Some evidence of what I have long suspected about Fargorating

Nobody puts in 100% effort all the time. A lot of reasons, some bigger than others. I used to wish I could ask race horses how they were feeling that day!

We don't run wide open all day every day at work. If we did half the people would be flat on their face before noon. We generally put in what we consider a reasonable effort and a fair day's work.

Playing pool over sixty hours a week I treated it like a job although I usually had a day job also. I wasn't going to put out 100% to beat someone when 80% would work. There was also the matter of not embarrassing the people around me. I was the only one obsessed with pool. I played pool when I was with other people, I played pool when I was alone. Aside from a hot girlfriend or two, I played pool whomever I was with. The people around me played 1/4 as much pool as I did or less. Only expected that I would be better.

Over time, FR is going to show your typical play. Your really bad and really good days will have very little impact. If I was running the show I would probably clip a certain number or percentage of games off the top and bottom to get rid of the outliers as much as possible, the scores way out of line. The pretty consistent 600 player turned in a 450 one night, pretty obvious this is an anomaly.

I have yet to see a ranking system that couldn't be gamed. Mike's is a lot better than most. Perhaps it could be better, the proprietary nature of his system doesn't allow it to be examined, or easily copied!

One thing, Mike's system is more accurate for pro's and advanced amateurs. Just a matter of garbage in, garbage out. The pro's number is going to be a lot more accurate than the person just out for a social evening. I think we have all seen people with awful technique that were happy with what they were doing and didn't want people bothering them.

Hu
 
Chili Palmer said:
Looks like a clear cut case of sandbagging to me :) (Just kidding, I don't believe for a second that you would do that).

I think it's been covered quite a bit but, players can average between 50 points higher and 50 points lower than their FR. I am not different but I think I go the other way, I perform better when playing league (when I played) and worst when I play people I don't know.
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I believe that is true for me

but im the opposite, in league where i played everyone a zillion times i get lazy and play poorly alot
, but most of the time i play better against people i dont know anything about
cant explain it
 
BRKNRUN said:
I don't know who this is......but I probably most likely know you......My comment was obviously an exaggeration.....but there are only a couple three guys in AZ I am going to take against Shane on his worst day.
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I'd stake myself. I know you were exaggerating, but if he decides to smoke a joint, I'll head over and play some sets with him.
 
Coos Cues said:
You noticed that too? What we can't find is "point in time" ratings to know how good our opponents were back on the day we played them. So that's a problem right? I requested the other half I guess we will see.
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This is one of the things I suggested in that thread a little while back that was asking for questions to be voiced to Mr Page.

Your match history being stamped with both your own and opponent's rating at that moment in time. Another case of the extremely valuable data being there, but not included.
 
I think Fargo is the best rating system we have even though I’m not really a big fan. Here’s an example why. A week or so ago I was watching part of a livestream on YouTube. I have no idea where it and I don’t remember the players names. Both were around 615 rating and both players were with 5 points of each other. Of course it didn’t show their robustness on the screen so I have no idea about that. Anyway it was very obvious after the first to games that one of the guys was a better player than the other guy even though they were within 5 points of each other. The set was never close either
 
9BallKY said:
I think Fargo is the best rating system we have even though I’m not really a big fan. Here’s an example why. A week or so ago I was watching part of a livestream on YouTube. I have no idea where it and I don’t remember the players names. Both were around 615 rating and both players were with 5 points of each other. Of course it didn’t show their robustness on the screen so I have no idea about that. Anyway it was very obvious after the first to games that one of the guys was a better player than the other guy even though they were within 5 points of each other. The set was never close either
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Maybe you are far more consistent that I am, but I have had matches where I shot every ball straight into a bumper. Other times, I don't.
 
Bob Jewett said:
Maybe you are far more consistent that I am, but I have had matches where I shot every ball straight into a bumper. Other times, I don't.
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I understand that all of us have bad days and maybe it was one of those cases but it was obvious that one guy was just better. He had better cue ball control played better safes ran balls better. I’m a banger so I yes I shoot a lot of balls into rails some days it looks like I’m playing bank pool. I know neither player and only have the one set to go off of but I’d bet on the guy that won the set every day against the same opponent
 
2 players, for all intents and purposes, even in Fargo rate, with 8 points separating them, and almost 30,000 combined games in the system.


Life happens. Play the game and see who wins.
 
skip100 said:
The tails of a probability distribution are a thing.
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Many people have a hard time understanding this. I have a friend who believes that it is impossible for red to come up ten times in a row at roulette. The record seems to be 32 times in a row according to the innerwebz.

My personal record is losing 17 straight games at nine ball (for small stakes) and with very few or no runouts by my opponent, who didn't play as well as I did, usually. It seemed at the time that I was inventing ways to lose.
 
BRKNRUN said:
I don't know who this is......but I probably most likely know you......My comment was obviously an exaggeration.....but there are only a couple three guys in AZ I am going to take against Shane on his worst day.
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I think there might be as many as a dozen that could be a coinflip with Shane on his worst day. They are mostly either very quiet or complete sleepers on here.

