Thanks for the clarification. Good luck with your game.
Fargo rating
- Thread starter measureman
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I heard that 10% of players in the system are 600 or better. So the top 10% of rated players isn't too shabby.
Are you over 200 robustenss? Mike has said many, many times, that if below, its actually not a Fargo rating, but a provisional rating that blends an arbitrary starter rating, plus the rating from the fewer than 200 games in the system. Then once you hit 200, the arbitrary starter rating portion of the calculation falls off completely.
IMO from watching the top pro players, sometimes there is a lot of movement in player ratings until you get to about 800 robustness. I watched that a bit with Big and Little Ko a few years ago. They were moving up and down the fargo ladder about 10 points, trading places with each other, which at the world class level, is not something you see often.
Edit to add, I think you knew all the above, and were just making a point
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Yeah just making a point that there is a lot of variables in a rating. If the guy has 1000 games in the system it’s probably fairly accurate. If he’s like me and has less than 100 he could be a lot better or a lot worse than his rating.Are you over 200 robustenss? Mike has said many, many times, that if below, its actually not a Fargo rating, but a provisional rating that blends an arbitrary starter rating, plus the rating from the fewer than 200 games in the system. Then once you hit 200, the arbitrary starter rating portion of the calculation falls off completely.
IMO from watching the top pro players, sometimes there is a lot of movement in player ratings until you get to about 800 robustness. I watched that a bit with Big and Little Ko a few years ago. They were moving up and down the fargo ladder about 10 points, trading places with each other, which at the world class level, is not something you see often.
Edit to add, I think you knew all the above, and were just making a point
I love Fargo rate... I've played in a region for decades wherein "handicapping" was merely arbitrary opinion. Drive to this hall, your rating was this, walk down the street and it was different. This hall used some kind of game system, another used a ball system. If you were a 'known' player but not a regular, expect to have to give up more than you should. Fargo is math based on performance, not opinion. What a fantasic idea...lol
As far as it being a handicapping system. Well there are tourneys that have max limits like 600 max, but for the most part the fargo rate is only used to gauge entry fee levels, which is my perfered method of handicapping tournaments.
Fargo, like any other system, is only valid in your own pond. A guy that's a 700 in my area, that's only achieved that rating because of performances in my area, may not be a 700 somewhere else with a greater talent pool. I don't think that makes fargo worthless, but people just need to be aware.
I've only played in one tournament that has reported my ~67 games to fargo, so my ~680 doesn't hold any official water. That said, I think it is a fair approx of my speed. Based on how I played versus my own assessment of my ability and the speed of the opponents I faced. It was to my benefit that it was an alternate break format, so the young guns couldn't blow me out of the water. That probably skews the fargo math in my favour.
I think Dr. Dave has a speed chart that inlcudes fargo rate with other well known rating systems. According to his chart, once you hit 600 in fargo you are maxed out in APA.
All appropriate props to Dr. Dave for the above chart. Someone please let me know if posting that is inappropriate and I'll remove it immediately.
As far as it being a handicapping system. Well there are tourneys that have max limits like 600 max, but for the most part the fargo rate is only used to gauge entry fee levels, which is my perfered method of handicapping tournaments.
Fargo, like any other system, is only valid in your own pond. A guy that's a 700 in my area, that's only achieved that rating because of performances in my area, may not be a 700 somewhere else with a greater talent pool. I don't think that makes fargo worthless, but people just need to be aware.
I've only played in one tournament that has reported my ~67 games to fargo, so my ~680 doesn't hold any official water. That said, I think it is a fair approx of my speed. Based on how I played versus my own assessment of my ability and the speed of the opponents I faced. It was to my benefit that it was an alternate break format, so the young guns couldn't blow me out of the water. That probably skews the fargo math in my favour.
I think Dr. Dave has a speed chart that inlcudes fargo rate with other well known rating systems. According to his chart, once you hit 600 in fargo you are maxed out in APA.
All appropriate props to Dr. Dave for the above chart. Someone please let me know if posting that is inappropriate and I'll remove it immediately.
And here is a related video:
And more info, including a BD article, is available on the player ratings resource page.
Enjoy!
It actually depends on how the tournament does the ratings, the straight up ratings are based on your ability not who else you play with. An A can make certain shots and run so many balls on average, that is what the rating is. The tournaments totally confuse this by putting in their own random skill rankings using the ABCD rating scale. D = barely knows about position, can run 1-2 balls on average before a miss in 9 ball. C = starting to know cue ball control but gets out of shape and misses often, does not know more advanced shots, can run 3-4 balls without missing. B = has more knowledge of shots and safety play, often runs 5-6 balls or 7 on average. A = strong player that lacks consistency and the hard shot skills to be an Open, more often leaves the table on a safety than a mistake.
