Will Fargorate accept any tournament with full match scores?

[ShortBusRuss]

Here in Germany, I would like to see some of our regional tournaments entered into Fargorate. Will Fargorate accept any tournament results, as long as there are full match scores? If so, what is the method to submit those results? We have a lot of players in these events with a Fargorate already, so we have a baseline that other players can be measured against..

Edit: I just realized full match scores for a lot of our tournaments are already in cuescore.com. Is it just a matter of sending the URL to Mike Page? Quite a few players already have Fargorate scores, so that should help getting other player's scores established..

One of my teammates also thinks that the German League system is reporting to Fargorate, as both of our Fargo-rated moved recently with us only playing leagues. Can Mike Page confirm this?

Russ

 

[Poolplaya9]

I can't answer most of your questions but I do recall Mike saying that he would accept the results from any tournaments who published the full results with scores publicly on the internet, so it would seem to suggest that the cuescore.com tournament results would be acceptable. I don't recall what other criteria he had, or what format the info had to be packaged in to be submitted to him or how he would prefer to be notified, but he will probably be along shortly to answer or can be reached on AzBilliards by PM at "mikepage" or he or his partner can be reached at "support@fargorate.com". It seems to me a HUGE misstep not to provide on his website at least the basics for what match results he will accept and in what format and how to submit them, but perhaps part of his screening process for legitimacy is seeing someone take the initiative to contact him and inquire.

One thing I wanted to point out is that while your (and your buddy's) ratings could indeed be moving as/if your newer league matches get reported to the system (you will have to confirm with the league or Mike if they are being reported or not), they can also move even if fargorate has gotten no new information regarding you at all. As your past opponent's ratings change, so too will your rating. This generally has a pretty negligible affect on your rating, but the affect can sometimes be a bit more if some of your past opponents had a low amount of games in the fargorate system and their rating changed a more significant amount as they got more games in. As fargorate learns more about your past opponents it has to correct your rating as well accordingly.

For example, when one of your opponents was rated say at 650 at the time you played them, but over time since then fargo has subsequently learned that they are actually a 600 player, well your results in your past match against that person, whatever they were, are no longer as impressive and so your rating has to go down slightly to reflect that (probably only a fraction of a point if you have a lot of games in the system, but it could be more if you have relatively few games in the system). And similarly, when they find out that 575 you previously played is actually a 620, whatever your results were against that person are suddenly a bit more impressive than they had previously been and so your rating has to be increased to properly reflect that. Your rating is actually changing every day if any of your past opponents had a new match entered into the system, it is just that the amount it moves isn't usually enough for you to be able to see it because of the fact that they are rounding to the nearest whole number and it didn't move enough to flip you to the next whole number up or down.

 

[alphadog]

If results are being reported your game total will change , that should be a clue

 

[JC]

They will not accept results from round robin tournaments because "historically players throw games after being out of contention".

Not sure who these players are but Fargorate appears to know them. I have never played against them.

But the results of a league match after a twelve hour work day and a few drinks against the same people you have been playing for years are golden data.

Fargorate concept is very smart but like so many deep thinking intellectual types of endeavors, lack common sense.

 

[Bob Jewett]

They will not accept results from round robin tournaments because "historically players throw games after being out of contention".

Not sure who these players are but Fargorate appears to know them. ...

I've seen it happen multiple times. In Cardiff one year at the World Nine Ball Championships, a top player had locked up first place in his group but had one more match left. A lot of money at high odds came down on his weak opponent who amazingly won the otherwise meaningless match.

The first pro tournament I saw (1966?) had a similar situation where in the final round player A would win first place if he won the match. He had a tough match on paper, but he won pretty easily -- against his cousin. Bill Stroud was the player who was knocked out of first by the "win".

 

[JC]

I've lost to more 300 fargo players in league play for the reasons stated in my post than I have ever witnessed games being thrown.

The system can always be gamed but some things are the rule and others the exception and you can't let the exception dominate the rule.

And if these players were such underdogs why were they in position to win the tournament and not the other "stronger" player? They played exactly the same field to get there in the round robin. Even good players have terrible days.

