How does a pool player get a Fargo Rating (if he or she cares to have one)?

[justinb386]

I am sorry for these stupid questions.

I have not done any research on how the Fargo system works (I guess I am just too lazy to do the research).

I am just very curious what leagues are using the fargo rating, and what tournaments are establishing Fargo ratings for unknown players (unknown to the Fargo system)?

I think that in the APA (for example), a player starts out as a 4, and then after playing a total of 10 matches, the player has an established APA rating (so that he or she can play in singles competition out in Vegas for the nationals, or other events where you would need to have an established rating in order to play in the event).

Is the Fargo rate system similar, in that a player needs to play a certain amount of games or matches before they have a Fargo rating, and what leagues or tours are currently being used to establish Fargo ratings for players?

I was looking up many players that I knew from past competition, and I see that none of the players who I could think of have a Fargo rating (so I assume that they either do not compete anymore, or maybe they just do not compete in the events that establish a Fargo rating for players).

Also, I assume that a players Fargo rating would eventually expire if they stop competing in a league or tour that uses the Fargo system, after a certain amount of time of not competing, right?

I understand that the Fargo Rate system is still very new, but I am not sure how new.

Hopefully it keeps getting better and better with time.

I am just trying to understand how it works.

I guess maybe I will just need to spend some time to read up more on it.

I just do not know where to find the info that I am curious about.

Thanks for any info about any of the questions that I have asked.

 

[Poolplaya9]

Most of the explanations you are looking for can be found here, particularly under "About FargoRate" towards the bottom of the page:
http://www.fargorate.com/

If after reading that you want even more insight and details Mike Page (the creator of FargoRate) has provided much more detailed additional information in the many threads on here regarding FargoRate. The FargoRate system has been done exceptionally well--as good as it is possible to do in fact. Anyone who takes the time to learn about it and understand it will come away extremely impressed.

 

[mikepage]

I am sorry for these stupid questions.

I have not done any research on how the Fargo system works (I guess I am just too lazy to do the research).

You will find many people here are helpful and generous with their time.

A general courtesy rule, though, is you need to be willing to put in more effort yourself than you are asking others to put in on your behalf.

I think you should start be reading the FAQ at www.fargorate.com, and if you are still interested watch the videos on the site.

 

[justinb386]

Most of the explanations you are looking for can be found here, particularly under "About FargoRate" towards the bottom of the page:
http://www.fargorate.com/

If after reading that you want even more insight and details Mike Page (the creator of FargoRate) has provided much more detailed additional information in the many threads on here regarding FargoRate. The FargoRate system has been done exceptionally well--as good as it is possible to do in fact. Anyone who takes the time to learn about it and understand it will come away extremely impressed.

Thanks for the info and the link. Hopefully I will find all the info I am curious about in that section of the site. I am very interested to learn more about it.

 

[jburkm002]

How complete is the system? Seems almost everyone I look up is in the system will no data. Just a starter rating with no robustness. Just asking and not knocking. It's out there so it could gain interest once complete.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[justinb386]

You will find many people here are helpful and generous with their time.

A general courtesy rule, though, is you need to be willing to put in more effort yourself than you are asking others to put in on your behalf.

I think you should start be reading the FAQ at www.fargorate.com, and if you are still interested watch the videos on the site.

I read the FAQ page, and I am still confused. The only thing that I understand is the system that you talked about with USAPL. So, does this mean that only players in the USAPL have a Fargo rating? I never even heard of USAPL. I only know of other leagues like APA and BCA. So many of my questions are still unanswered in my mind (sorry for my stupidity, if they should be after reading the FAQ page).

 

[justinb386]

How complete is the system? Seems almost everyone I look up is in the system will no data. Just a starter rating with no robustness. Just asking and not knocking. It's out there so it could gain interest once complete.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Maybe that is because the players that you look up or not touring pro's or in the USAPL. I looked up Jesse Bowman, and the search did not find any results (that was surprising).

 

[sbpoolleague]

I read the FAQ page, and I am still confused. The only thing that I understand is the system that you talked about with USAPL. So, does this mean that only players in the USAPL have a Fargo rating? I never even heard of USAPL. I only know of other leagues like APA and BCA. So many of my questions are still unanswered in my mind (sorry for my stupidity, if they should be after reading the FAQ page).

