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BGonline.org Forums
The Giants List - A Great Institution in Backgammon
Posted By: Rick Janowski
Date: Wednesday, 24 February 2016, at 1:26 p.m.
Since its inception in 1993 the Giants List (originally intended to be just the top 32 players) quickly became the accepted measure of high status within backgammon and with good reasons. Hitherto, the top 32 players have invariably been players who had demonstrated themselves to be at the top of the game. Granted, there have been other players who were as strong as those in the top 32, but not as many as one might expect from a voting system. Also, the relative place positions between players in the top 32 may not have been absolutely correct, but this is inevitable in any system of ranking. Because of the great track record of the Giants List it has been justifiably recognised as one of the great institutions in Backgammon, and for that we should all appreciate the great work by Yamin Yamin, Carol Joy Cole and Jake Jacobs, and the late lamented Howard Ring for maintaining such a great asset.
Notwithstanding the above comments, for whatever reasons, the 2015 results appear to have demonstrated some potentially serious flaws in the overall Giants voting process, to such an extent that many voters who have a deep appreciation of this institution have become very concerned about its future viability.
If one considers all the previous top 32 Giants Lists placings before this current list there appear to be only 4 examples where a player has jumped up more than 200 places between two successive Giants Lists and of these only two jumped up more than 300 places. In each of these cases the players involved had made a significant impact in terms or results and/or exceptional performance levels.
This year alone there are five examples were each player jumped up more than 200 places (four of which jumped up more than 300 places), but only one of the players (Marty Storer) had made a significant impact in terms or results and/or exceptional performance levels.
To many observers this will appear to be a highly irregular and very much unexpected result. Without transparency of results or independent auditing, it is quite natural for voters (who are stakeholders) to consider these as being extreme oddities out of balance with the normal results where players rarely shift positions, up or down, more than 30 points.
The Giants List voting is really a competition which has rules like in any game, but not very clear or comprehensive perhaps. It is extremely unlikely that these results have breached the current rules. However, in addition to the written rules, voters will usually have some concept of additional “unwritten rules” and what might constitute the “spirit of the rules”. This is only natural I believe.
In my opinion, it is inevitable that voters will form their own strong opinions of the validity of these results based on the degree to which they consider them regular or irregular and whether they consider some breach of the “unwritten rules” or “spirit of the rules” was likely. These personal perspectives may also be influenced to a large extent by an overall lack of transparency.
It is my belief that the Giants List has been a great institution in Backgammon, but now needs a significant upgrade to maintain its universal status.
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