 

[ShortBusRuss]

Well, that sucks for round robins. A LOT (if not the majority) of European weekly events are round robin, and if Fargorate was not aware, Europe produces more high-quality players than America. It seems counter-intuitive to not accept the main tournament format for all of Europe. They take it a lot more seriously than in some other areas, and as such, The round robin results reflect an accurate measurement of skill over here.

I assume that if the tournaments go to single elimination in later rounds, that those rounds could be imported?

 

[Chili Palmer]

In order to enter matches into FR you have to be a member of their League Management System (LMS).

FargoRate - LMS

fargorate.com

I'm not sure of the round robin thing, makes sense but I had not heard that before.

 

[skip100]

I think Chili is right, they will accept open tournaments but league results need to be entered in through their proprietary system.

 

[Chili Palmer]

I just logged in and confirmed, tournaments are not entered via LMS, so the OP will need to contact FR directly on that process.

I think Chili is right, they will accept open tournaments but league results need to be entered in through their proprietary system.

Here in Germany, I would like to see some of our regional tournaments entered into Fargorate. Will Fargorate accept any tournament results, as long as there are full match scores? If so, what is the method to submit those results? We have a lot of players in these events with a Fargorate already, so we have a baseline that other players can be measured against..

Edit: I just realized full match scores for a lot of our tournaments are already in cuescore.com. Is it just a matter of sending the URL to Mike Page? Quite a few players already have Fargorate scores, so that should help getting other player's scores established..

One of my teammates also thinks that the German League system is reporting to Fargorate, as both of our Fargo-rated moved recently with us only playing leagues. Can Mike Page confirm this?

Russ

 

[ShortBusRuss]

I think Chili is right, they will accept open tournaments but league results need to be entered in through their proprietary system.

I emailed both ingenpool and Fargorate about using the Open Play tournaments to report German league results, and asked for Mike Page's input on the question. At this point, there is zero chance the lower level league players will voluntarily pay the Fargorate fee, as the German Liga system actually tracks statistics and whatnot better than any American league ever has. All matches are tracked going back years, with actual match scores, win percentage over the season, where the match was played, a various other tracking metrics. The entire Liga system needs to be "sold" on Fargorate, and the only way we are gonna do that is to market it a little within the Liga system by word of mouth, and show that it induces people to play more.

American league players, I think, could generally care less about accurately measuring themselves against other players, and practicing to close the gap. The mindset in Europe is completely different, and teams collectively expect their members to practice if they are in the hunt, to move up to the next level. The entire team wants to move from Landesliga to Verbandsliga... From Verbandsliga to Oberliga, etc. If a team fails to field a team for a league match, the responsible club gets fined by the German state Liga management, etc.

 

[ShortBusRuss]

Greta news!! Mike Page just responded to me saying that round robin tournaments, that move on to single elimination, are perfectly fine to be imported into Fargorate. It is just a matter of ironing out the import mechanism with him at this point..

 

[mikepage]

They will not accept results from round robin tournaments because "historically players throw games after being out of contention".

Not sure who these players are but Fargorate appears to know them. I have never played against them.

But the results of a league match after a twelve hour work day and a few drinks against the same people you have been playing for years are golden data.

Fargorate concept is very smart but like so many deep thinking intellectual types of endeavors, lack common sense.

Where do those words in quotes come from? Are you attributing them to FargoRate?

Our position on Round Robin events has nothing to do with this throw-games-after-being-out-of-contention issue.

 

[JC]

Where do those words in quotes come from? Are you attributing them to FargoRate?

Our position on Round Robin events has nothing to do with this throw-games-after-being-out-of-contention issue.

I got that idea from here. Did I misunderstand what I was told?

 

[mikepage]

I got that idea from here. Did I misunderstand what I was told?


View attachment 620657

The first sentence is fine, and the second sentence is not a good summary of our concern.

Why won’t FargoRate process Round-Robin events?

