VNEA & APA League results entered into FargoRate, anyone doing this?

[telinoz]

I understand VNEA and APA have different scoring systems to BCAPL.
Ultimately though, rack is won and lost for a player.
So, in theory it should be possible to just enter these racks won and lost into FargoRate.

Anyone out there doing this?

It seems to me, a lot of good data could be entered into FargoRate and when some players finally decide to enter a tournament, they will have data vs a 525 Starter rating as an 'Unknown' player.

Here in Sydney, there is a VNEA league.
A lot of these players, come and play a BCAPL as well, some enter National events and some play a private pool series.
If there VNEA data was also entered, there would be years worth of additional robustness.

Kind of hoping, that when Digital Pool gets league formats done - it can be used to run VNEA, APA leagues - but it can pull out the racks won / lost data and simultaneously send to FargoRate.

Any issues with this?

 

[Woodshaft]

Any issues with this?

The leagues are all direct competitors financially so yah, there is an issue.
Mike Page's Fargorate was introduced specifically to promote the BCA leagues.
Trust me, there is no love lost between these other leagues.
Fargorate only has a little over 22,000 established players in it's system btw.
That's a drop in the bucket relative to how many people on the planet actually play competitive pool regularly.
I definitely take his "Top XXX" region lists with a big grain of salt lol. It only includes established AND recently data'd fargorated players.
It's very exclusive... Tons of other great players aren't on his "Best" lists.

 

[dquarasr]

APA scores 9-ball by ball count. How would you record rack win/loss? Ball count? What if tie 5-5 (racks are worth 10; 9-ball worth 2. Also pocketed balls with scratches and early 9s count as “dead balls”)?

Standard APA 9-ball not practical to measure against other systems’ scoring. IMO.

 

[telinoz]

APA scores 9-ball by ball count. How would you record rack win/loss? Ball count? What if tie 5-5 (racks are worth 10; 9-ball worth 2. Also pocketed balls with scratches and early 9s count as “dead balls”)?

Standard APA 9-ball not practical to measure against other systems’ scoring. IMO.

Yeah, probably just VNEA 8Ball then.

 

[mikepage]

I understand VNEA and APA have different scoring systems to BCAPL.
Ultimately though, rack is won and lost for a player.
So, in theory it should be possible to just enter these racks won and lost into FargoRate.

Anyone out there doing this?

It seems to me, a lot of good data could be entered into FargoRate and when some players finally decide to enter a tournament, they will have data vs a 525 Starter rating as an 'Unknown' player.

Here in Sydney, there is a VNEA league.
A lot of these players, come and play a BCAPL as well, some enter National events and some play a private pool series.
If there VNEA data was also entered, there would be years worth of additional robustness.

Kind of hoping, that when Digital Pool gets league formats done - it can be used to run VNEA, APA leagues - but it can pull out the racks won / lost data and simultaneously send to FargoRate.

Any issues with this?

The way APA scores 9-Ball would not work.
8-Ball would be OK.
10-point scoring for 8-Ball leagues (point per ball pocketed plus a 3-point win bonus) and 17-point scoring (like 10-point scoring with winning player getting an additional point for unpocketed opponent balls) are potentially problematic because a player is sometimes incentivized to do something other than win the game ("Hey Joe, we need 3 points to cinch the round!"). So occasionally a player loses a game he might have otherwise won. It is important to add, though, that occasionally Joe wins a game he wouldn't otherwise have won because his opponent just needed a few balls and pocketed a break-out ball early. We've treated whether these formats are OK for FargoRate as an empirical question: look at tens of thousands of games scores this way and see if we can distinguish them from tens of thousands of, say, tournament 8-Ball games. We can't; they're fine. We've chosen to prohibit formats that have less inventive to win the game than these do (like 8-point 8-ball, where you get only one extra point for winning the game.).

League play becomes part of the FargoRate system by being generated within the system, not by being imported from outside the system. League play is all generated within FargoRate LMS, our League management System.

There is not, at this point, a way to run APA leagues through LMS.

I don't believe VNEA requires use of a particular software. There are, I believe, many VNEA divisions in Ohio, through Shaffer Entertainment, that use LMS. At least the divisions have VNEA in their names. There is Wyoming Amusement that I believe is using LMS across the board starting this year. I don't know if they are sanctioned with VNEA, but they used to be and I assume they are now.