Any 8-ball, 9-ball, or 10-ball league that plays regular games (as opposed to ball count) can use Fargo ratings. The APA will never use it (my guess), but there is no reason that VNEA, TAP, VVS, etc. shouldn't use it. My league is a BCAPL league and we manually send Fargo all our game results. Any league can do the same. If your league is not doing it, then smack the league operator on the head and ask him why not.

 

[mikepage]

Maybe that is because the players that you look up or not touring pro's or in the USAPL. I looked up Jesse Bowman, and the search did not find any results (that was surprising).

Here you go

 

[Poolplaya9]

How complete is the system? Seems almost everyone I look up is in the system will no data. Just a starter rating with no robustness. Just asking and not knocking. It's out there so it could gain interest once complete.

The system itself is totally complete. However, as with anything else relying on data, the more data you have to draw from, the more accurate the conclusions will be that you come to from using that data. A not so good analogy would be if a new player moved into town and started playing at your pool room. If you only saw that player shoot one shot, you can probably get a very rough idea how they play but it won't be very exact at all. If you see them play a whole game you have a better idea but still not very precise. Seeing them play a whole set or even a whole night gets you an even better idea, but for a variety of reasons they could be really off or on that night and you still might have them pegged a little wrong. Same thing if you watched them play for the week. Maybe they just started playing again that week after years of a layoff, or they have had the flu all week and are not at their best, or maybe they have just been really in stroke playing above their head that week and that weeks play still isn't a perfect representation of their true average skill level. But after you have seen them play hundreds or thousands of games over the course of months or years you have them pegged pretty well because that additional data let you get more and more accurate with your assessment of their skill level. And so it is with FargoRate or anything else, more data always equals more accuracy.

Now limited data doesn't always mean horrible accuracy and FargoRate actually works pretty darn well right from the start even with very limited data because of the way it cross references players against each other. Kind of like how with sex and STDs they say you aren't just sleeping with that one person, but with every person they have slept with in the last ten years, and every person each of those people has slept with in the last ten years, etc. Well to drastically over simplify things FargoRate can in a similar way compare you to everyone else through just the people you have played against by using a very accurate and complicated version of "well if Adam usually beats Bob by this much, and Bob usually beats Carl by this much, then Adam will likely be beating Carl by this much" except that instead of just the three players there are usually hundreds or thousands of players in the equation and it becomes very accurate when you cross reference them in this way. But the more data you have (the more games you have played, and the more people you have played against), the better and more accurate the conclusions you can draw from that data, always, even if it was pretty good already with only limited data.

When FargoRate was made public for worldwide use (it had been used on a local/regional level for years), the initial problem you will have with a system like this is that it doesn't start off with as much data as would be ideal. Many people have played few or sometimes no matches where the results of those matches where give to FargoRate for inclusion in their data set. Mike Page did the best he could to get data from previous tournaments and leagues going back as far as ten years (the system uses play from the last ten years with more recent play carrying more weight and having more effect on one's rating that older play) so that it could start off with as much data as possible, but one of the difficulties was that not many tournaments or leagues keep records of all the individual matches, and especially not with the final scores also which FargoRate also makes use of and requires--not just who won or lost. The BCA national singles events is one where this data has been saved over the years, and they were kind enough to provide that information to FargoRate for inclusion, and Mike was able to scrounge up other results from some other tournaments and tours and league sources as well, but because past results including the final scores weren't saved by most people, especially outside of the pro events, the data that FargoRate started with was not as comprehensive as you would ideally like it to be. Now that FargoRate is public and worldwide however, and tournaments, and tours, and leagues start contributing their match statistics to FargoRate as they occur, more and more people will be included, and the already good accuracy gets better and better exponentially and quickly.

 

[mikepage]

How complete is the system? Seems almost everyone I look up is in the system will no data. Just a starter rating with no robustness. Just asking and not knocking. It's out there so it could gain interest once complete.

[...]

No knock taken.

We've been quietly collecting data for 6 years. I, personally have probably the equivalent of two-years of my full-time effort on data collection alone. And I don't make up more than half of the total effort on data collection, which with everyone involved is probably in the vicinity of 10,000 hours of effort. We spent a long time very quiet because we wanted to wait until we had a critical mass of coupled data. And we do.

