Fargo-Ratings NCAA Bracket

mikepage

mikepage

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Many of you know about Fargo Ratings

We've been using them to rank 8-ball, 9-ball, 10-ball, and straight-pool players--bust mostly 8-ball players. We now have 125,000 games amongst more than 1000 players, each of whom has played at least 30 games in the system. We're developing software for league administration for small leagues and large leagues using them......

But for now I want to tell you about our NCAA bracket experiment.

With zero knowledge of basketball and zero knowledge of anybody's rankings or predictions, we did a Fargo Ratings analysis of all 6000 or so games amongst 600+ college teams. I then constructed a bracket using those Fargo Ratings. The whole project took about an hour.

Right now, only 3.4% of the brackets nationally are doing better than the Fargo Ratings bracket.

We have Florida over Virginia and Louisville over Arizona in the final four. And we have Louisville winning the tournament.

For the 8-ball ratings, only 2 players are over 750: SVB and Justin Bergman
700-750 -- 9 players
650 - 700 -- 40 players
600 - 650 -- 53 players (I'm a 602)
550 - 600 - 138 players
500 - 550 -- 101 players
450 - 500 -- 126 players
400 - 450 -- 126 players
350 - 400 -- 138 players
300 - 350 -- 92 players
250 - 300 -- 38 players
200 - 250 - 72 players
150 - 200 -- 18 players
100 - 150 - 4 players
50 - 100 -- 2 players

I don't say this very often, but this system is the nuts...
 
That's the same final four I have except I have Florida over Louisville I the final.
 
mikepage said:
...
For the 8-ball ratings, only 2 players are over 750: SVB and Justin Bergman
700-750 -- 9 players
650 - 700 -- 40 players
600 - 650 -- 53 players (I'm a 602)
550 - 600 - 138 players
500 - 550 -- 101 players
450 - 500 -- 126 players
400 - 450 -- 126 players
350 - 400 -- 138 players
300 - 350 -- 92 players
250 - 300 -- 38 players
200 - 250 - 72 players
150 - 200 -- 18 players
100 - 150 - 4 players
50 - 100 -- 2 players

I don't say this very often, but this system is the nuts...
Click to expand...
I'm curious about the < 150-rated players. I'm guessing they don't win many matches. In a simpler incarnation of this system there was one player with a negative rating -- or it would have been if there hadn't been a floor of about 100. He still liked to play, but he was the least coordinated person at pool I've ever seen who didn't have an obvious handicap.

If I calculate it correctly, a long, fair match between SVB and the bottom player would be 1000-3 or so.
 
This is pretty cool Mike. Who knows, maybe you can apply this rating system to other sports as well?
 
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