My Fargorate progression

[iusedtoberich]

I've been doing a lot of prep work. I have a printed sheet of all the players I think are coming or that came before. I have on the sheet for anyone under 200 robustness, I hand write any info I have about them, and what I think their rating should be for this tournament. For the 2 players above I'll move them up manually. I've also had 1 player that I made a 500 after he told me he was an apa6. He could barely make a ball after watching him play 3 weeks, so I'll lower him quite a bit.

The players over 200, I don't mess with their established ratings.

But really many of these daytime players have never played a tournament before, or had just 20-30 robustness, so I had to just try my best to get it close.

 

[iusedtoberich]

Another thing I learned is 7 is the minimum # of players. There has been a very long delay in getting my tournaments into the system, so I emailed fargo asking if something was wrong. They said 7 is the minimum. I've had 7 for 2 weeks, and above all the other weeks. But on one of my second chance tournaments for eliminated players I only had 3. So that one can't count. I'm kind of bummed about that because one thing I wanted to do was have a mini-tournament at one of my buddies houses with just 4 of the boys. We are always bragging to each other we are better, and the fargo is wrong, etc. So we could make it "count" on fargo plus a small entry fee. That won't count if we do it. But at least it's good to know what the min is.

IDK why salotto counts with 2, but a tournament with 4 or 6 won't count.

I also don't know why salotto goes in within hours, but tournaments can take 3-4 weeks on the long end, and almost always 1 week on the short end.

 

[iusedtoberich]

Here are all of the links:

Dec 5, 12 players

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

Dec 12, 7 players

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

Jan 7, 11 players

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

Jan 7 (2nd chance), 3 players

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

Jan 14, 18 players

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

Jan 14 (2nd chance), 8 players

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

Jan 21, 7 players (no second chance, I changed this one to double elim since small field)

DigitalPool - Bridging the gap between player and technology

Create and manage your own pool leagues and tournaments and challenge other players from around the pool world.

digitalpool.com

 

[iusedtoberich]

Here is the FB writeup of the one with 18 players. I've been trying to grow it and have a fun write up after each event. It should open for anyone, even if not on FB.

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

 

[mikepage]

[...]

IDK why salotto counts with 2, but a tournament with 4 or 6 won't count.

Salotto has some built-in data protections that tournament bracket software doesn't have. For instance, you cannot record in Salotto a match against ME that didn't happen without me being complicit. For the Salotto match against me, I need to have my FargoRate record attached to Salotto, agree to the match, and agree the score is correct. Further, that match is automatically public record on both of our FargoRate profiles. In tournament software, you can write me in and score matches for me without my knowledge. You can even create whole tournaments that didn't happen and add in Efren Reyes and Earl Strickland. Protections are made better when a tournament is advertised publicly and a broad range of people can choose to sign up and pay attention and others can pay attention to a public bracket. Small invite-only events are a source of problems. Private round-robin events are the worst. You can choose just friends who are in on the conspiracy, add other "players" you're confident are not paying attention as opponents who play the role of winning or losing games against you and your cohorts. Also, with round-robin events, you can perform "poorly" and still play a lot of games. This contrasts with elimination tournaments, in which you play fewer matches and thus fewer games if you lose.

I also don't know why salotto goes in within hours, but tournaments can take 3-4 weeks on the long end, and almost always 1 week on the short end.

Salotto--like LMS for leagues--is integrated with the FargoRate database. The connection to the correct record is made before play. That's why when you hit submit in the LMS scoring app, the games are in your record immediately (for the next optimization) and the league standings are updated before you can order a beer at the bar.

Tournaments run on third-party bracket systems, like Cuescore, Digitalpool, Challonge, Ingenpool, Pooladmin, TournamentAPP, Compusport, etc. are part of a major and extensive process for which we start 5am Monday mornings and spend 50+ hours a week on. We start from scratch and match names to records in our system and create new records as needed. Our goal is to get those matches into the system within a few weeks. We are actually getting a lot of them in within a week. There are other sets of tournaments we will work on more intermittently. Perhaps tournaments on Cuescore in the Balkans or tournaments in Japan on Billi-walker.jp. Yesterday and today we worked on getting records matches for the Eurotour event so it can go in soon after it is done. There is also an event in Taiwan going on right now, and we're working on cleaning up names. A name like Shin-Mei Liu can be in a bracket as
Shinmei Liu,
Shin Mei Liu,
Shin-mei Liu,
Liu Shin-Mei,
Liu Shin Mei
--and of course it can be in Mandarin

 

[iusedtoberich]

@mikepage thanks for the explanation, it makes a lot of sense.

You must have a huge headache with player names. I've run into it with my tiny player fields. Sometimes there will be 2 or 3 players with the same name, and I have to pick the right one. The frustrating part is after I pick the right one, at the end when I press the digital pool button "get fargo ratings" it gets rid of the right one, and I have to do it all over again.

