Recent content by mikepage

yes.

It, imo, is hard to ignore that 18-year-old phenom from Sweden (Walter Laikre, 753) has 1670 games in FargoRate against opponents 750 or higher 18-year-old phenom from Minnesota (Hank Leinen, 707) has 248 games in FargoRate against opponents 750 or higher a 7-to-1 ratio

Yes, agreed.

Thank you. That is good to hear!

There ARE geographic differences. But it is not a simple popularity of barboxes issue. There are two different subcultures regarding them. At the risk of oversimplifying, I'll call them two-world and one-world, TWO-WORLD (northeast is an example, some very strong APA areas other examples) Here...

You're saying this like it's a bad thing. This is what success looks like. This is a sport gaining traction. It would not actually good to have the US dominate simply because nobody else cares. The US has I think more strong junior prospects than it has in a long time. But at the same time...

I'm not familiar with this approach. Did you mean to attach a table?

I'm not following what your format is nor understanding your objection. Here is what it MIGHT be. Perhaps this will help us to communicate. Two 5-player teams are playing in an 8-ball round-robln format that includes individual 5-game ROUNDS, e.g. a ROUND might be A2 v B1 A3 v B5 A1 v B4 A5 v...

So Alex Kazakis (824) played in the Scottish Open last May. This is what he was doing a few weeks before and a few weeks after. I'd say Athens players are pretty fortunate.

Yes, and maybe maybe we should not think of this effort that many of us will enjoy following as being just about him (or his chances of success or his motivations). What if it plays a role in inspiring others who have a bigger chance? What if we enjoy the journey? What if it inspires us to try...

So long as they keep playing a lot--which is likely if they are improving--the rating will nearly track. Look, for example, at Lukas Fracasso-Verner. At this time in 2022, he was 711 with 5288 games. He hit 6,000 games that fall. So, June 2022 - 711 June 2023 - 736 June 2024 - 748 June 2025...

Weird subtlety: an 11-10 handicap may be close to fair, but that doesn’t mean 11-10 is the most likely score in a race to 11. Because of the stopping rule, the winner must win the last rack. So 11-10 requires first getting to 10-10, while 11–9 only requires getting to 10-9. Hill-hill has more...

There isn't a "lifetime" Fargo Rating. Or if we wanted such a thing, we'd need to do a completely different computation. There is only our best estimate of current skill considering all the information. You feel like some sort of post-FargoRate assessment of a player's last 500 games would...

Golf is not a network-constructed measuring instrument. It is literally counting strokes.

I don't know the answer. Some tournament he was in at some point in his career must have been removed from the system most likely. Today, for instance, we realized the 2025 SBE pro event was duplicated, and so we removed one instance. Those players will see a reduction in robustness and won't...