WPA World Rankings

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voiceofreason

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
http://www.wpapool.com/web/rankings

There surely can't be enough events for this to be a true "world ranking". Only five of last years top ten have retained a top ten place. Appleton, the previous world number one has dropped five places.

Surely this should be a two year ranking list like most other sports?

Not a lot of American's on there. Is there a reason for that?

Johnny Archer, ranked 37 down to 39? Surely not??
 
Pardon me, but what other sports use a two-year ranking period? Golf, Tennis, NASCAR, Football, Basketball, Baseball, everything I can think of uses a single year.

Five events is low. But this year is odd as there is no World 10-Ball event and no World 8-Ball event. Those could both be back next year and so the movement within the rankings will be less severe.
 
Jerry Forsyth said:
Pardon me, but what other sports use a two-year ranking period? Golf, Tennis, NASCAR, Football, Basketball, Baseball, everything I can think of uses a single year.
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Cue sports then, example, snooker and English 8 ball pool..

Had know idea NASCAR had a world ranking. Can you point me to the list please?

Baseball world rankings are over FOUR years

Golf world ranking points last for 105 weeks

Football (soccer) world rankings are over FOUR years

Tennis is 52 weeks. Fair enough..
 
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voiceofreason said:
http://www.wpapool.com/web/rankings

There surely can't be enough events for this to be a true "world ranking". Only five of last years top ten have retained a top ten place. Appleton, the previous world number one has dropped five places.

Surely this should be a two year ranking list like most other sports?

Not a lot of American's on there. Is there a reason for that?

Johnny Archer, ranked 37 down to 39? Surely not??
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Although you raise a good point, I'm OK with this methodology, which causes big swings in the rankings from event to event. If the sport had more premium events, it might be different.

Americans, other than Shane Van Boening and Hunter Lombardo, tend not to show up to the WPA rankings events contested overseas.

That's why few Americans have a decent WPA Ranking.

Things were made easier for the American pros as the US Open and the Ultimate 10-ball are now two of the five WPA Rankings events.

America-based
US Open 9-ball
Ultimate 10-ball

Asia-based
China Open
Japan Open

Middle East
Word 9-ball Championships

Europe-based
None
 
I'm not %100 certain because I'm not an expert or a statistician, but I believe the World Golf Rankings are over a two year period with additional weighted emphasis on the more recent year/events. Not that it matters of course because pool isn't golf. I don't know what tennis or other individual sports do.
 
StraightPoolIU said:
I'm not %100 certain because I'm not an expert or a statistician, but I believe the World Golf Rankings are over a two year period with additional weighted emphasis on the more recent year/events. Not that it matters of course because pool isn't golf. I don't know what tennis or other individual sports do.
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105 weeks for golf with an emphasis on recent form (extra weight to ranking for 13 weeks after earning them I think, or something like that).
 
I think my point was that it was all a bit too much movement and therefore spikes are appearing that reflect on the list.
 
World Rankings

What is somewhat suspect, however, is the fact that Marlon Manalo, while being out of competition for @ 3 years now, plays in the recent World 9-ball Championships, and immediately assumes 55th place in the rankings, ahead of such players who compete regularly such as Dechaine, Rob Saez, and many others...????

This observation has NOTHING to do with Manalo's potential for ranking high among his fellow competitors, but the logistics of moving into a spot of note with only one (1) tournament under his belt in three (3) years doesn't make much sense...????
 
Yeah I agree. It's nice that pool has a world ranking system, but with few events and high volatility it's usefulness is somewhat suspect. To make it more reflective would be difficult however because of lack of established tours and organizations.
 
Well put, StraightPoolIU.

Rankings are only reflective of what is actually happening. And as you say, pool doesn't have the sufficient events available to have a real time "who's on first, what's on second."

But hey, at least there IS such a list. We have to make do with what we have, folks. If there were no list, would we be complaining because no one has "organized" our favorite players?
 
This is interesting.

I think with pool they could and should use up to 150 weeks (or 156 to make it easy to compute) for this ranking list since there are so few ranking tournaments.

You could compute it as follow:
Most recent year gets 50 percent.
Previous year gets 35 percent
2 years ago gets 15 percent.

This would stabalize the rankings a bit and probably make them more accurate since tournament pool can be so unpredictable.
 
There are dozens of great players who just aren't financially able to make it to the ranking tournaments to get on the list. It's not just Americans either as you have Yang Ching Shun, Kuo Po Cheng, Alcano and many others very low on the list due to lack of ranking events played.

Hell, if I had the money, I could probably enter every ranking tourney and maybe break into the top 100 and get ranked ahead of lots of great players.

The very top of the ranking will give an idea of who's hot at the moment, but until the majority of the top players are able to compete in most of the ranking events, it will never be an accurate ranking system, and that's just not possible given the current state of the pro pool scene.
 
However, doing poorly in the World Championships can be extremely costly. The poor showings in Doha by Ralf Souquet and Li Hewen devastated them in the Rankings. Li fell from 4th to 33rd while Souquet fared only slightly better in his drop from 5th to 22nd.
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The Points is a game of strategy. It is very interesting to note how various players choose to play their cards.
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Source - http://www.azbilliards.com/news/sto...hmann-lays-claim-to-best-player-in-the-world/

Rather telling really...
 
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