Meanwhile in Qatar

I'd like to add that I never said that WPA is more accurate than Fargo or anything along those lines... MY POINT is that rating systems for pool players in general aren't something that can be quantified by one number...especially when that system doesn't really allow for opinion.

A player's statistics don't simply refer to their wins and losses. Also AGAIN, Fargo may be the most "accurate" system there is currently available but that doesn't mean its accurate. ITS NOT FARGO's FAULT. So remove the sticks. Ranking a player accurately among a field of other players requires that all the other players have played in the same event. Conversely, rating a player based on only a handful of tournaments isn't accurate in itself. The WPA rankings aren't that great, no doubt, but what they do is show the pecking order in WPA events. Which means they only compare to other WPA Events.

Again I'm sorry but you can't tell me Ko Pin Yi is the 21st best player in the world with a world 10 ball title under his belt. Darren Appleton is showing as 15th in the world right now...How many of you can honestly say you agree with that? He won the Chinese World 8 ball. which at the very least deserves top 10. Meanwhile Mike Dechaine who is now in his first international event besides the Mosconi is 8th in the world? Seriously what is in the Kool Aid. Oh and Albin Ouschan? 2nd in last years W9ball and 1st in the China open with a 17th place finish in the chinese 8 ball? That guy? 51st according to Fargo...

For the people using the AZb moneyboard as an argument Wu Jia Qing is 145th and still number 1 in the world according to Fargo.

Part of the problem is trying to rank the players by giving them a rating based purely on wins and losses and ranking them compared to others even if they haven't all played in the same events.

I'm stating that its inaccurate, which unless someone can give me a clear and concise argument as to how it is accurate, I'm going to stick to that. Just because it is inaccurate, doesn't make it the devil. Better than other systems doesn't mean its accurate.

Lets just say the Top 20 of both the WPA and Fargo ratings which do you all honestly think is more accurate? By accurate I mean that there aren't ridiculous stretches or players that seem to be missing completely.

as far as i know Fargo takes into acct who you beat and what THEIR record is and what their opponents record is- which is much more comprehensive than anything you are talking about.
 
actually yes you can...

I'd like to add that I never said that WPA is more accurate than Fargo or anything along those lines... MY POINT is that rating systems for pool players in general aren't something that can be quantified by one number...especially when that system doesn't really allow for opinion.

A player's statistics don't simply refer to their wins and losses. Also AGAIN, Fargo may be the most "accurate" system there is currently available but that doesn't mean its accurate. ITS NOT FARGO's FAULT. So remove the sticks. Ranking a player accurately among a field of other players requires that all the other players have played in the same event. Conversely, rating a player based on only a handful of tournaments isn't accurate in itself. The WPA rankings aren't that great, no doubt, but what they do is show the pecking order in WPA events. Which means they only compare to other WPA Events.

Again I'm sorry but you can't tell me Ko Pin Yi is the 21st best player in the world with a world 10 ball title under his belt. Darren Appleton is showing as 15th in the world right now...How many of you can honestly say you agree with that? He won the Chinese World 8 ball. which at the very least deserves top 10. Meanwhile Mike Dechaine who is now in his first international event besides the Mosconi is 8th in the world? Seriously what is in the Kool Aid. Oh and Albin Ouschan? 2nd in last years W9ball and 1st in the China open with a 17th place finish in the chinese 8 ball? That guy? 51st according to Fargo...

For the people using the AZb moneyboard as an argument Wu Jia Qing is 145th and still number 1 in the world according to Fargo.

Part of the problem is trying to rank the players by giving them a rating based purely on wins and losses and ranking them compared to others even if they haven't all played in the same events.

I'm stating that its inaccurate, which unless someone can give me a clear and concise argument as to how it is accurate, I'm going to stick to that. Just because it is inaccurate, doesn't make it the devil. Better than other systems doesn't mean its accurate.

Lets just say the Top 20 of both the WPA and Fargo ratings which do you all honestly think is more accurate? By accurate I mean that there aren't ridiculous stretches or players that seem to be missing completely.

There are variables in the winning of a tournament that aren't accounted for in having that title that ARE accounted for in the Fargo ratings.

Ease of draw is one... How many games you gave up to your opponent is another... What the rating of the player you gave games up to is another....

I would suggest that Mike see about tweaking (if he already hasn't) the algorithms to include who is breaking in a given game as I believe that has an effect on overall ability, especially in rotation based games and one hole. It may be too difficult to implement the recording of that though which is the other difficulty, a system that takes into account successful safeties, successful kick safes, successful outs from safes etc, would be more accurate but too cumbersome to implement on a large scale.