Is there any plan for your own bracket software? That would certainly help automate a lot of things on your end (I think). Or, give the 3rd party bracket vendors more direct access?

It would also be great if there was a "self-serve" area on your website for TD or players. You must field a lot of helpdesk requests for "Where is my data?". If you had some sort of portal that showed the status of an event, if there is a problem with it, etc., it would probably save your staff a lot of time.

 

[ShortBusRuss]

Salotto has some built-in data protections that tournament bracket software doesn't have. For instance, you cannot record in Salotto a match against ME that didn't happen without me being complicit. For the Salotto match against me, I need to have my FargoRate record attached to Salotto, agree to the match, and agree the score is correct. Further, that match is automatically public record on both of our FargoRate profiles. In tournament software, you can write me in and score matches for me without my knowledge. You can even create whole tournaments that didn't happen and add in Efren Reyes and Earl Strickland. Protections are made better when a tournament is advertised publicly and a broad range of people can choose to sign up and pay attention and others can pay attention to a public bracket. Small invite-only events are a source of problems. Private round-robin events are the worst. You can choose just friends who are in on the conspiracy, add other "players" you're confident are not paying attention as opponents who play the role of winning or losing games against you and your cohorts. Also, with round-robin events, you can perform "poorly" and still play a lot of games. This contrasts with elimination tournaments, in which you play fewer matches and thus fewer games if you lose.




Salotto--like LMS for leagues--is integrated with the FargoRate database. The connection to the correct record is made before play. That's why when you hit submit in the LMS scoring app, the games are in your record immediately (for the next optimization) and the league standings are updated before you can order a beer at the bar.

Tournaments run on third-party bracket systems, like Cuescore, Digitalpool, Challonge, Ingenpool, Pooladmin, TournamentAPP, Compusport, etc. are part of a major and extensive process for which we start 5am Monday mornings and spend 50+ hours a week on. We start from scratch and match names to records in our system and create new records as needed. Our goal is to get those matches into the system within a few weeks. We are actually getting a lot of them in within a week. There are other sets of tournaments we will work on more intermittently. Perhaps tournaments on Cuescore in the Balkans or tournaments in Japan on Billi-walker.jp. Yesterday and today we worked on getting records matches for the Eurotour event so it can go in soon after it is done. There is also an event in Taiwan going on right now, and we're working on cleaning up names. A name like Shin-Mei Liu can be in a bracket as
Shinmei Liu,
Shin Mei Liu,
Shin-mei Liu,
Liu Shin-Mei,
Liu Shin Mei
--and of course it can be in Mandarin

Mike.... One big problem I have seen is not "homogenizing" names written with English letters, but having foreign accented characters. I was looking up a Polish player from the Italian Open, and could not find them, because they have a single accented character in their name. I literally could not find him in Fargorate until I googled his name, and then copied the name and pasted it into fairmatch with the accented character included. Again.. in USCF, the search function would find an accented name whether you included that character or not.

It is incredibly frustrating to me as as I.T. Engineer... Because this is SO easy to fix. Either remove all accented characters from the player name before you put it into the database... Or store a "second" non accented spelling in the database for foreign players, and then "de-accent" the search term, and search against the non-accented spelling. Done this way, the search returns the accented spelling, but you can search against the names database with, or without the accented characters.

In reference to my other post in the other thread.... If a foreign player cannot find themselves in the app/site for reasons like this.. How excited are foreign tournament admins gonna be to submit to Fargorate?

 

[ShortBusRuss]

Salotto has some built-in data protections that tournament bracket software doesn't have. For instance, you cannot record in Salotto a match against ME that didn't happen without me being complicit. For the Salotto match against me, I need to have my FargoRate record attached to Salotto, agree to the match, and agree the score is correct. Further, that match is automatically public record on both of our FargoRate profiles. In tournament software, you can write me in and score matches for me without my knowledge. You can even create whole tournaments that didn't happen and add in Efren Reyes and Earl Strickland. Protections are made better when a tournament is advertised publicly and a broad range of people can choose to sign up and pay attention and others can pay attention to a public bracket. Small invite-only events are a source of problems. Private round-robin events are the worst. You can choose just friends who are in on the conspiracy, add other "players" you're confident are not paying attention as opponents who play the role of winning or losing games against you and your cohorts. Also, with round-robin events, you can perform "poorly" and still play a lot of games. This contrasts with elimination tournaments, in which you play fewer matches and thus fewer games if you lose.




Salotto--like LMS for leagues--is integrated with the FargoRate database. The connection to the correct record is made before play. That's why when you hit submit in the LMS scoring app, the games are in your record immediately (for the next optimization) and the league standings are updated before you can order a beer at the bar.

