings has nothing to do with that

ELOs in chess have different ratings for different formats and time controls such as Rapid vs Blitz.

If all we did was ELO, I'd quit and then jump off a bridge. We would not have ratings anything close to the quality of what we have. It turns out the best ratings for classical time constraints in chess come from combining results with classical, rapid, and blitz time constraints--for the same reasons combining the data leads to the best results in pool. [I think chess learned that from us]. If you're thinking some good chess player might suck with the faster constraints and the rapid results sullies his rating a bit, you're missing the big picture and making the same mistake you're making in pool. The main value--by a lot--of having the millions of rapid games in the system has nothing to do with that guy's few games. It is the degree to which they play a role in interpreting the guy's CLASSICAL games. To interpret his classical games you need to know the strength of each of his opponents. And to know those you need to know the strength of each of the opponent's opponents, and so on. Ultimately you need to know how France compares to Norway, how New Jersey compares to California, how men compare to women, how top players compare to mediocre players. The rapid games have valuable information here. It doesn't matter that the game is different and different people excel at it to different degrees. The reason it doesn't matter is there is a lot of averaging going on. If you compare 100 rapid players in one country to 100 rapid opponents in another country, the difference of the average is more meaningful than any individual difference.

Imagine you had 100 shipwrecked people on team A that are (unknown to you) 700 speed and another 100 shipwrecked people from somewhere else on team B that are (unknown to you) 670 speed. They compete team A vs team B on the remote island on old crappy tables with dead rails and no chalk. If they play enough you will see that 30-point gap emerge. That is the power of the averaging. You're not claiming these conditions are "the same as" anything. But you now have an idea how someone who only competes against team A people compares to someone else who only competes against team B people. Get rid of those games, and you might be way off on team A people vs team B people.

Even if Filler and Alcaide and Ko Pin Yi never play on a bar table, the reason we know their relative strengths at big table rotation as well as we do is because of the perhaps 20 million bar table games in the system. If we just erased those bar table games, we'd get much poorer ratings for the pros and everybody else. This is the reason league games are important, old games are important, 8-Ball games are important. We know this; it's what we do.

 

[BasementDweller]

You are an example of what I was talking about in this recent facebook post--feeling you are honest and others are not. Turns out many of those "others" see themselves as honest and you as likely not. Here is that post for those not on facebook.
********************
As one of the FargoRate people, I have many conversations with pool players about ratings. One refrain I hear often is some version of, ”I am one of those unusual people who actually WANTS a higher rating.” And I smile inside.

Cynicism is in style. Nobody wants to be caught erring on the naïve side of reality, and so their safe space, their comfort zone, is to assume bad intentions are rampant in others. We get to a bizarre situation where of 100 pool players, 95 see themselves as having integrity and those same people imagine half of everyone else doesn’t.

We can see how some of this happens by taking ethics out of the equation for a minute. To say someone is a sandbagger is a compliment of their skill, like yeah that stupid number is 510, but you’re 550 all day. For you as a player to suggest after an embarrassing loss that you might be managing your rating is to say "I could have won if I really wanted to."

We do, at FargoRate, have information not generally available to others. We can see, for example, whether match data that comes in through Salotto has more unexpected scores than similar match data from tournaments: it doesn’t within a margin of error. We can see whether underperforming in league compared to tournaments is more pronounced than underperforming in tournaments compared to league: it isn’t within a margin of error. We can see whether there are extra people with ratings just under key numbers like 600 and corresponding missing players just over 600: there are not within a margin of error.

Statistical measures like these can’t say that manipulation doesn’t exist. Manipulation, of course, does exist. But we can say with confidence that it is far less prevalent than virtually everybody believes. And we can also say data integrity is something we take seriously and that we continually work to improve detection of statistical anomalies and vet and monitor data sources.

Finally, we get some clues from the questions and comments and support requests we field every day. If wanting a lower rating was common, we’d expect more questions about why a poor performance tournament is not recorded. We get the opposite; players want to insure they get credit for their good tournaments. When someone claims a score is incorrect, it is nearly always that they won more games than recorded.
You might enjoy reading just some of these comments. These are all longer comments with identity and more culled out. And they’re all commenters who received a written reply from us.View attachment 790419

Yeah it would be odd to get the following type of message:

Dear Mr. or Mrs. FargoRate,
For the previous year I've been purposely working to keep my rating down, but I've thus far been unsuccessful. If it's not too much to ask, could you lower my rating by 23 points? I'm really hoping to play in a large Fargo capped tournament this weekend, where hopefully the tourney director doesn't walk off with the funds.

Hopeful in Missoula

I'm sort of kidding here but I think all of this is intuitive. If you think you're worse than your rating you would just chalk it up to being lucky and realize that your rating will go down when you lose more. Plus you get the ego bump, so you're not going to send a message. If you think the opposite, you're going to be confused -- thus the messages.

Seems like potential confirmation bias to me.

 

[Jaden]

Fargo Caps = The dumbing down of pool

Have at it. I think I'm going to make this my signature.

Especially when every TD in the whole country makes them all the same pretty round number of 599.

-Excludes anyone who can play worth a damn.
-Makes the same group of people, nationwide, the favorites.

*I'd say the exact same thing if I was a 599.