I did get a chuckle out of 300 seven hundred or better players nationwide. Might be an equal number not in the system but I would bet on over 3000 thinking they are seven hundreds on their best days, probably closer to thirty thousand nationwide!
Bob Jewett said:
Many people have a hard time understanding this. I have a friend who believes that it is impossible for red to come up ten times in a row at roulette. The record seems to be 32 times in a row according to the innerwebz.

My personal record is losing 17 straight games at nine ball (for small stakes) and with very few or no runouts by my opponent, who didn't play as well as I did, usually. It seemed at the time that I was inventing ways to lose.
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A computer program was made to randomly generate zero and plus five. I don't know if there is a true random number generator for computers. I don't remember them putting in a mechanical component. Anyway, the longest run was twenty-two of the same thing after many millions of times running the software.

Incidentally, poker is and isn't a game of luck. While it isn't luck, for the probabilities to fill out takes over a human lifetime so people can be lucky or unlucky. Running nine or ten identical poker players over a lifetime of hands two were "unlucky" one was "lucky". Interesting especially since they didn't get the expected results.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
... A computer program was made to randomly generate zero and plus five. I don't know if there is a true random number generator for computers. I don't remember them putting in a mechanical component. Anyway, the longest run was twenty-two of the same thing after many millions of times running the software. ...
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There are random number generators based on radioactive decay events which are unpredictable and as random as we have. Also, there are random numbers based on the electronic noise that comes from the thermal vibrations in resistors. Again, humans can't predict them. I believe both of those kinds of random number sources have been used in computers.

I used to design systems that used digital circuits to make numbers that looked very random -- pseudo-random number generators. Testing them to see if they were "random enough" involved millions of tests per minute over days and weeks, so maybe trillions of tests. Computers don't complain if you work them hard.
 
Bob Jewett said:
There are random number generators based on radioactive decay events which are unpredictable and as random as we have. Also, there are random numbers based on the electronic noise that comes from the thermal vibrations in resistors. Again, humans can't predict them. I believe both of those kinds of random number sources have been used in computers.

I used to design systems that used digital circuits to make numbers that looked very random -- pseudo-random number generators. Testing them to see if they were "random enough" involved millions of tests per minute over days and weeks, so maybe trillions of tests. Computers don't complain if you work them hard.
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I knew about the pseudo random number generators that are random enough for most purposes but not truly random. I knew of some testing with scatter but nowhere near up to date, what little I remember dates to late eighties/early nineties or before with a little more looking at it later when I messed with internet poker a little. Incidentally, none of the computer poker software was without superuser capability. The ones that it was actually known to be used had things like superusers could see every card on the table, face up, face down, every hand. Superusers also were permitted to have dozens of sign-ins. You can be playing on a nine or ten person table and three-fourths or more of the players are all the same person.

I ran across bots even at low stakes too. I don't know if they were just test running at low stakes or people in third world economies satisfied to take in small amounts over a long period of time. One "player" was in the game from Friday afternoon until Monday morning! Oops! There was a site set up just to build and trade bots. I found it to be great fun to nuke out how the bot was set up then beat it to death! One of the simpler ones folded to a shove that would put it all in even when it was impossible for it to not have the best hand. That operator had a rude awakening when he checked his bot after six or eight hours.

Hu
 
Bob Jewett said:
Many people have a hard time understanding this. I have a friend who believes that it is impossible for red to come up ten times in a row at roulette. The record seems to be 32 times in a row according to the innerwebz.

My personal record is losing 17 straight games at nine ball (for small stakes) and with very few or no runouts by my opponent, who didn't play as well as I did, usually. It seemed at the time that I was inventing ways to lose.
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I find flipping coins to be a good demonstration because everyone is familiar with a coin toss. I lined up two rows of 25 quarters. For both the coins in a column to be heads, it's a 25% chance. In 25 chances, there will still be a four in a row. Just in a single row of 25 you will still get streaks of 6 or 7. I guess the weird thing is how common streaks that seem to defy the odds are.
 
Bob Jewett said:
...snip...

My personal record is losing 17 straight games at nine ball (for small stakes) and with very few or no runouts by my opponent, who didn't play as well as I did, usually. It seemed at the time that I was inventing ways to lose.
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I bet he enjoyed that lemonade! ha ha
 
In the audit side of the accounting world they have random number generators for document reviews so when a company is audited they can randomly select documents for review and they take it seriously. One of my instructors pushed the button twice just to see what happens and they had to start the entire audit from the beginning :oops:
 
tomatoshooter said:
I find flipping coins to be a good demonstration because everyone is familiar with a coin toss. I lined up two rows of 25 quarters. For both the coins in a column to be heads, it's a 25% chance. In 25 chances, there will still be a four in a row. Just in a single row of 25 you will still get streaks of 6 or 7. I guess the weird thing is how common streaks that seem to defy the odds are.
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One of those things, if you just toss something like a deck of cards out random, some of the the sections will look too contrived to be random like 3,4,5,6,7 in order, maybe the same suite. If I see too perfect a spread, that is when I suspect something foul is afoot!

Speaking of such things, the powerball gives you a far more organized set of numbers if you buy five on one ticket instead of five separate tickets. Your chances of winning are the same but I still balk at the appearance they are using pretty crude software!

Hu
 
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