The short answer is the format is a slime magnet

While data integrity can’t be guaranteed for any event, several small factors typically work together to encourage it. I’ll list some of those for an example event and then comment on round robin format

Typical event: Wednesday race-to-3 9-Ball at Joe’s poolroom run by TD Bill

Factors that contribute to data integrity.

(1) TD Bill runs regular events and has a reputation in the local pool community to protect

(2) Proprietor Joe has a reputation in the local pool community to protect

(3) This event, advertised in advance, is either open to anybody or open to anybody who meets a rating range or other broad criteria. This means I as a player cannot choose my specific opponents and I cannot choose who is in the event.

(4) If I play well, I may log 30 or more games into FargoRate. But if for some reason I significantly underperform, I am likely logging fewer than 10 games into FargoRate. Fewer games means less influence on a rating and also higher per-game investment.

(5) Because the event is open to a broad range of people, I don’t know who will be looking at the online bracket and perusing the scores.

(6) Because it is a random group of players, it’s hard for us to collude on things like playing for less than the stated entry fee or playing for nothing or recording wrong scores or putting players on the bracket who are not playing.

Many of these protections, which are not perfect but are pretty good, are lost with round-robin events.
Round Robin events are often run by one-off “TD”s who for some reason are anxious to get games into FargoRate. They can be run at a pool room, at the bar, at a house, or not be actually run at all. We've had a number something like this: the “TD” has 4 “opponents,” all 100 points lower and the “TD” loses 1-9 1-9, 3-9, and 2-9. We’ve seen ones with “opponents” who have been curiously inactive for the last few years and even dead. We’ve seen ones from TD’s who we’ve had significant interactions with and seem legitimate with a handful that look fine, and at some point things change. When you can choose a small number of participants, you can choose some who want a higher rating and some who want a lower rating. You can choose some who don’t care and others who do. You can avoid inviting anybody who wouldn’t put up with shenanigans. You can include phantom players and not play at all. So long as your phantom players are not people checking their game history, a RR event can be the work of just a single person with no checks or balances.

We can run statistical checks to see how well data from a particular category match with expectation. The answer is FINE for high-entry tournaments, FINE for league games, FINE for low-entry-fee tournaments, and NOT FINE for round-robin events.
You may be thinking well *I* am a trusted person who doesn’t do these things, is honest and above board and public and all that and *our* events are legitimate. And that’s probably true. But we have to look at the category of event as a whole, and this one is a slime magnet.

 

[JC]

The first sentence is fine, and the second sentence is not a good summary of our concern.

Why won’t FargoRate process Round-Robin events?

The short answer is the format is a slime magnet

While data integrity can’t be guaranteed for any event, several small factors typically work together to encourage it. I’ll list some of those for an example event and then comment on round robin format

Typical event: Wednesday race-to-3 9-Ball at Joe’s poolroom run by TD Bill

Factors that contribute to data integrity.

(1) TD Bill runs regular events and has a reputation in the local pool community to protect

(2) Proprietor Joe has a reputation in the local pool community to protect

(3) This event, advertised in advance, is either open to anybody or open to anybody who meets a rating range or other broad criteria. This means I as a player cannot choose my specific opponents and I cannot choose who is in the event.

(4) If I play well, I may log 30 or more games into FargoRate. But if for some reason I significantly underperform, I am likely logging fewer than 10 games into FargoRate. Fewer games means less influence on a rating and also higher per-game investment.

(5) Because the event is open to a broad range of people, I don’t know who will be looking at the online bracket and perusing the scores.

(6) Because it is a random group of players, it’s hard for us to collude on things like playing for less than the stated entry fee or playing for nothing or recording wrong scores or putting players on the bracket who are not playing.

Many of these protections, which are not perfect but are pretty good, are lost with round-robin events.
Round Robin events are often run by one-off “TD”s who for some reason are anxious to get games into FargoRate. They can be run at a pool room, at the bar, at a house, or not be actually run at all. We've had a number something like this: the “TD” has 4 “opponents,” all 100 points lower and the “TD” loses 1-9 1-9, 3-9, and 2-9. We’ve seen ones with “opponents” who have been curiously inactive for the last few years and even dead. We’ve seen ones from TD’s who we’ve had significant interactions with and seem legitimate with a handful that look fine, and at some point things change. When you can choose a small number of participants, you can choose some who want a higher rating and some who want a lower rating. You can choose some who don’t care and others who do. You can avoid inviting anybody who wouldn’t put up with shenanigans. You can include phantom players and not play at all. So long as your phantom players are not people checking their game history, a RR event can be the work of just a single person with no checks or balances.