In some areas we are strong, other areas mixed, and other areas pretty thin. In the mid-atlantic area we are pretty thin right now. But that is OK. We are at a point where people can see and appreciate where we can be. So yes, in the big picture, our 3.3 million games just skim the surface. And we won't turn this into 33 million games or 330 million games by the kinda brute force approaches we've used to get a lot of the first 3.3 million games. It is not going to happen that getting "complete," if there is such a thing, is a viable approach to getting the community motivated to participate. It has to be the other way around. The motivation provided by visualizing what it can be has to drive the participation.

It is our vision that everybody that plays pool league in this country and elsewhere uses the software we are developing that feeds data directly in and directly gets real-time results to players. It is our vision that we are the catalyst for unifying pool more generally.

 

[zpele]

No knock taken.

We've been quietly collecting data for 6 years. I, personally have probably the equivalent of two-years of my full-time effort on data collection alone. And I don't make up more than half of the total effort on data collection, which with everyone involved is probably in the vicinity of 10,000 hours of effort. We spent a long time very quiet because we wanted to wait until we had a critical mass of coupled data. And we do.

In some areas we are strong, other areas mixed, and other areas pretty thin. In the mid-atlantic area we are pretty thin right now. But that is OK. We are at a point where people can see and appreciate where we can be. So yes, in the big picture, our 3.3 million games just skim the surface. And we won't turn this into 33 million games or 330 million games by the kinda brute force approaches we've used to get a lot of the first 3.3 million games. It is not going to happen that getting "complete," if there is such a thing, is a viable approach to getting the community motivated to participate. It has to be the other way around. The motivation provided by visualizing what it can be has to drive the participation.

It is our vision that everybody that plays pool league in this country and elsewhere uses the software we are developing that feeds data directly in and directly gets real-time results to players. It is our vision that we are the catalyst for unifying pool more generally.

Just out of curiosity since I work in the field- what database system are you using to store the data? Are you using a full fledged rdbms or are you going with one of the big data ones like Mongo?

 

[Poolplaya9]

I read the FAQ page, and I am still confused. The only thing that I understand is the system that you talked about with USAPL. So, does this mean that only players in the USAPL have a Fargo rating? I never even heard of USAPL. I only know of other leagues like APA and BCA. So many of my questions are still unanswered in my mind (sorry for my stupidity, if they should be after reading the FAQ page).

I don't want to speak for Mike but to me it almost seems like you are thinking of FargoRate as another league handicapping system in the same vein as the APA and it is not a league handicapping system at all (although it can and should be used for that). It is a worldwide rating/ranking system that accurately rates and compares all pool players who play 8, 9, or 10 ball against all other pool players in the entire world who play 8, 9, or 10 ball no matter the league or even if not in a league, and because it accurately rates people, one of its many uses is that it can also accurately handicap matches when desired.

No league or league rating/handicap system does anything remotely similar. If you are an APA 6 in 8-ball for example, there is no way to compare that to someone in say a TAP league. And for that matter, an APA 6 in Idaho is probably a totally different skill level than an APA 6 in Ohio, so you can't even accurately compare APA rankings from people that are not in the same area. Not to mention that APA ratings aren't usually that accurate to begin with even for a specific player in a specific city.

The USAPL is a pool league that decided to adopt the FargoRate rating system for handicapping matches because it does it more accurately than anything else out there, and because it does it on a worldwide level where if you are rated an X in one city or country, you have the exact same skill as an X in another city or country. But again, FargoRate is not a league itself, or simply just a handicapping system. It is a rating and ranking system that accurately compares anyone in the world who plays 8, 9, or 10 ball and therefore it can also be used to accurately handicap 8, 9, or 10 ball matches in a league or anywhere else when desired.

 

[JC]

No knock taken.

We've been quietly collecting data for 6 years. I, personally have probably the equivalent of two-years of my full-time effort on data collection alone. And I don't make up more than half of the total effort on data collection, which with everyone involved is probably in the vicinity of 10,000 hours of effort. We spent a long time very quiet because we wanted to wait until we had a critical mass of coupled data. And we do.

