It's not linear. There's an exponent in there. 75 points higher is about 68% better (1.68 times as good). 50 points higher is 41% better (1.41 times as good). ~158 points better is 3x as good.
Can I question my Fargo rating?
- Thread starter roger.p
- Start date
i get that no rating system is perfect, I’m only playing in one Fargo data capturing league & don’t play in tournaments. I’m not sure how the rating will ever even out if I stay in this league. When I play opponents that someone earlier reasonably suggested averaged out at 500, I was 80 points above them when I started. Now I’m 160 points above them but there’s no extra handicap, I’m still playing a race to one, not a race to 7 when I’d be giving something on the wire. Anyway I’m not trying to moan here, just trying to understand how this happened. I’d suggest not playing in a league doing races to one against lower ranked players if you’re trying to establish robustness
Playing a race to 1 doesn't change anything so far as your rating is concerned.
Neither does playing against lower-rated players.
You have an unusual record. You have 65 games played over the last few months. And you have 165 games from essentially more than a decade ago. For the recent games, you won 77% (50/65) against opponents averaging 494. This is what is expected of a 668 player.
If we just look at your recent record against players 500 and over, that's 38 games and your opponents average 550. You won 26 and lost 12. That's 68%, just over two thirds. That is what is expected of a player a little more than 100 points above the competition (expected of a 662).
I get that you're saying a rating in the 660s doesn't feel right to you. Because your other 165 games are so old (as old as 13 years ago), they are almost ignored and your rating is determined mostly by your recent play. A consequence of this is your rating will be very responsive to new play. So if your high performance recently has been a bit of a hot streak or you had several drunk opponents or something, new play will move you pretty quickly.
Another possibility is you play better than you think you do. Or maybe it's a little of both.
Now -- I know this runs a bit counter to the narrative but I contend that league play can skew your rating a bit, depending on the nature of the league. Is it a "fun" league where players are just getting their weeks in, or is it super competitive where everyone is shooting for a big cash payout or some other motivation?
I'm guessing since the OP is even bringing up his FargoRating, that he is a more serious league player who grinds through his racks weekly. He very well could be playing right next to his equals -- skill wise, while they are having a few drinks and having more fun.
This is the only slight hole I still see in FargoRate and it may not even be all that noticeable in the numbers, and it's more of a human nature problem than a system one.
We can all conceive of hypotheticals like this. And it certainly is possible. The data just tends not to support it, though. We've looked in quite a few different places, and we just can't detect any effect like this. That doesn't mean an effect doesn't exist at all. But I think it does mean it is at best small.
I think there are a few reasons for this
(1) When there is a lot on the line and we take a long time for each shot and care a lot about the shot's outcome and study the potential patterns for a while, etc, that feels very different from a more casual several-second study of the table followed by a brief muscle-memory execution of our normal shot routine. I'm not convinced the outcome is very different, though.
When you are at that place where you can go for the bank shot or play safe and it is a close call, you imagine you might play safe it it "mattered" and go for the bank shot in league. This seems like a big difference. But it's like whether you hit on 16 playing blackjack. The big picture is it really doesn't matter that much. If you're feeling it is a close call, it probably is. And the outcome is pretty close to the same if you're playing loose and a little aggressive or playing more deliberately.
(2) Chances are if a league or tournament feels casual to you, it probably does for others as well. So while YOU may have a few drinks and not warm up and not have the speed of the table down before your game, that is likely. true for your pool of opponents as well.
Even if league is dead serious to you and others are playing loose, it probably won't matter.
I just checked two players in that division (Sofia M. and Thomas W) average about 600 mostly from non league play. They have 75 games between them of which they won 51, 68%. That makes sense --opponents about 500 and they win about two thirds.
Obviously I'm not privy to the data.
Let me further narrow my subset of potential players who could be affected by my hypothetical...
It's the best local players, playing in friendly leagues where the talent disparity is very wide. I've played in such leagues and I know the difference. I've experienced and watched teammates lose racks of 8 ball to players who have little chance of winning a rack when there's something on the line, but when they're your friends and you're having fun -- stuff happens.
Maybe you're numbers don't reflect this -- but it's just a reality. Maybe less of a reality the further along we get with FargoRate as people tend to have some pride about such things.
Once again, thanks for all the input everyone has been offering. It’s been great. A decade ago I used to play a lot of pool, now i play less, am older & my general interest in it has dropped. I liked the thought that “maybe I play better than I think I do”. That’s a very reasonable question. There’s some truth to that but not enough, even though I am my own worst critic. I do know I miss more regularly than I used to. The players in the league with similar winning %s to me, and who I’d rate as similar speed, are 40 to 50 points below me. The league is competitive, everyone in it seems to try to win to the best of their talents. I guess I have to hope that they start beating me more frequently
I’m showing my general pool ignorance here by telling you I’m not even sure what the ghost is about.