We can run statistical checks to see how well data from a particular category match with expectation. The answer is FINE for high-entry tournaments, FINE for league games, FINE for low-entry-fee tournaments, and NOT FINE for round-robin events.
You may be thinking well *I* am a trusted person who doesn’t do these things, is honest and above board and public and all that and *our* events are legitimate. And that’s probably true. But we have to look at the category of event as a whole, and this one is a slime magnet.

Thank you for your concise reply

What I have to ask myself is why? Yes you can do all these things you say but to what end? What do these people have to gain by doing the stuff you say goes on? I mean really, what?

I don't want to argue about it on this forum but would love to have a conversation about all of this.

My phone number is on our Tioga BCAPL web site.

 

[Chili Palmer]

Thank you for your concise reply

What I have to ask myself is why? Yes you can do all these things you say but to what end? What do these people have to gain by doing the stuff you say goes on? I mean really, what?

I don't want to argue about it on this forum but would love to have a conversation about all of this.

My phone number is on our Tioga BCAPL web site.

This is the perfect place to have that conversation.

I got that idea from here. Did I misunderstand what I was told?


View attachment 620657

In the above message it says Players can/will throw games and in your first response says that's not the case, then in your second response you say the format is a "slime magnet" and then you go onto say how it's the TD's that are shady?

So, you're saying the players aren't the issues, but the TD's?

I'm not discounting they are part of the problem but in the accounting world the only way to get a way with shit is via collusion. With the proper checks and balances one person should not be able to do anything without someone else knowing.

There's simply no way (IMHO) a TD - on his/her own - could get away this long-term, there may be one or two instances but, let's face it, someone in that tournament is going to go looking up their FR stats and see they lost/won a tournament they didn't enter and questions should be asked.

I would venture to say there are many more players that dump if not in contention than there are TD's that mess with the system.

Just my opinion.

The first sentence is fine, and the second sentence is not a good summary of our concern.

Why won’t FargoRate process Round-Robin events?

The short answer is the format is a slime magnet

While data integrity can’t be guaranteed for any event, several small factors typically work together to encourage it. I’ll list some of those for an example event and then comment on round robin format

Typical event: Wednesday race-to-3 9-Ball at Joe’s poolroom run by TD Bill

Factors that contribute to data integrity.

(1) TD Bill runs regular events and has a reputation in the local pool community to protect

(2) Proprietor Joe has a reputation in the local pool community to protect

(3) This event, advertised in advance, is either open to anybody or open to anybody who meets a rating range or other broad criteria. This means I as a player cannot choose my specific opponents and I cannot choose who is in the event.

(4) If I play well, I may log 30 or more games into FargoRate. But if for some reason I significantly underperform, I am likely logging fewer than 10 games into FargoRate. Fewer games means less influence on a rating and also higher per-game investment.

(5) Because the event is open to a broad range of people, I don’t know who will be looking at the online bracket and perusing the scores.

(6) Because it is a random group of players, it’s hard for us to collude on things like playing for less than the stated entry fee or playing for nothing or recording wrong scores or putting players on the bracket who are not playing.

Many of these protections, which are not perfect but are pretty good, are lost with round-robin events.
Round Robin events are often run by one-off “TD”s who for some reason are anxious to get games into FargoRate. They can be run at a pool room, at the bar, at a house, or not be actually run at all. We've had a number something like this: the “TD” has 4 “opponents,” all 100 points lower and the “TD” loses 1-9 1-9, 3-9, and 2-9. We’ve seen ones with “opponents” who have been curiously inactive for the last few years and even dead. We’ve seen ones from TD’s who we’ve had significant interactions with and seem legitimate with a handful that look fine, and at some point things change. When you can choose a small number of participants, you can choose some who want a higher rating and some who want a lower rating. You can choose some who don’t care and others who do. You can avoid inviting anybody who wouldn’t put up with shenanigans. You can include phantom players and not play at all. So long as your phantom players are not people checking their game history, a RR event can be the work of just a single person with no checks or balances.

