Artificial Intelligence's "thoughts" on the APA's (SL) "secret sauce"

[JessEm]

The APA's proprietary and secretive handicap formula is always up for debate. If I'm not mistaken, Dr,Dave even took a good swing at cracking the code. See my Q/A with AI.

*The caveat is it's entirely possible this answer is inaccurate - as demonstrated yesterday with my "test questions" about absentee ballots...

 

[Cuedup]

Ah. It's settled then.

 

[APA Operator]

At least you acknowledged that the answer may or may not be inaccurate. Maybe the AI is under the same non-disclosure contract that I'm under?

 

[JessEm]

At least you acknowledged that the answer may or may not be inaccurate. Maybe the AI is under the same non-disclosure contract that I'm under?

Doubt it. Unlikely you're at liberty to state whether innings directly affect a player's SL, as AI did...? Or, that SLs are determined by League Operators.

Personally, I would be wary of engaging in this conversation at all, if I was you. But take it or leave it. Just some friendly advice.


This does backup my assertion that, *if* innings carried the weight some claim, we wouldn't see the skill disparity gap between same-rated players from different regions. Furthermore, that SLs are competition-based, contingent mostly on W/L against other players within respective league.

 

[Cameron Smith]

ChatGPT only has access to what is publicly available. So this will only really be a summary of what has been put out there in the past.

 

[skip100]

"Self assessment" - LOL. That would be interesting.

Just the usual hallucination from the ChatGPT plagiarism machine.

APA itself notes that innings are a factor in its calculations:
The Equalizer® scoring and handicap system works perfectly when players concentrate on the game and let the system take care of itself. In fact, BOTH players in a given match must break the rules before the system will fail. One player must deliberately miss shots resulting in more turns (innings), and his opponent must fail to mark the deliberate misses on the scoresheet as defensive shots.

https://tucson.apaleagues.com/CustomPage.aspx?q=3041

 

[JessEm]

"Self assessment" - LOL. That would be interesting.

Just the usual hallucination from the ChatGPT plagiarism machine.

I hear ya. They actually do. Their "certification form" is just that.

APA itself notes that innings are a factor in its calculations:
The Equalizer® scoring and handicap system works perfectly when players concentrate on the game and let the system take care of itself. In fact, BOTH players in a given match must break the rules before the system will fail. One player must deliberately miss shots resulting in more turns (innings), and his opponent must fail to mark the deliberate misses on the scoresheet as defensive shots.

https://tucson.apaleagues.com/CustomPage.aspx?q=3041

This isn't the full story. Probably anyone who's ever tried understanding how it works has read the above explanation by APA... They also say it's actually a secret, and proprietary, and they make their operators sign non-disclosures. So there's that.

I don't really care how it's done one way or the other. There's a lot of different opinions, I just think it's an interesting discourse.

 

[fuggles]

Their "secret sauce" was published on the internet about 20 years ago by a disgruntled league operator. So there are some people outside of the APA that have seen it.

 

[g-string]

I believe your handicap is based of your last 20 games and innings of games you won.

 

[Billi Ardball]

In the 90s it was the last 15 games average of Wins / (Innings - Safeties). It may have changed somewhat since then.

 

[straightline]

What about players simply portraying their rating?

 

[hang-the-9]

The idea that there are people that do league handicaps by known ability and watching the players play then judging what their league handicap would be is a bit silly in the real world. Sounds like it may be for maybe the starting rating only. I don't remember ever seeing someone on league night watching a league match with a notebook tracking how many times a player shot a good shot or knew a good safe to play.

Innings (AKA misses/scratches/safeties) are one of the main things and really the only thing outside of just the win/loss ratio, that a computer program can use to calculate skill level. Without every game being watched all you can do is mark down the basic events, made a ball, missed a ball, played a safe, won or lost the game. Nothing else can be done. This is why APA and TAP handicaps are pretty easy to mess with when cheating since you can still win games but keep the misses up higher. Fargo just cares if you won, so to sandbag there you actually have to throw the games, which makes winning a bit hard LOL In the APA I bet I can mess with some SL2-3-4-5 to the point where I win every rack but do it in 4-5 innings, keep the points close, and make it look like it's luck or an equal parity win. Calling tough two-way shots and then "accidentally" leaving the opponent hooked is not too hard for a decent player and will make life tough for the opponent. I calculate those shots all the time when playing, I know at a certain speed for a certain angle if I miss the guy has a good chance of not seeing the ball or be left across the table on the rail from it, and that is just playing normally not in a league. In a league those shots are very strong not just for beating someone but also for playing the system to keep a low handicap.

 

[buckshotshoey]

Their "secret sauce" was published on the internet about 20 years ago by a disgruntled league operator. So there are some people outside of the APA that have seen it.