My league operator suggested that he may start reporting stats to Fargo. Not that I think it would sway his decision, but I flat out told him I would quit. Although I do try my best. I play league for fun, and don't want to concern myself with trashing my rating while doing so. Now that I think about it though. I'd probably be better served if results were reported. There's only one player with a higher fargo and we're on the same team...lol. My odds of my rating going up is pretty strong.
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We can all think of reasons why our perceptions don't fit a particular model, but short of a programming error the system shows exactly what the results show, and that will be pointed out time and time again. Perhaps the 75% you see from others isn't their entire body of work against that average rating? I.E., maybe their 75% is only what you've seen but their actual win% against that average includes more seasons in the league or matches in other leagues where their win% isn't so high. Either way, if your perception is correct then you can expect that one or both of the 75% numbers you quote does not represent the long-term (Fargo-wise) reality.
No rating system can account properly for players that don't want to play to their ability. ANY system. If I am the best basketball player, but when I go play in front of a crowd I miss shots on purpose, I am not going to be drafted. The only rating system that can work this way is the guy in the corner watching the players for years that has developed a local knowledge of the players personally and knows what they can do when they are trying.
Just like Scarlet, rating systems depends on the kindness of strangers, although in their case it's the "honesty" of strangers that is needed. Even for "fun" games, if they are reported as results that affect the handicap, taking it easy on a buddy will mess up the data. No way around it. Have fun and let the people win when not in an official match. The good thing about Fargo is that it does not go up and down like many other league systems, it takes quite a bit of losing or winning to move the points enough to matter. I have been a 550ish rating for years, with maybe getting to 555 or so once in a while, but always 550-555, over years of playing. That is a less than a 1% change. It would need to be about 10% or higher for someone to notice a marked difference in skill over a period of time, and moving 10% with an established rating takes some work, more so than a few dumped games.
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I don't know why you would expect your rating to go up OR down. In general it would stay the same. And if it's a little high or low now, in general more data will make it a little better.
I can attest to this. I play in leagues with loads of lower rated players. I beat the hell out of most of them with the occasional loss because they ran out or I dogged my brains out. My rating rarely moves because our ratings suggested my win ratio would be where it was.
I just looked at the four highest rated players from Platinum 8-Ball singles at BCAPL Vegas this year
Oliver Ruuger (NY) 718
James Davee (WA) 715
Victor Cucuzza (UT) 713
Dylan Spohr (PA) 712
They all play in the vicinity of 715 and have tons of tournament games. But I just put all four players league games--just league games-- from beginning of 2022 to now together in one file. That's 946 games, and the average opponent rating was 525. At 190 points above, we'd expect them to win just shy of 80% of the games. They won 753 and lost 193. That's 79.6%. That's a performance rating of 721, right in the vicinity of what we expect.
If we look at opponents around 100 points below, they win at about 2-to-1
If we look at opponents 300 points below, they win at about 8-to-1
Because I can perform better in the format then compared to tournament play. If stronger results don't equate to a stronger rating, then I'm really mis-understanding the concept behind fargo.
It's a practice type game of 9 ball. Break, and take ball in hand anywhere, and try to run out. Pure offense. If you win the rack, you get one game. If you don't run out, the "ghost" wins that game. Typically played races to 7 or so, and can be gambled at. It does not matter if you foul on the break, or don't make a ball. Just take BIH no matter what. You can also ride the 9 on any shot, including the BIH shot.
The equation is base 2 exponential extended over 100 points. Very simple...
is the percentage win expectancy, where delta is the point difference between two players.
Bob -- don't both the methods that you describe here actually rely on the same sort of system, which is relative records of players against other players? The way you describe it sounds like it is just that one focuses more on recent and the other is more cumulative?
I don't know how you are differentiating between ranking and rating, but I would think of "rating" more as an individual permormance number -- like balls per inning or that sort of thing, rather than how one player fairs against another player. But I am no expert! You were part of some kind of system in CA back in the day, correct? How did it work?
Play tournaments where the race is more than 4 and the entry fee means cashing is a decent payout.
I think you have whats called a fragile fargo rating.
I think you have whats called a fragile fargo rating.
I think both types would converge if we had a full field million dollar events every month with international participation. In the absence of that, they can be wildly different. Take for example, the Chinese players who have been inactive the past 4 years. Their fargorate is still world class. But their tournament winnings are absent.
If you go further back about 10 years, the WPA list was mostly based on participation. There were top pros that missed a lot of events for various reasons. But if those missing pros were to match up in a head-to head competition, we would have all bet on them.
On a local level, we had a regional event in the early 2000's in the NE area. The tournament director was trying to encourage participation, so he would make "player of the year" tour points accumulate each event. The guy that won player of the year went to almost ever event, but he was a C player, and I don't think ever even cashed.
I believe when Fargo came out, Mike talked about all these scenarios, and one of his goals was to make ranking based on ability, not participation.