No sir, I was simply referring to the general consensus..Could you please explain (briefly) how Fargo determines the skill of many dozens of different players?..Do they not first use their system to determine player ranking?..If I am wrong in saying Fargo-rating is 'extremely' flawed, I will gladly admit it!
PS..I will also concur, Karen is an extremely gifted player.(for a woman
)......But, I can easily name a
whole bunch of men, she would be an underdog against in any kind of extended race! :wink:
Ok you know how we all sit around the pool room trying to match up and the conversation goes like this, I need the 7 from you because you beat Billy and Billy gave Tom the 8 and Tom beats me even?
Or Jake is definitely a 10 speed player because he clearly plays a ball better than Bob who is a solid 9. Jake snapped off the saturday tournament last week and had to beat Tom and George to do it. Tom and George are 11 speeds.
This is what Fargo Rate does in a very detailed mathematical way. Every game that you play you can add to your rating or subtract from your rating based on the strength of your opponent. Every single game. Everyone you and your opponent have ever played ALSO affects your ratings. In other words if everyone around you is moving up then you're moving down if you're not beating them....you're moving down even if you're not playing them. But the only way that they are moving up is not by beating people who are below your speed, but instead by beating people who are your speed and higher. So the system presumes that performance in games tells the real story on actual speed.
Yes you can have a great day and play over your head and you can have a bad day and play three balls worse than you usually do....but that's where the number of individual games comes into it....over time your true average comes out and the more games you have in the database the more accurate that average is.
We all know the player who spends a ton of time at the poolroom who plays ok but can never "get there". Once in a while he books a winner but by and large he loses or breaks even a lot.....cracks the "money" in tournaments but rarely wins...we all know where to place that player in the hieracrchy of players in the area. We know what he is capable of on his best day and we know for sure what he is likely to do in any given match. Imagine that on a global scale.
That's Fargo Rating. A mathematical system that only works if can predict what is likely to happen when any two players play a race to whatever. The whole thing rises and falls with that ability because if it's WRONG more often than it is right then the ratings are clearly not right. But if it is right most of the time, within a statistically acceptable margin of error, then the ratings are right.
The whole point of ratings is to determine what the relative skill levels of players are for the purpose of assigning them a handicap that makes the race a fairly even one for both players. Otherwise there is really no need for players to be rated unless you just like to discuss disparate skill levels.
Now the problem isn't really a local one...local pool communities generally have a pretty good handle on where the local players stand relative to each other. But a problem arises when a stranger comes to town.....how does he fit in to the local scene? Well the standard answer is to rate him high and let him donate to prove where he fits in until such a time as the people who hold the ratings in their hands decide on his speed.
With Fargo Rating that is eliminated because a 550 in NYC is literally the same speed as a 550 in Phoenix. Period. Full Stop. Blasphemy you say...that cannot be true.....the variables, the variables!
Yes, a 7 speed in NYC can be actually better or worse than a 7 speed in Phoenix because of the variables in competition, table types, games predominately played...
But when it comes to Fargo Rating none of that matters because performance is based solely on how one does against opponents who are ALL connected. There is no pool community in the world that is fully insulated - it's all Jeff played Bill played Sam played Jessica - played Shane - played Johnny....and so one. Every player's performance literally affects every other player on earth's rating to some small degree. So that the end result is that when a 775 on one side of the earth plays a 775 on the other side of the earth it is an even match and likely to go hill hill on average. Or it could go 9-1 one way and then 9-1 the other way the next set.
That's how Fargo Ratings work for "different" players because at the end of the day the balls don't care who the player is they only care whether they will get pocketed or continue to be beaten around the table. For professional level players the balls don't get hit as much and for amateurs they get a lot more abuse. Fargo tells us who is more likely to be rail abusers