Tournaments run on third-party bracket systems, like Cuescore, Digitalpool, Challonge, Ingenpool, Pooladmin, TournamentAPP, Compusport, etc. are part of a major and extensive process for which we start 5am Monday mornings and spend 50+ hours a week on. We start from scratch and match names to records in our system and create new records as needed. Our goal is to get those matches into the system within a few weeks. We are actually getting a lot of them in within a week. There are other sets of tournaments we will work on more intermittently. Perhaps tournaments on Cuescore in the Balkans or tournaments in Japan on Billi-walker.jp. Yesterday and today we worked on getting records matches for the Eurotour event so it can go in soon after it is done. There is also an event in Taiwan going on right now, and we're working on cleaning up names. A name like Shin-Mei Liu can be in a bracket as
Shinmei Liu,
Shin Mei Liu,
Shin-mei Liu,
Liu Shin-Mei,
Liu Shin Mei
--and of course it can be in Mandarin

Oh, and one more point... The only reason this "sandbagging" sh*t has the "possibility" to work in Fargorate.. Is because not all the data is 100% completely public. Both tournament directors AND players should be able to review the match/rating history of ANY player in the field in the run up to a Fargorate capped event, or be able to review the same after the event is done.

Also.. Chess has "ratings floors". This means if you hit 1800 rating... You rating floor is automatically 1600, so you cannot fall below that rating, unless you petition for it and give reasons. Fargorate does not have as big of a rating range, but this can be done ona smaller scale.. Let's call a spade a spade... What are the odds a player who has reached 650 Fargorate, will ever fall below 550 over a short period of time, without some shadiness?

And as for tournament directors actively participating in shenanigans to tank a specific player's rating to help them win a capped event? Well, if you had ONE single avenue to become a tournament director... Then you ban any TD that engages in obvious manipulation. And you ban the player involved for some period of time.

Fargorate is starting to gain momentum, and is REALLY driving tournament attendance. We are at the point where all the data being public, and the risk of not being able to participate in the rating system is enough to discourage manipulation, given controls are in place, and appropriate punishments.

 

[iusedtoberich]

The data being public is useless unless normal players and TD's have access to analysis tools. My data is all public. Try scrolling through it. It's a waste of time. There are so many entries that it's not possible to find anything worthwhile (if there was). Of the pro players, Oscar's is public, with 14k games. Good luck scrolling through that for more than 30 seconds before you go do something else. If a player has league games they go in as 1-0 or 0-1, until the whole set is recorded, and clog up the rest of the entries.

 

[iusedtoberich]

Speaking of Oscar, I just saw that his full matches were recorded at DCC for 9 ball only. (IDK if he played banks or one hole). This is the first year full set scores were recorded. On recent prior years, only the last game of each set was recorded.

 

[Bob Jewett]

Speaking of Oscar, I just saw that his full matches were recorded at DCC for 9 ball only. (IDK if he played banks or one hole). This is the first year full set scores were recorded. On recent prior years, only the last game of each set was recorded.

Maybe it's because DigitalPool was there?

 

[mjantti]

Mike.... One big problem I have seen is not "homogenizing" names written with English letters, but having foreign accented characters. I was looking up a Polish player from the Italian Open, and could not find them, because they have a single accented character in their name. I literally could not find him in Fargorate until I googled his name, and then copied the name and pasted it into fairmatch with the accented character included. Again.. in USCF, the search function would find an accented name whether you included that character or not.

It is incredibly frustrating to me as as I.T. Engineer... Because this is SO easy to fix. Either remove all accented characters from the player name before you put it into the database... Or store a "second" non accented spelling in the database for foreign players, and then "de-accent" the search term, and search against the non-accented spelling. Done this way, the search returns the accented spelling, but you can search against the names database with, or without the accented characters.

In reference to my other post in the other thread.... If a foreign player cannot find themselves in the app/site for reasons like this.. How excited are foreign tournament admins gonna be to submit to Fargorate?

I feel you. I had to request to merge two accounts because my last name has an umlaut and there were two account with and without umlaut. Umlaut is annoying because depending on the system, you either write it as ä, a or ae.

 

[mjantti]

Salotto has some built-in data protections that tournament bracket software doesn't have. For instance, you cannot record in Salotto a match against ME that didn't happen without me being complicit. For the Salotto match against me, I need to have my FargoRate record attached to Salotto, agree to the match, and agree the score is correct. Further, that match is automatically public record on both of our FargoRate profiles. In tournament software, you can write me in and score matches for me without my knowledge. You can even create whole tournaments that didn't happen and add in Efren Reyes and Earl Strickland. Protections are made better when a tournament is advertised publicly and a broad range of people can choose to sign up and pay attention and others can pay attention to a public bracket. Small invite-only events are a source of problems. Private round-robin events are the worst. You can choose just friends who are in on the conspiracy, add other "players" you're confident are not paying attention as opponents who play the role of winning or losing games against you and your cohorts. Also, with round-robin events, you can perform "poorly" and still play a lot of games. This contrasts with elimination tournaments, in which you play fewer matches and thus fewer games if you lose.




