I'm losing faith in the FargoRate in the amateur ranks. I now agree with others that many people are entering bs leagues to keep their rating low, then do well in high entry events.
I just looked through the player list on the digital pool bracket from the $1000 entry 578 I played in last year. I went through half of the 64 players, in order of finish of the tournament, typing each player's name in the app and seeing what their fargorate is today, exactly 12 moths after the tournament. I didn't put in a spreadsheet (I might later), but by eye, the average was something like 10 points higher. I stopped half way through the list. Also a couple of the guys with got a top 3 finish got a top 3 in a later $1000 entry 599, and one of them is in a $500 entry 660 right now (today), and crushing the field thus far.
To @mikepage , I really think you need better transparency.
1: Make everyone's rating public. You mentioned before this was not default due to privacy. But the source date is already all public info. Digitalpool is all public. Cuescore in EU is all public. Challonge is all public. 12 year old weightlifting boy's records are all public (I did WL 5 years ago and the entire national system is all public). If there was someone truly stalking a pool player that entered tournaments, they would have ZERO issue finding them, even if FargoRate never existed. Hello Facebook, that's the #1 way to stalk a pool player.
2: You need to aggregate LMS results so it doesn't say 1-0, 1-0, 1-0, 1-0, 0-1, 0-1, and instead says 4-2. It's impossible to see what happened in the match. That can't be difficult to implement? Your own LMS app is submitting the data to the FargoRate app. Can't it recognize when the data comes from that app and aggregate it?
3: When interrogating a random player's match history, the player's opponents needs their fargorate added to their name. You created and succeeded in a system where all that matters now is "whats your FR?". It doesn't even matter what your name is anymore. Just FR. Yet you are hiding that info from the opponent list. It is visible in my OWN opponent list, but if I want to see someone else's opponent list, it is missing.
4: There has got to be some way to analyze the players to see who is dumping league matches and doing well in high entry events. People point to Solato all the time, but I'd argue it's way easier to do it in a league. Solato requires conspiracy by two players. League is just "I got drunk and was hitting on a broad and played like crap".
TD's need more tools to analyze players that are manipulating their rating. Scratch that.... EVERYONE needs more tools to do that, TD's, LO, AND other players.
Love you brother. You're great for the game. Just play. No handicaps and work against the competition.