TD's, if you MUST have a cap, make it RANDOM each event!
OR, even better, just allow EVERYONE to play, and handicap by game spot.

A capped tournament 1000% IS a handicapped tourneament, because it excludes all the better players. That's the handicap.

I would understand a top cap, like say, nothing above 900. There should be no such thing as a mid level cap.
At the top, there absolutely is a rating creep. I don't care what anyone says.

Jaden

 

[easy-e]

I would understand a top cap, like say, nothing above 900. There should be no such thing as a mid level cap.
At the top, there absolutely is a rating creep. I don't care what anyone says.

Jaden

What do you mean by "rating creep"?

 

[skip100]

What do you mean by "rating creep"?

There used to be almost no players above an 800 skill rating but now there are dozens.

This is a common occurrence with Elo-type rating systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#Ratings_inflation_and_deflation

 

[BasementDweller]

Just to put a number on the "creeping", at one point in 2015 SVB was a 819. He's a 841 now. Has his performance been better since then? I actually think his game has slowly gotten better but others on here have disagreed. He certainly hasn't been as dominant it doesn't seem. So what explains his FR increase? Creep, improved performance, or rising tide?

I don't have an opinion one way or the other on the creeping. I know Mike's done a good job explaining it in the past.

 

[9BallKY]

Well sure, if you want to split that hair.

The point in a cap is to create a field within relative skill range. Those signing up know going in that there "shouldn't" be a world beater in sheep's clothing. Someone say like myself who "should be" a mid 680 isn't going to blow up the field in a <675 event because I went on a bad run, dipped to 674 and snuck in.

You can go to extremes and claim +700 players continually sandbag to poach a <650 event. That's the kind of differential that you would need for the 'wolf' to crush a lesser field. However, I don't believe that's a rampant problem. Sure players are deceitful. It's pool for God's sakes. Of course there are those looking for an angle. None of that is a falling of Fargo however.

What about the time I won the 700 and under with a 630 rating. The tournament wasn’t reported to Fargo. A year later my rating has went up a whole 3 points. Is that sandbagging.

 

[maha]

it can never be exact, but fargo does a great job of matching up players that are about the same caliber. that is all it can do.

all systems can be cheated in ways. but thats how the world goes.

if you dont like it go play in an open tournament and draw filler or gorst. and see where your money went while sitting in the chair watching.

 

[BasementDweller]

What about the time I won the 700 and under with a 630 rating. The tournament wasn’t reported to Fargo. A year later my rating has went up a whole 3 points. Is that sandbagging.

Robustness. I bet you still barely have a real rating.

 

[WobblyStroke]

There used to be almost no players above an 800 skill rating but now there are dozens.

This is a common occurrence with Elo-type rating systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#Ratings_inflation_and_deflation

I was thinking about this creep too and wonder if the prevelance of reporting iis what's responsible. As more and more leagues full of 400s and below enter data, to reflect the gigantic gap between them and the top, top must go up. A trickle up effect if u will.

I don't think the top guys are getting all that much better. I for one think that 2015 SVB would be favorite over SVB today. Can def be wrong, but i think the FR's creeping up has more to do with the relative gap between the pros and much weaker players being exposed as wider than the 2:1 per 100 points would suggest so everyone higher gets bumped up a bit to keep the 100 points reflective of a 2:1 edge.

 

[alphadog]

What is

What about the time I won the 700 and under with a 630 rating. The tournament wasn’t reported to Fargo. A year later my rating has went up a whole 3 points. Is that sandbagging.

What is your point if the trnmnt wasn't reported to fargorate ?

 

[Icon of Sin]

What about the time I won the 700 and under with a 630 rating. The tournament wasn’t reported to Fargo. A year later my rating has went up a whole 3 points. Is that sandbagging.

Definitely not bagging and congrats on a good win like that.

What is your point if the trnmnt wasn't reported to fargorate ?

I think his point is the inconsistency with what gets reported to Fargo and what doesnt. I mentioned early that the Expo Amateur Open (probably one of, if not the, largest and most prestigious amateur tournaments in the world) only reported to Fargo once, maybe twice.

2019, I cashed in it. It reported to Fargo that year.
2020, Covid
2021, Covid
2022, I cashed again. It did not report to Fargo that year.
2023, (see my disclaimer in my signature)

Going 5 matches in a tournament like that is probably going to be one of the most accurate representation of someone's skill. Sure they are short races, but it is a best off 3 sets. It is also single elimination, so you arent going to get someone dumping to go up the B side.

If a tournament uses Fargo to leverage who can play in it and who can't (which the tournament 9BallKY snapped off did and which thte expo does to keep pro caliber players out), then it should report to Fargo as well... especially if it a larger and more prestigious event where players are going to be trying to play their best.

 

[Coos Cues]

No.

Why do we have handicapped events to begin with? Because if all events were Open, there would be very little participation, as the same few guys would win every week.

What is the purpose of a handicapped event then? Its to increase participation, by making the lower level players have a fair chance to cash/win.

A capped event heavily favors the players immediately under the cap. If the cap is at the usual 599, then the same players are favored over and over.

The better player is not favored because they are better. They are favored because they won the "price is right" game show of being closest to the cap without going over.

There is no answer making this thread quite silly. It doesn't matter where you set the cap someone will be just below it and someone else just above it. There is no answer.