In some areas we are strong, other areas mixed, and other areas pretty thin. In the mid-atlantic area we are pretty thin right now. But that is OK. We are at a point where people can see and appreciate where we can be. So yes, in the big picture, our 3.3 million games just skim the surface. And we won't turn this into 33 million games or 330 million games by the kinda brute force approaches we've used to get a lot of the first 3.3 million games. It is not going to happen that getting "complete," if there is such a thing, is a viable approach to getting the community motivated to participate. It has to be the other way around. The motivation provided by visualizing what it can be has to drive the participation.

It is our vision that everybody that plays pool league in this country and elsewhere uses the software we are developing that feeds data directly in and directly gets real-time results to players. It is our vision that we are the catalyst for unifying pool more generally.

There is still a huge problem with what I would call housekeeping in the system. I am pretty sure I'm the only person with my name yet am listed 4 times, three of which are just dead end listings. I have a buddy listed 4 times with a very unusual name with zero chance of there being more than one of him. Two of his identities are dead and the other two with 60 or 70 games in each. Extrapolate this to the entire system and what I see a data mess.

JC

 

[Poolplaya9]

We've been quietly collecting data for 6 years.

I was not aware of the extent of this although I suspected that it took place to some extent. To be clear, I do not speak for Mike and do not have any inside information. My attempts to help with explanations about FargoRate are based on my own knowledge and understanding from the information that is public and in some cases are just my presumptions.

 

[mikepage]

There is still a huge problem with what I would call housekeeping in the system. I am pretty sure I'm the only person with my name yet am listed 4 times, three of which are just dead end listings. I have a buddy listed 4 times with a very unusual name with zero chance of there being more than one of him. Two of his identities are dead and the other two with 60 or 70 games in each. Extrapolate this to the entire system and what I see a data mess.

JC

This is on our radar, and though it may seem widespread to you, it is isolated in certain ways. We could do a quick fix on it, and then it would look better to you. But we would lose certain connections that are meaningful to us. So we are doing it more thoughtfully. We understand the source of this issue, and it will be addressed.

I see for example you are from the Pacific Northwest. There are many instances of players being re-created as new players when they play in Western BCA event. It was not forseeable this was any sort of problem. And now it is an issue but not a big issue. We just need to deal with it carefully, and we will.

 

[mikepage]

I was not aware of the extent of this although I suspected that it took place to some extent. To be clear, I do not speak for Mike and do not have any inside information. My attempts to help with explanations about FargoRate are based on my own knowledge and understanding from the information that is public and in some cases are just my presumptions.

I appreciate your thoughtful replies, and it is clear you have been paying attention. Thank You.

 

[Shenanigans]

Are there any plans in the future for players to enter their own match scores online? Or have there been any discussions with the APA to acquire their match data? Unfortunately they are the only game in town right now for my area.

 

[Poolplaya9]

There is still a huge problem with what I would call housekeeping in the system. I am pretty sure I'm the only person with my name yet am listed 4 times, three of which are just dead end listings. I have a buddy listed 4 times with a very unusual name with zero chance of there being more than one of him. Two of his identities are dead and the other two with 60 or 70 games in each. Extrapolate this to the entire system and what I see a data mess.

JC

I could be wrong but I would think it would help if you emailed him about the cases where you knew or suspected the same person was listed multiple times (and make sure you are clear about how positive you are about it and why). There are several that I am aware of that are listed more than once with several different name misspellings, or under different nicknames, or under their various maiden and married names that I plan to email him about soon. I wouldn't think it could hurt but then again maybe he truly has all the sources of of these errors figured out and doesn't need to be inundated by a ton of emails about it. Mike, would this be of any help?

 

[mikepage]

Are there any plans in the future for players to enter their own match scores online? Or have there been any discussions with the APA to acquire their match data? Unfortunately they are the only game in town right now for my area.

There have been no discussions with APA.

While user-generated data is an attractive approach to, in a sense, crowd-sourcing data collection, we have chosen to avoid it.

Data integrity is an important issue to us. And while we will never have every match score be right, we want bad data to be a minor statistical issue that is a fact of life--like shoplifting is for Walmart.

One of the things that helps insure this is peer review. So basically, for the matches that go into the system for you, we want your peers to seem them, including possibly peers that don't like you and don't trust you. So we want the matches to be viewable online. This way we won't have a phantom league or an imaginary tournament. We actually feel pretty good about this issue. But it is our business to develop policies that if anything err on the cynical side...