Salotto--like LMS for leagues--is integrated with the FargoRate database. The connection to the correct record is made before play. That's why when you hit submit in the LMS scoring app, the games are in your record immediately (for the next optimization) and the league standings are updated before you can order a beer at the bar.

Tournaments run on third-party bracket systems, like Cuescore, Digitalpool, Challonge, Ingenpool, Pooladmin, TournamentAPP, Compusport, etc. are part of a major and extensive process for which we start 5am Monday mornings and spend 50+ hours a week on. We start from scratch and match names to records in our system and create new records as needed. Our goal is to get those matches into the system within a few weeks. We are actually getting a lot of them in within a week. There are other sets of tournaments we will work on more intermittently. Perhaps tournaments on Cuescore in the Balkans or tournaments in Japan on Billi-walker.jp. Yesterday and today we worked on getting records matches for the Eurotour event so it can go in soon after it is done. There is also an event in Taiwan going on right now, and we're working on cleaning up names. A name like Shin-Mei Liu can be in a bracket as
Shinmei Liu,
Shin Mei Liu,
Shin-mei Liu,
Liu Shin-Mei,
Liu Shin Mei
--and of course it can be in Mandarin

Do you handle all matches manually or do you have some automation, RPA or AI agent involved?

 

[mikepage]

Do you handle all matches manually or do you have some automation, RPA or AI agent involved?

It is an ever changing mix.

 

[muskyed]

Nick, I just want to say your Facebook write up was creative and great. I really enjoyed it.

 

[mikepage]

The data being public is useless unless normal players and TD's have access to analysis tools. My data is all public. Try scrolling through it. It's a waste of time. There are so many entries that it's not possible to find anything worthwhile (if there was). Of the pro players, Oscar's is public, with 14k games. Good luck scrolling through that for more than 30 seconds before you go do something else. If a player has league games they go in as 1-0 or 0-1, until the whole set is recorded, and clog up the rest of the entries.

While I understand your objections, consider that "useless" might overstate the case.

One value to matches being public is as a deterrent against particularly egregious behavior. It doesn't happen often, but there are cases in which a player has gone 2 and out several weeks in a row against weaker players in a local weekly tournament. A player with public matches who does that runs the risk of being called out with a screenshot on facebook. If tournaments that use the ratings require matches to be public, that bad actor might reconsider the idea in the first place.

Another value is in allowing people to see that the claims of bad behavior are far more frequent than the reality.

While we are prohibited from making the matches public by default, it would be good, once again, if tournaments that allow players to benefit from a rating (by being eligible to enter or by getting a spot) rejected players who keep their match history private.

 

[alphadog]

While I understand your objections, consider that "useless" might overstate the case.

One value to matches being public is as a deterrent against particularly egregious behavior. It doesn't happen often, but there are cases in which a player has gone 2 and out several weeks in a row against weaker players in a local weekly tournament. A player with public matches who does that runs the risk of being called out with a screenshot on facebook. If tournaments that use the ratings require matches to be public, that bad actor might reconsider the idea in the first place.

Another value is in allowing people to see that the claims of bad behavior are far more frequent than the reality.

While we are prohibited from making the matches public by default, it would be good, once again, if tournaments that allow players to benefit from a rating (by being eligible to enter or by getting a spot) rejected players who keep their match history private.

Change the "default" to any and all matches are public. FR is for the public right?

Along these same lines why would a trnmnt director using digital pool enter players in such a way that the whole trnmnt can't be reported to Fargo? Curious as 1 player has a rather high FR ( and a large robustness)but gets entered by a nickname and that negates the trnmnt?

 

[mikepage]

Change the "default" to any and all matches are public. FR is for the public right?

We cannot do that.

Along these same lines why would a trnmnt director using digital pool enter players in such a way that the whole trnmnt can't be reported to Fargo? Curious as 1 player has a rather high FR ( and a large robustness)but gets entered by a nickname and that negates the trnmnt?

Are you asking why a director would not want the tournament recorded in Fargorate? I don't know. I suspect there are different possible reasons.

 

[Jimmorrison]

There are several reasons I have heard given. IMO, none of them have been good reasons

 

[iusedtoberich]

I don’t see what the holdup is on making it all public. The data you get starts as public. Everything (well almost every tournament) on digitalpool, ingenpool, chollange, etc, is public. I can go to digital pool and see any player’s entire history.

Most organized sports are like this.

Including for minors.