What tournaments and people that don't understand this rating scale do is just make things up, but it's really not that hard. You have D through A, if A is great and D is almost a beginner then it's not hard to figure out how a C or a B would play. Clearly a C would not be running out a rack often or playing good position a lot if D is a new player and C is just one level over that. Yet I see a lot of people say they are C players when clearly they are Bs. I personally witnessed one guy say he was a C after he finished top 8 in an open tournament and almost beat a 650 Fargo even in 10 ball. This either shows he has no idea how the rating works or that he was outright lying to get a low handicap in other events. Both things are bad.
...and there's the reason why opinion based systems are garbage. Assuming the fellow you're speaking of is a honest individual, then I have zero doubt someone told him that he was a C at one point. Probably that someone isn't any better but just got the best of him on a given day and was propping his own ego after a win. However, lets assuming the opposite, and he is the scum of the earth. He gets to make up his own level because there's nothing other than opposing opinion to say otherwise.
I didn't include the part of your post wherein you describe the D thru A skill sets, but I know of at least a dozen local players that meet that 'A' criteria, but are light years apart from each other. None of them are 'Open".
Fargo is math... You can skew that math if you like. Not sure when the rewards for that will if ever kick in.
The person that has a 604 is a local Colorado player and does very well in our local tournaments.
I have never seen him play as I'm retired from tournament play for the last 10 years or so.
I work with his wife and get updates on how he does and from her he places high or wins quite often.
I have never seen him play as I'm retired from tournament play for the last 10 years or so.
I work with his wife and get updates on how he does and from her he places high or wins quite often.
I have no Fargo rating so I'll take a 624 based on your expert opinion.
Can't agree more... Fargo like any other system is biased to local talent pool. It's also biased based on tournament rules.
There is no metric for winner vs alternate break format wins. At least I'm unaware of one. ...However, an 7-2 landslide win in winner break can easily be translated to a 7-5 in the alternate break format. Those differing match scores will effect your fargo rates differently.
If there are A players but some are better that would mean that those players that are better are A+ and the worse ones are A-, or the better ones are in the Open range, which is about 680-720 Fargo, bellow the lower level pros but better than the 650 solid A players. The rating system I have known since I started playing goes D, C, B, A, Open, Pro. with - and + ranges in the general skill areas.
This is only true if those players never leave the area to play anyone else. Fargo is a national ranking vs who you play and who the players you play have played. So if you have 10 players living in a bubble in their area and never play anyone else, you will need to first get a ranking for one of them, which is then used to base the others. A "seed" ranking of sorts, it has to start somewhere. So if player 1 can run out every rack and we have a known skill for that, say 750 which is pro level, you assign him that. Then the other 9 play him over a few 100 games, and based on how they do they get a rating.
Statistics work, with the correct data and enough of it, which Fargo does pretty well, better than any other rating system. APA is a closed sphere with players faking handicapps often, same for most leagues. Local tournaments often don't understand ratings properly to assign them. Fargo does it simply by EVERYONE playing EVERYONE and comparing them. So if you play me, you are not just raking you vs me, you are ranking you vs everyone I played in Fargo over all my events. If I am a 550, that means compared to the 60 players I played, that is where I fall. If you beat me and are a new Fargo player, you will be a 550 or higher depending on how badly you win. You beat me 7-2, you are likely to be put in as a 600 or higher. I beat you 7-6 you may be in as a 500 or 530. And this is done over a hundred matches, with a web going across the country. APA does not do that, they really only can match how you play against others in your area. And that is all relative, so is not a good system, never mind the fact that half or more of the players are not doing their best to keep handicaps low, that also does not help one bit. Fargo is harder to cheat unless you plan on losing in every event you play in since it's reported to by non-handicapped tournaments.
Fargo and the real ABCD ratings are not based on the area you are in, but how you play in general. Fargo does compare players against each other, but there is so much data in the system from open events, pro events, non-handicapped events and even handicapped events that the comparison is valid world-wide. APA and other leagues are all handicapped based in the first place and don't link players across areas, Fargo does.
If every league and tournament used a single rating system, we can actually have a valid rating system with less cheating. Fargo is the closest thing we have to this. I can play in my USAPL league and get a Fargo rating, when I play in my local even race tournaments they report to Fargo so my rating is based on that, when I play in the Joss tour they report to Fargo so I get a rating based on that. 40-50 matches and my rating is pretty solid and fair based on all the people I play. Only an idiot or a scumbag would dump every event they are in to win some Vegas trip, but APA does not look at anything other than APA so it's easy as hell to cheat there. If an APA 5 plays in some open event and beats a bunch of A players that are 7s, APA rating does not see that. Fargo would.
