- What is an ELO
Rating?
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- The ELO rating system
typically starts players off at 1500 (average rating). As players
complete matches, their rating gradually moves towards their ultimate
playing strength. Sometimes, if the skill level of the group can be
estimated, the starting point (average skill level) may differ.
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- ELO is based on math and
can be used to give a good estimate of the probability of a certain level
player beating another.
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- What is a good ELO
Rating?
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- In Chess, the World
Champion might achieve a standardized ELO rating of 2700 and more.
In Backgammon, due to the luck involved, the World Champ might achieve a
standardized ELO rating of about 2000.
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- World Class BG
player = 1900
- Advanced BG player
= 1800
- Intermediate BG player =
1650
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- What are the
weaknesses of ELO?
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- ELO is based on a
weighted- average of opponents a player has played. This is one
reason why only tournament matches are used in many ELO computations.
The " random- seeding element" of a tournament removes much of
this weakness. Players cannot choose their opponents.
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- When applied to a "
closed group," ELO will do its job and give a good idea of how much
better Player A is vs. Player B. However, it can't tell how Player A
in THIS Club or Group would do against a player in a different
Club or Tournament. ELO does not give much information outside
of this "closed group."
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- For instance, if a Club of
World Class Players and/or SNOWIE's played one another, their ratings
would all tend to hover around 1500! Another Club of all Novice
Players would ALSO tend to have ratings of 1500! How do we
counter these idiosyncrasies of ELO while maintaining the overall
mathematical benefits
of ELO?
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- At zRoundtable.com,
we use various quantitative analyses to compute and compare ratings across
various Clubs and Leagues. We use "benchmark" players to
help compute correlations and inter-relationships among different Clubs
and Leagues. We have come up with a standardized Backgammon Rating
List which we call a Zuperlist.
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- Who or What is ELO?
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- The rating approach is
based on work done by Professor
ELO, who originally developed this approach for Chess.
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- What is a rampup?
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- In backgammon, it
typically takes "experience" (you earn 9 points of experience in
a single 9- point tournament match) of more than 1000 (closer to 1500)
before a player's "true or steady-state" rating is achieved.
This
period of "gradual change" is called the "rampup."
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