Thursday, December 13, 2012

Impact of Teams Events on UK Rankings and Masters

The UK Masters invites come out later this week and I am very interested to see what the reaction will be when some players realise that they have missed out on their place due to the inclusion of Team events into the rankings.

My back of the envelope calculations show that ten of the Top 20 ranked players have Teams events in their best four scores. You can determine the impact of this by replacing the Team Event with the next best Singles event score. The impact ranges from -5 RPs to a whopping -80 RPs in one case for those ten aspirants. Five of the Top 20 would lose in excess of 35 RPs once these team events are disregarded.

Given the gap between 16th place and 30th place is less than 17 RPs and also that the aspirant currently in the Top 16 would fall to 78th in the Rankings if Team Events disregarded, I can see some unhappy teddy bears.

And that is the reason why Team Events are not included in Masters invites here in NZ.

16 comments:

  1. There has also been an overwhelming, if not unanimous response from the NZ community that they do not want team events to appear at all in RHQ individual rankings, not just masters considerations.

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  2. Does it make that much of an impact, Locky and I smashed up Warclouds and would still of both masters invites irrespective of this result? Is it more to do with larger teams i.e 4-8 players? I think if 8 players are getting max points for tournament then yes, it can cause problems

    Mal

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    Replies
    1. I love how Pete details, in depth, exactly how big a difference it would make, and Mal is all "huh?"

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  3. In Sweden they include team events scores in your rankings. But the score earned by a team (which is calculated in the same way as a singles event) is divided equally between the team players.

    So for example I won the Swedish Team event in Varberg last month. Based off their system if it was a singles event then the winner would have earned 62000 points (see here for details on how they calculate it: http://svenska40k.se/rank.php?action=rankutr). But as it was a 4 man team event that score is shared between our team and so I only earn 15500 points.

    I think this is a happy medium as sure you can earn points for a team event, and if it is a really big event you can potentially earn more points compared to a small singles event, but at the same time it is not disproportionately rewarding due to the higher number of players, but small number of placings, compared to a large singles event.

    That is where the UK rankings fails IMO as they do not take into account that whilst there may be a lot of players, there are not a lot of teams and so the chances of placing towards the top are much higher than in a similar sized singles event.

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  4. Meh, the whole rankings system is flawed anyway so what's one more problem? I'm not too fussed about it.

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  5. This is extreme hyperbole, but that approach is like saying "our legal system is screwed, so lets just make paedophilia legal. What's one more hole in the system? Now pass me that hot Mexican child!"

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  6. Lets refer to that as the Jimmy Saville defense from here on out

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  7. WTF? That simile is truly awful.

    I obviously don't think that any minor flaw in a system makes the whole system invalid*. However, I do think that pre-existing large flaws in a system make further small flaws pretty much irrelevant.


    * and certainly not to the extent you make out in your straw man argument


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  8. Sorry, your initial comment just came across as "it's broken so who cares if we just keep breaking it further", which is the kind of apathy that if not kept in check, can be quite destructive.

    I don't think the ranking system itself is all that flawed, so long as you keep a fairly level head about what it actually
    means, or more importantly what it doesn't mean.

    Being ranked #1 in the country does not in any way shape or form mean that you are the best player in the country.

    The biggest flaw really is just people who take it too literally or too seriously, which really is a concept that applies to a lot of aspects of this game.

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    1. >Being ranked #1 in the country does not in any way shape or form mean that you are the best player in the country. <

      That's not what you told me last night :-(

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  9. Is the photo Charlie?

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  10. I suffer from Adult Onset Gingerbetes.

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  11. Just out of curiosity would you publish the your findings with out the team events? Just curious what they would be

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    Replies
    1. Sure Will....and I suspect you know what it will show :-)

      1. Pym 395 (-3)
      2. Armstrong 385 (-9)
      3. Johnson 394
      4. Dan Thomas 384
      5. Mawdsley 381
      6. Watkinson 378
      7. Howley 365 (-8)
      8. Legg 347 (-29)
      9. Heelen 276 (-100) - no 4th result
      10. Wilkinson 375
      11. Nikolov 365 (-6)
      12. Spiers 371
      13. Diesel 371
      14. Harbinson 307 (-59)
      15. Ricagni 369
      16. Newman 367
      17. Thompson 324 (-41)
      18. Goodwin 364
      19. Wildman 363
      20. Sewell 346 (-17)
      21. Follows 363

      So reordering just for singles

      1. Pym 395
      2. Johnson 394
      3. Armstrong 385
      4. Thomas 384
      5. Mawdsley 381
      6. Watkinson 378
      7. Wilkinson 375
      8. Spiers 371
      9. Diesel 371
      10. Ricagni 369
      11. Newman 367
      12. Howley 365
      13. Nikolov 365
      14. Goodwin 364
      15. Wildman 363
      16. Follows (363)

      So Legg (2x Teams), Heelan (1x Team), Harbinson (2x Teams) would miss out replaced by Goodwin, Wildman and Follows

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    2. The difference from my original numbers can be explained by variations due to Winter Incursion 2011 being replaced by Winter Incursion 2012.

      Things get very tight around when determining invites and the inclusion of 1-2 Teams Events has a marked effect.

      Personally I would be cautious including Teams events in Masters invites if the number of Teams events is expected to grow.

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