Jaden
 
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as far as i know Fargo takes into acct who you beat and what THEIR record is and what their opponents record is- which is much more comprehensive than anything you are talking about.

I reiterate: Again I'm sorry but you can't tell me Ko Pin Yi is the 21st best player in the world with a world 10 ball title under his belt. Darren Appleton is showing as 15th in the world right now...How many of you can honestly say you agree with that? He won the Chinese World 8 ball. which at the very least deserves top 10. Meanwhile Mike Dechaine who is now in his first international event besides the Mosconi is 8th in the world? Seriously what is in the Kool Aid. Oh and Albin Ouschan? 2nd in last years W9ball and 1st in the China open with a 17th place finish in the chinese 8 ball? That guy? 51st according to Fargo...

Does that seem accurate? Simple yes or no will suffice?

Also what has Wu Jia Qing done in the last two years that the handful of world champs at the top of WPA haven't? I'll wait.
 
I reiterate: Again I'm sorry but you can't tell me Ko Pin Yi is the 21st best player in the world with a world 10 ball title under his belt. Darren Appleton is showing as 15th in the world right now...How many of you can honestly say you agree with that? He won the Chinese World 8 ball. which at the very least deserves top 10. Meanwhile Mike Dechaine who is now in his first international event besides the Mosconi is 8th in the world? Seriously what is in the Kool Aid. Oh and Albin Ouschan? 2nd in last years W9ball and 1st in the China open with a 17th place finish in the chinese 8 ball? That guy? 51st according to Fargo...

Does that seem accurate? Simple yes or no will suffice?

Also what has Wu Jia Qing done in the last two years that the handful of world champs at the top of WPA haven't? I'll wait.

No I'll just wait for you to publish your ratings which are obviously perfect.
 
YEs it seems accurate...

I reiterate: Again I'm sorry but you can't tell me Ko Pin Yi is the 21st best player in the world with a world 10 ball title under his belt. Darren Appleton is showing as 15th in the world right now...How many of you can honestly say you agree with that? He won the Chinese World 8 ball. which at the very least deserves top 10. Meanwhile Mike Dechaine who is now in his first international event besides the Mosconi is 8th in the world? Seriously what is in the Kool Aid. Oh and Albin Ouschan? 2nd in last years W9ball and 1st in the China open with a 17th place finish in the chinese 8 ball? That guy? 51st according to Fargo...

Does that seem accurate? Simple yes or no will suffice?

Also what has Wu Jia Qing done in the last two years that the handful of world champs at the top of WPA haven't? I'll wait.

Have you LOOKED at the list of the fargo ratings???

There are MARGINAL differences in 10 of the top twenty of less than 5-10 points, OUT OF 800 points@@!!!

that's no more than 1% difference. So NO, it's not out of the question to put him within 10 points of the number 5 player based on skill and within 2 points out of ~800 of the top ten.

Jaden
 
I don't think many of you really understand how this system works. If you get enough data all you really need to track are the scores. All the other stats are just taking up extra time and space.

Did you win the rack or not? That's all the info you need to compare anybody given enough data.

They are collecting plenty of data. I think the system is the best thing to happen to pool in a long long time.
 
To get a better understanding on how Fargo works, please go to www.fargorate.com and watch the short videos.

Poke around the site a little bit. I think you will see that the system will (and does) work. I think it is easy to miss the point a little bit. It is not based just on who wins the tournaments - but on every match and how they performed. To go by perception is very deceiving.........

The more info Fargo has, the better the ratings are. currently around 35,000 players and 1.4 million games.

Mark Griffin


PS At the recent Tuscon tournament, Fargo predicted 36 winners out of 38 matches. just sayin'
 
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[...]

Also what has Wu Jia Qing done in the last two years that the handful of world champs at the top of WPA haven't? I'll wait.


Excellent question.

Wu is WPA 30. And we have over 200 games in the last two years for which Wu has played people ABOVE him on the WPA list.

His combined rating against the WPA top 29 is 117 wins and 87 losses.
His combined record against the WPA top 20 is 88 to 74
His combined record against the WPA top 10 is 20 to 14

More specifically in the last two years here are his records against those opponents:

Pin Yi Ko 9 to 4
Ekonomopoulos 11 to 10
Yu Lung Chang 23 to 18
Van Den Berg 18 to 22
Van Boening 7 to 11
Can Wang 9 to 2
Corteza 11 to 7
Boyes 9 to 4
Jun Lin Chang 11 to 4
Che Wei Fu 9 to 5

There is no pool player on the planet with a better record.
 
[...]

Getting to Mr. Lombardo . . . I can’t really fault his Fargo-Rate. [...].

People might like to see his record over the last several years against specific opponents. These all contribute to his rating. I put on the list all opponents for whom he has played at least 20 games.
 