It is common for VNEA divisions or leagues who want to use LMS to choose to also sanction with BCAPL. The reason they would do this is once the players incur a once-a-year sanction fee, everybody gets unlimited use of LMS for as many sessions as they want, gets them all the featured version of the FargoRate APP, and gives them access to CSI events.

But they don't need to do that. If they have a strong VNEA affiliation such that they choose not to be affiliated with BCAPL, those individual divisions or leagues can get access to LMS and everything FargoRate directly through FargoRate. There is a once-a-year per-player fee here as well.

Or leagues can be independent (unaffiliated with any major organization) and still use LMS

 

[mikepage]

[...]
Mike Page's Fargorate was introduced specifically to promote the BCA leagues.

This is not true.

Fargorate only has a little over 22,000 established players in it's system btw.

This is not true.

I definitely take his "Top XXX" region lists with a big grain of salt lol. It only includes established AND recently data'd fargorated players.
It's very exclusive... Tons of other great players aren't on his "Best" lists.

Maybe.

 

[telinoz]

The way APA scores 9-Ball would not work.
8-Ball would be OK.
10-point scoring for 8-Ball leagues (point per ball pocketed plus a 3-point win bonus) and 17-point scoring (like 10-point scoring with winning player getting an additional point for unpocketed opponent balls) are potentially problematic because a player is sometimes incentivized to do something other than win the game ("Hey Joe, we need 3 points to cinch the round!"). So occasionally a player loses a game he might have otherwise won. It is important to add, though, that occasionally Joe wins a game he wouldn't otherwise have won because his opponent just needed a few balls and pocketed a break-out ball early. We've treated whether these formats are OK for FargoRate as an empirical question: look at tens of thousands of games scores this way and see if we can distinguish them from tens of thousands of, say, tournament 8-Ball games. We can't; they're fine. We've chosen to prohibit formats that have less inventive to win the game than these do (like 8-point 8-ball, where you get only one extra point for winning the game.).

League play becomes part of the FargoRate system by being generated within the system, not by being imported from outside the system. League play is all generated within FargoRate LMS, our League management System.

There is not, at this point, a way to run APA leagues through LMS.

I don't believe VNEA requires use of a particular software. There are, I believe, many VNEA divisions in Ohio, through Shaffer Entertainment, that use LMS. At least the divisions have VNEA in their names. There is Wyoming Amusement that I believe is using LMS across the board starting this year. I don't know if they are sanctioned with VNEA, but they used to be and I assume they are now.

It is common for VNEA divisions or leagues who want to use LMS to choose to also sanction with BCAPL. The reason they would do this is once the players incur a once-a-year sanction fee, everybody gets unlimited use of LMS for as many sessions as they want, gets them all the featured version of the FargoRate APP, and gives them access to CSI events.

But they don't need to do that. If they have a strong VNEA affiliation such that they choose not to be affiliated with BCAPL, those individual divisions or leagues can get access to LMS and everything FargoRate directly through FargoRate. There is a once-a-year per-player fee here as well.

Or leagues can be independent (unaffiliated with any major organization) and still use LMS

Thanks Mike.

 

[Fore Rail]

There is Wyoming Amusement that I believe is using LMS across the board starting this year. I don't know if they are sanctioned with VNEA, but they used to be and I assume they are now.

THE AMUSEMENT & MUSIC OPERATORS OF WYOMING BECOME AN AFFILIATE ASSOCIATION OF CSI LEAGUES

CueSports International (CSI), and its CSI Leagues division, is excited to announce the Amusement & Music Operators of Wyoming (AMOW) as its newest affiliate league association. On Monday, July...

www.playcsipool.com

To my knowledge Cheyenne is the only place in Wyoming that is dual sanctioned for VNEA & BCAPL.

 

[hang-the-9]

I understand VNEA and APA have different scoring systems to BCAPL.
Ultimately though, rack is won and lost for a player.
So, in theory it should be possible to just enter these racks won and lost into FargoRate.

Anyone out there doing this?

It seems to me, a lot of good data could be entered into FargoRate and when some players finally decide to enter a tournament, they will have data vs a 525 Starter rating as an 'Unknown' player.

Here in Sydney, there is a VNEA league.
A lot of these players, come and play a BCAPL as well, some enter National events and some play a private pool series.
If there VNEA data was also entered, there would be years worth of additional robustness.