There have been a dozen or more posts about the Fargo ratings and local vs general ratings, like when someone said a 700 female is not as good as a 700 male, it's just not understanding the data the system uses and how it works. Female, Male, local, world-wide, it's all the same to the Fargo rating, with the exception of a closed bubble where the players inside never play anyone else and they start with a bad rating to begin with. As the old computer saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. If you take those 10 players that never play anyone else, and you base the top player as a 500 when they should be a 700, then you have your false rating that is localized. Then when one of those players go play someone else, they are all of a sudden 200 points off what the rest of the world is, and that will simply be adjusted the first time they play anyone else and people notice the difference in skill. Hi Mr Page, this player is rated a 500 and he just ran 4 racks against me. Click click click, that player is now a 650 or 700 or whatever.
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Weber
Registered
The majority of Fargo ranked players are now just league players.
It used to be more select groups and tournament players, but now with BCA and other leagues reporting in, the majority of these players never play outside of their league.
Then there are equipment differences. I played up north in a competitive league, but all matches were played on valley bar boxes. The league I play in down south is on 9’ diamonds. A 600 on a bar box is not the same as a 600 on a 9’ Diamond.
Yes, IF those players never play anyone else or on any other equipment. There is no way to get proper data with bad data being entered. I doubt an A player has never played on a 9 footer to get their rating, and the rating even then will not be that much off. You can't get to a 600 skill by playing on badly setup 7 footers only. As soon as you play someone that has played outside your small area, your rating is linked to all of theirs. Your or someone else may never leave the town, but other players have, and you play them, so your rating is based on that not just your local area. Web of statistics is what does this.
When you played those players in a league on bar tables, you brought your rating with you, and the players you played would have been matched vs your rating there. If you played some guy and he beat you, his rating is based on yours linked to everyone else you played on every table type and room you were in. There is no perfect system unless you have a guy visit every pool hall and bar on the planet and sit watching every player play for an hour to note how they play. Fargo is the closest though and over the general ratings, table size or even the game played does not matter much to the overall global ratings. There may be some random players that can beat an 800 Fargo in one pocket that lose to a 700 in 10 ball, but that is rare and does not affect the statistics much at all. It's a data average not just based on "well I am a 500 but Joe is a 530 and I beat him all the time in my dad's basement so Fargo is wrong", it's I played 30 players that were 550 I lost to them by a score of 7-5 on average, so I am a 500.
Fargo did some predicting in a few one pocket events for the results and even the scores, it was correct in a large majority of the time and was even able to predict the score of the matches closely even though Fargo really only tracks 9/10/8 ball events.
It just takes a couple of players in a league area to play other people at other tables for the overall league to adjust the Fargo rating to that. Bill never plays anyone and is a 400, Bob is a 400 but goes to Big City and plays in a tournament, plays some 500s and wins, his rating goes up. Bill then plays Bob, he plays close matches like they always do, now Bill goes up since Bob went up when his Big City tournament results were entered and since Bill does well against that new rating his is adjusted. Bill who is now a 450 plays some player that was a 350 when they played Bill and Bob when they were 400, but now that 350 nudges up to a 370 since the other players got a more correct rating. Repeat this a few thousand times across the country and you have your national rating.
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We only recently (the last year and a half, or so, maybe two years) have had some local tournaments reporting to Fargo. I'm interested in following it, with players that I know. (I don't get to play in tournaments as much as I would like.)
Recently, one was held and Mike Dechaine played in it. So now anyone in that tournament that got lucky (or unlucky) enough to play him, will be reflected of all the people he has ever played...right? I'm simply curious what effect that has on local players, if any
Recently, one was held and Mike Dechaine played in it. So now anyone in that tournament that got lucky (or unlucky) enough to play him, will be reflected of all the people he has ever played...right? I'm simply curious what effect that has on local players, if any
Weber
Registered
I agree but most are not playing outside of their league and then returning.
In my example earlier, that area 9’ tables didn’t exist. There was only one Diamond in the area and it was a smaller one that was not used for league play.
I think it’s the best system we have but it’s still very inaccurate, just like the rest of the handicap systems.
I think it could be better if it evaluated more kpi’s of a match.
But if anybody in your league system goes to one of the national pool league tournaments in Vegas (where they will face players from many other areas who might also have FargoRatings), then all the stats will come into play to make sure all your local ratings are consistent with ratings worldwide.
Ok, first... What's a "kpi"...?
Second, I agree it's the best system we have. However I feel as though it's far more accurate then any of the other systems I have been expose to and/or read of.