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BGonline.org Forums
Real world examples
Posted By: Chuck Bower In Response To: How to improve backgammon: Adopt a world ranking system like tennis or golf (Henrik Bukkjaer)
Date: Friday, 8 July 2011, at 5:44 p.m.
I doubt I'd be going out on a limb saying that the Danish rating system is likely the best in the world. I'm not in position to analyze it. I can give a couple examples from other ratings systems:
1) USBGF rating system. Before Rich responds with a defensive post, we all know that this system A) hasn't had time to reach maturity, and B) is likely to be changed (augmented) to more accurately reflect the skill level competitions that led to those results. But with those caveats, I just looked at the current top 30 and roughly half play Open and half play in lower flights. Now you could argue that all 30 SHOULD be playing Open.... (I don't know if viewing this list is open to non-members, and players from outside the US likely won't know most of the names anyway, but you might want to try looking down that list yourself -- choose "all tournaments" and then click on the last column heading "Club Rating" to get the list ordered by rating.)
2) The best system prior to the computer age was the KG Ratings system. I have a copy of the last issue (July 1996). (There were some problems with that issue where some active players who previously were rated inexplicably(?) disappeared from the list, BTW. I don't know how that affects my story.) That document lists sequentially the top 100 ratings for players with a minimum of 1000 experience points and then an alphabetical listing of everyone (except the 'missing' -- see comment above). About 2800 names appear in this listing (including some Europeans). I don't know the distribution of experience points and don't feel like spending several hours tallying it, but looking at a couple pages in R's, I counted 15 out of 200 with 1000 experience points or more.
I had 404 rating points at the time. My rating equaled that of the 58th-60th players on the top 100 list (Shimon Kagan, Howard Markowitz, and Joe Russell). I had been playing open for 10 or 11 months at that time. If anyone thinks I deserved to be ranked equal with these three then I'm asking that person to start the Chuck Bower Fanclub. I did not cash in an Open level event until 1998 (semifinalist in the Main at the Midwest) and followed that with my next cash in 2001 (4th/5th in Novi). I was not pushed into the Open division. I don't know if I would have been if I hadn't gone voluntarily, but clearly my rating was (grossly) inflated. Was I an anomaly?
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