Kind of hoping, that when Digital Pool gets league formats done - it can be used to run VNEA, APA leagues - but it can pull out the racks won / lost data and simultaneously send to FargoRate.

Any issues with this?

If a league did this the ratings of 50% of the players would suddenly go up a level. The APA is not going to allow their sandbagging system out in the public eye. I have seen, on a streamed finals APA match, with Ewa commentating, an APA 5 with an over 600 Fargo rating LOL That should have immediately disqualified the team for cheating if anyone cared at all about fairness in the league.

 

[telinoz]

If a league did this the ratings of 50% of the players would suddenly go up a level. The APA is not going to allow their sandbagging system out in the public eye. I have seen, on a streamed finals APA match, with Ewa commentating, an APA 5 with an over 600 Fargo rating LOL That should have immediately disqualified the team for cheating if anyone cared at all about fairness in the league.

Yep.
I hate sandbaggers, cheats basically.
I have been sending data to FargoRate for a while now, as I find tournament history.
I have everything compiled in one large spreadsheet..
So, easy to spot someone sandbagging in a VNEA league for example vs. When they have great results in tournaments and are ranked well in state and national events.
I even found some players using multiple names, so I have had them merged as well.

Give it another 6 months, pool in NSW, Australia will be tidied up.
I already convinced everybody to use Digitalpool.com as well.
Which has direct submission to FargoRate.
Everybody is ditching their own in house handicap tables, to move to one player profile in Digitalpool.com and a single FargoRate entry.

 

[hang-the-9]

Yep.
I hate sandbaggers, cheats basically.
I have been sending data to FargoRate for a while now, as I find tournament history.
I have everything compiled in one large spreadsheet..
So, easy to spot someone sandbagging in a VNEA league for example vs. When they have great results in tournaments and are ranked well in state and national events.
I even found some players using multiple names, so I have had them merged as well.

Give it another 6 months, pool in NSW, Australia will be tidied up.
I already convinced everybody to use Digitalpool.com as well.
Which has direct submission to FargoRate.
Everybody is ditching their own in house handicap tables, to move to one player profile in Digitalpool.com and a single FargoRate entry.

There is actually a decent issue with re-used names, since even an accidental misspelling of a name would lead to a new record, or in some cases players with the same names were mixed up. One particular case was a son with the same name as the father, the matches for both were being entered to a single person due to the fact their locations were also the same. Fargo can have Bill Smith from Stick City and Bill Smith from Hanger City but if there are two Bill Smith's in Stick City, the results can be not so great.

Just random submission of data to Fargo is not a good thing either, if it's allowed there is not many checks and balances to make sure the data is correct and not someone trying to game the system.

 

[hang-the-9]

I definitely take his "Top XXX" region lists with a big grain of salt lol. It only includes established AND recently data'd fargorated players.
It's very exclusive... Tons of other great players aren't on his "Best" lists.

Well, yea, if someone does not enter an event that is rated, there is no way for it to know about it. There may be a guitar player that makes Eddie VanHalen look like a 3 year old, but if they only play in their house no-one will ever know. You can only know what you know. The WPA list for top players is different than the Predator list which is different than the Matchroom list which is different from the list Joe Gambler has in his head, etc... It would take an omniscient system or person to make a fully comprehensive list of players without missing anyone, but that is not likely to happen. Since Fargo does not care about who runs the organization that reports to it, it is the single best thing right now.

 

[telinoz]

There is actually a decent issue with re-used names, since even an accidental misspelling of a name would lead to a new record, or in some cases players with the same names were mixed up. One particular case was a son with the same name as the father, the matches for both were being entered to a single person due to the fact their locations were also the same. Fargo can have Bill Smith from Stick City and Bill Smith from Hanger City but if there are two Bill Smith's in Stick City, the results can be not so great.

Just random submission of data to Fargo is not a good thing either, if it's allowed there is not many checks and balances to make sure the data is correct and not someone trying to game the system.

Agreed.
This is why you have to monitor your area, to spot genuine mistakes and people gaming the system.
Lucky these days everything is online.
Between Challonge, CueScore and now Digital Pool I have been able to cross reference.
Even the local VNEA league has a excel sheet for how they set handicaps. Which I was able to integrate.

It is not a perfect system, but FargoRate could improve things by allowing users to add more personal details to their profile, which a tournament or league organisor can see to select the correct person.
When we join up, they all need address, mobile, email for example.
More than enough to separate people with the same name in the same town.