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i think fargorate is the best thing to happen to pool in a while.

It's the most accurate system we have right now and it's still improving, it's still fairly new so obviously there will be faults but give it time.

The wpa rankings on the other hand are a joke. They only count wpa sanctioned tournaments, which we only have like 5 or 6 a year.
The fargo ratings are pie in the sky but they are harmless.
If they were of any significance then players would be trying to corrupt them.


If i were basing someone's rating off a system, i would look at fargo because they actually count way more tournaments and games played by that player instead of 5 or 6 tournaments a year.
the fargo ratings are pie in the sky but they are harmless.
If they were of any significance then players would be trying to corrupt them.
The wpa list is clear in it's objective and that is to rate the performances of players who take part in their events worldwide. Periodically it is used to select and seed players from their rankings.
 
What you may perceive changes once Mike lays out all the match scores in front of you as he did above.

You can have your own opinion but not your own facts


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Well, the one good thing that can come from a rating system like this is, if it was accepted universally, is that players wouldn't have to play musical chairs wondering which tournaments are "points" tournaments and which ones aren't like has happened in the past if things are done by rankings in the future.

And as a result of that, you would never have to deal with some points tournaments stopping being points tournaments temporarily because all the major players just happen to be playing in a tournament across the globe, (like has happened) and other tournaments on smaller tables wouldn't miraculously become points tournament for big table players when the majority of big table players think that is just stupid.

Plus, people trying to get on the Mosconi cup team, who are way down on the waiting list of a "points" tournament, wouldn't need to seemingly have favors pulled for them and have someone "withdraw" from said tournament, because they didn't have enough sense to sign up early enough, despite the fact that there were people higher up on the waiting list, that basically got shafted because you know, the powers that be like to F*ck with things.

All that points garbage, and strong arming players crap, and having players dance for their masters sh*t would hopefully cease to exist.

That is if it's all legit and transparent.

:wink::D
 
Ranking Lists cannot exist in a vacuum so unless a list is created for a purpose other than amusement then it serves no purpose.
A list can be fact packed and be very in depth but if it doesn't get you a World Pool Maters spot or a top 24 seeded place in Qatar then what is the point of it?
 
Must be getting desperate for a negative post lately to have to pick on a player rating system that has no impact on players.

(*) This post could be considered negative :D
 
I'm not going to get into discussion about ratings and how things are working in pool, but all I want to say is that pool isn't tennis. Rating in tennis really mean something, usually higher rated players win there, maybe do what they do?
 
PS At the recent Tuscon tournament, Fargo predicted 36 winners out of 38 matches. just sayin'

Step 1 -- Develop system that picks 36 out of 38 winners

Step 2
Option A -- Publicize it as "FargoRatings" and endure the wrath of AZBilliards
Option B -- Keep it private and name it "FargoRetirementPlan 2.0"

Or perhaps there is an Option C waiting in the wings.
 
Ranking Lists cannot exist in a vacuum so unless a list is created for a purpose other than amusement then it serves no purpose.
A list can be fact packed and be very in depth but if it doesn't get you a World Pool Maters spot or a top 24 seeded place in Qatar then what is the point of it?

The system was developed independently, so of course it won't be universally utilized initially. However, I think the hope is that it can be used going forward for the various things you've mentioned and much more. It's already being used to help handicap league teams at the amature level, which helps reduce the conspiracy concerns.
Also, to address the previous accuracy concerns - they don't matter. Even if your subjective perceptions are, in fact, more accurate than the compiled data,FargoRatings will fix itself. In other words, if a player's rating is too low, then he'll regularly beat lower ranked players (and by or above the predicted margin) and he'll knock off some of the players who are rated higher than him. His rating will increase, and the issue will be solved. The more data that's compiled, the more accurate everyone's rating will be.
 
Excellent question.

Wu is WPA 30. And we have over 200 games in the last two years for which Wu has played people ABOVE him on the WPA list.

His combined rating against the WPA top 29 is 117 wins and 87 losses.
His combined record against the WPA top 20 is 88 to 74
His combined record against the WPA top 10 is 20 to 14

More specifically in the last two years here are his records against those opponents:

Pin Yi Ko 9 to 4
Ekonomopoulos 11 to 10
Yu Lung Chang 23 to 18
Van Den Berg 18 to 22
Van Boening 7 to 11
Can Wang 9 to 2
Corteza 11 to 7
Boyes 9 to 4
Jun Lin Chang 11 to 4
Che Wei Fu 9 to 5

There is no pool player on the planet with a better record.

We can now add an 11-6 victory over the WPA #1 player Albin Ouschan.
 
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