We can run statistical checks to see how well data from a particular category match with expectation. The answer is FINE for high-entry tournaments, FINE for league games, FINE for low-entry-fee tournaments, and NOT FINE for round-robin events.
You may be thinking well *I* am a trusted person who doesn’t do these things, is honest and above board and public and all that and *our* events are legitimate. And that’s probably true. But we have to look at the category of event as a whole, and this one is a slime magnet.

 

[Poolplaya9]

While Mike has said it wasn't his primary concern with the format, my experience has been that the round robin tournaments where some collusion takes place outnumber those where everybody gave their best effort every match. Among other things there are just too many matches that don't mean anything for at least one of the players, and too many opportunities to help somebody else out (who might be a friend, or who might have offered you financial incentive) by manipulating your meaningless matches.

 

[ShortBusRuss]

While Mike has said it wasn't his primary concern with the format, my experience has been that the round robin tournaments where some collusion takes place outnumber those where everybody gave their best effort every match. Among other things there are just too many matches that don't mean anything for at least one of the players, and too many opportunities to help somebody else out (who might be a friend, or who might have offered you financial incentive) by manipulating your meaningless matches.

Well, in AMERICA, that may be true, because all Americans wanna do is win money. In Europe, round-robin is by far the most popular tournament format, as it guarantees everyone at least 3-4 matches, no matter how they play, or whom they draw. Gee, maybe this is one of the reasons that Europeans generally play better.

Gambling is not so much of a thing, because quality players get picked up on club teams and play non-handicapped in German leagues against players within 50-100 Fargo points of them, or so. Gambling distracts from what you are in the club to do: Get better through practice, and help your team win, so you can move from Landesliga to Verbandsliga.. From Verbandsliga to Oberliga, etc.

Fargorate might actually be the solution to that problem. I remember back in WA state, the single most motivating factor for my home hall Wednesday night tournament was a list on the wall of top three players in the tournament, going back a couple of years by the time I left. I wanted so bad to be on that wall, it drove my practice. Winning money had nothing to do with it,so while everybody else was gambling cheap sets,I was practicing, which is why I quickly moved beyond the skill level of the gamblers.

People want to measure themselves. Fargorate is the easiest, most accurate way tod do so. If you decide to test yourself against someone else and you know their Fargorate, at least you can get into a tough, but workable game, rather than being completely outclassed. Gamblers hate it, because they don't want anything close to a fair game.

My hope for Fargorate is that it has the same basic effect on the game as a USCF rating has on chess. Kids will practice chest for HOURS, to achieve a 50 point improvement. When your friend has a good tournament and raises their rating 20 points above you, you VERY badly want to study and practice more, and play as many tournaments as needed to beat them. Two good players in any sport/game, actively competing to achieve more than the other, is a powerful motivator for getting better.See: Chip Compton and Joey Gray.

 

[Dan_B]

geeez, I certainly wouldn't want to be fined by German state Liga management,
I'll hope that any importing of such motivations has its limits.

Short Bus you're conflating the hustle and league play when it comes to gambling.

That import mechanism can handle the games of round robin match ups, even if it's unknown who's playing who at game time, all the better when it comes to the legit part for such a format. Once you get past, learn, the initial set up from the back end to conclusion, the options prompt on match entries make it possible for all the player games (points), it will help the public display (results) having equal number of games for all players.

Just a quick thought on two different formats within one event (tournament) as far as the machine understanding what to record and display would be to set up two different games/sessions even though anybody paying attention would know that those results are from one tournament.

There are some memory prompts on players when doing the data game entries however there is a lot of repetitive data field work to it (the unknown), while getting it right, the machine doesn't discern motivations and character assignations are pain so..., they, Brain will implore the importance of getting it right.

you can do it...