It was a public court document that contained the information. APA was Involved in a lawsuit at the time and it was public court document information for a while... until they had the case info sequestered.

There is a lot of bullshit being spread about how the APA Equilizer system works. You will be surprised how little "innings" have to do with handicaps.

I've sat on this for twenty years. The only one I remember sending this to is Dr Dave. But I'm getting tired of the ignorance being spread around.
So here's what I'm going to do...
I have a transcript of the specific part of the court doc that covers APA handicap. I won't publicly post it here, but I will PM it to whoever wants it.

 

[mikepage]

[...]
This does backup my assertion that, *if* innings carried the weight some claim, we wouldn't see the skill disparity gap between same-rated players from different regions. Furthermore, that SLs are competition-based, contingent mostly on W/L against other players within respective league.

Though the AI's response is fuzzy and doesn't say much, "innings played do not directly affect" is at odds with any discussion I've seen over the last few decades. That old document a few mentioned described a system for which inning counts were indeed a key ingredient, like the tomatoes in Grandma's tomato sauce.

I believe the system described there computed, for a player's last 20 matches, the average number of non-safety innings per game win, I think using only the best 10 in the average. (call this NSI/win). Players were then binned into SL groups where, for example SL 6 is NSI/win between 2.0 and 3.0.

It caps NSI/win contributions for new match wins using a table of "applied scores" that depend on SL and also on overall match win%. For example if you are a SL6 who wins 50% of your matches, you might be expected to be a mid-level 6 and have NSI/win in the mid-6 range, around 2.5. The cap prevents you from both winning a match and also recording an NSI/win larger than this expectation. An SL6 who wins 80% of matches--presumably a strong SL6 or an SL7 in disguise-- has a stricter cap, like 2.2. And an SL6 who wins only 20% of matches might be allowed an NSI/win up to 2.8 for his new match wins.

So long as the level of competition is not wildly different from league to league, the inning count idea should lead to skill levels that are fairly independent of region. At the next level of scrutiny, though, a player of a given skill (let's say Fargo Rating of 500) will have a lower NSI/win in a league filled with 600s than he would have in a league filled with 300s. This is because against weak opponents there are on average more opponent balls on table for your win attempt at any given inning number.

Maybe that was/is the gist of it. Maybe not. Either way it seems like a pretty clever approach, imo.

I would not have expected the idea that inning counts play a primary role to be secret or controversial.

 

[Texas Carom Club]

It was a public court document that contained the information. APA was Involved in a lawsuit at the time and it was public court document information for a while... until they had the case info sequestered.

There is a lot of bullshit being spread about how the APA Equilizer system works. You will be surprised how little "innings" have to do with handicaps.

I've sat on this for twenty years. The only one I remember sending this to is Dr Dave. But I'm getting tired of the ignorance being spread around.
So here's what I'm going to do...
I have a transcript of the specific part of the court doc that covers APA handicap. I won't publicly post it here, but I will PM it to whoever wants it.

send it my way

 

[justadub]

I've seen the doc, years ago. What does anyone suppose the odds are that APA hasn't tweaked it, at least somewhat, since that was disclosed, back then? I would expect it have been adjusted or modified or some such. Probably would have been over time in any event.

And the expectation that it would be determined by the LO giving an assessment of each player is silly. I'm sure there are dozens and dozens of players that our LO has never seen in person, probably a very high number. Heck, we have between 120 and 150 players in our division alone, and I bet our LO has never set eyes upon half of them, or maybe more. And he has 10 to 14 divisions, depending on the session. He'd never be able to see most of his players to do any such "assessment".

I chuckle every time people insist that they "know" how the formula works. We all have our suspicions, and probably some of the elements we believe are indeed a part of it. But to know "exactly" how, that's just silly. But to think that innings aren't at least a part of the formula is even sillier. Why else would we be tracking it?

Play your best, mark defenses, and have fun.

 

[Cornerman]

It was a public court document that contained the information. APA was Involved in a lawsuit at the time and it was public court document information for a while... until they had the case info sequestered.

There is a lot of bullshit being spread about how the APA Equilizer system works. You will be surprised how little "innings" have to do with handicaps.

I've sat on this for twenty years. The only one I remember sending this to is Dr Dave. But I'm getting tired of the ignorance being spread around.
So here's what I'm going to do...
I have a transcript of the specific part of the court doc that covers APA handicap. I won't publicly post it here, but I will PM it to whoever wants it.

Lol! I think my email is listed on that document! 25 years ago, I reposted the orginal post because I didn’t want it to get lost in the bit bucket. I got a call from the APA the next day. It wasn’t a nice conversation. The next time someone reposted it, my repost was printed out, and it was added to the court documents. Every time someone copies, pasted, etc., I cringe and hold my breath.

And then there’s the guy who originally disclosed it.