Best posts made by MrRoboto

Just FYI, some statistics for the current 2023 League

I love managing spreadsheets actually so if nobody else wants to do it, I’m available.
I don’t have nearly as much history here as many others though, so no hard feelings if I’m not suited to the task.

Dear community,

there is a discussion going on right now concerning revamping / overhauling the current ranking system.

While the current system is doing okay and we could certainly just leave it as is, there are some issues with it. How severe are they? I guess that’s up to personal opinion. For me they are major flaws.

I have listed these in another post, over in the league general discussion thread:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/post/1664594

Please also have a look at this post:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/post/1664652

Now I have been working these past few weeks on an improved system and I’d like to introduce it to you.

The spreadsheet is here. I hope it’s easy to understand, but explanation will follow.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Larckt6iOuBZtZ-AVzDPv-HEofZJdeN8ptXXotun0Og/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Short and simple version for everyone:

Every player starts at a base rating of 1500.
Wins award points while losses give negative points.
Winning against higher ranked opponents give more points than winning against lower ranked ones.
Accordingly, losses against low ranked opponents reduce ELO rating more thank losing against better players.

That’s basically all you need to know: The higher your ELO rating, the better you are!

Tier levels are included but just serve as a visual cue or a motivation. They don’t have any impact on the ranking.

For everyone interested: Now some more details:

Whenever a game is posted, the Ratings of both Players A and B will change.

The exact formula is:

RAnew = Rating of Player A after the game
RAold = Rating of Player A before the game
K = Factor that increases / decreases the points - more on that later
S = 1 if Player A has won, 0 if Player A has lost
EA = Expected outcome for Player A

What is EA?

Now this might look complicated to some. But what this formula does is easy:
The higher the difference between Ratings of Player A and B before the game, the smaller the absolute value of Ea. Therefore a win against much lower ranked players is not worth a lot, while winning against similar or even higher ranked players is worth a lot more.
For losses the opposite is true.
A win by the current #1 against the current last place will award only meager 4 points for the winner and -2 for the loser.
However, the last player would receive a whopping 136 for a win and #1 would suffer -87 for that loss!

Now the Factor F is important: I set it to 500.
This means, that a player with an Elo rating 500 higher than the opponent is 10x as likely to win the game.

Increasing this factor would lead to a wider field of ELO Ratings, while lowering the factor would squeeze everyone closer together.
I found 500 to be quite suitable for our needs but this might change in the future with more games coming in.

Now the other important thing: The K factor.
This factor is quite high in the first couple of games and then diminishes gradually. This is so a player can rapidly find her or his correct place in the ranking system. A very strong player would not need to play dozens of games to climb to the top - the system would realize the strength very quickly and move that player to the top in just a few games. Same of course for not-so-good players.
The exact numbers are up for debate, but I have for now settled on these values:

We can change these numbers if people think the impact of the first couple of games is too high or too low.

.
.
.

Advantages of this system:

Besides solving the issues I mentioned in my other post, there are the following upsides:

1. Transparency
   Everybody can always see the amount of points a result gave at any time.

2. Climbing is always possible
   ELO is not set in stone. Climbing or falling can always be done: The more drastic the change in skill, the faster the ELO change will be.
   PPG on the other hand was getting more stable with each more game finished.

3. ELO reflects the CURRENT strength
   You can see how strong every player RIGHT NOW is and not how strong the year on average was.

4. No games are discouraged
   No strategic avoiding of games / players anymore!

5. No theoretical end, improvement is always possible
   PPG always has a maximum. You can reach that maximum with your first game! You might need to complete the necessary amount of games to qualify for playoffs but if you go 3-0 against highest Tier, there is no way to get higher than that.
   ELO can always be improved, there is no limit!

6. Filtering
   You can filter the results quickly. If you want to know how a specific player is doing with the Axis, you can find out!

.
.
.
Now this is a work in progress. I will gladly take your feedback and discuss it with the community. The goal is to find a system that the majority is happy with!

Some things are TODO at the moment and I hope I will get to it asap.

1. ELO Decay
   I am planning to implement a decay, if someone is inactive. My idea is that only ratings above the starting Rating of 1500 will decay. The decay could start after 6 months inactivity and then the ELO could drop by 10% per month until it reaches 1500. Please give some feedback!

2. Two different rankings
   I am in favour of a lifetime ranking. However, most of us love the yearly playoffs and we need some kind of requirements to qualify for them. So my idea is to have two columns: One for the lifetime ELO and one that only uses the results of the current year. That way we can see overall ranking and yearly ranking at the same time. We could keep the requirement of 3 completed games in the current year to qualify for playoffs.

3. Factor in bids?
   One idea came up by @mr_stucifer to factor in the bids into the results.
   For example: For every point the bid is above the average bid, the ELO-change could be 5% bigger than usual (and vice versa). I would need to work out the exact numbers. But I’m not sure if that’s even desirable in the first place? Your feedback is appreciated!

Oh wow, so much praise from the gamerman himself. Thanks mate :-)

Yeah I tend to be emotional about being diced, making mistakes afterwards and had to step back a while after getting frustrated.

Then I kinda forgot about the game and now am super happy to be back. Not to enthusiastic yet about PtV but that may be just because I am not used to it.

I don’t know why you waved that Japanese flag at me though haha.

PS: 4 years older, with my 3rd child on the way - although not completely emotionless, I’m sure I can handle bad dice a lot better now ;-)

@gamerman01 said in Post League Game Results Here:

Roboto is clearly not very rusty…
No pun intended

Yeah those were nice. I am having some losses coming in too tough, unfortunately.

I always find it fascinating how in a game that does involve luck in quite a substantial way, some players are still so consistently strong and come out top of the league year in year out.

I am away for a week, so won’t be able to play.
Will be back next Tuesday!
I hope it’s ok if I make my life easier by just posting it here once and tagging everyone that I’m playing against right now, instead of posting it in every single thread.

@gamerman01
@simon33
@Avner
@FlyingBadger
@Ghostglider
@aequitas-et-veritas
@Sovietishcat
@Pejon_88
@surfer
@elche

I was playing around with the exact numbers and apparently didn’t settle on the same number across different versions.

Tiers have no actual meaning and are just a visual cue.
And they add motivation, I think.

I will discuss final numbers with gamerman later, probably after entering more of the historical results.

Huge thanks btw to @mr_stucifer and @farmboy who provided all of the data before 2023.
As of right now, we have everything from 01-01-2019 until now!

First of all, I can’t quite follow @Arthur-Bomber-Harris last post. Sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re trying to say there.
All I can say is, that starting ELO is the same for everyone.

Then the easy answer to @oysteilo first post:
Winner and loser points may differ, when one of them (or both) has less than 11 completed games.

This is because the first couple of games weigh more than later ones. I accomplish that with a “K Factor”, which expresses the amount a game is worth.
That K factor is really high for the first couple of games and then gradually decreases. As @gamerman01 said, the exact values are chosen “arbritrarily”, although of course we thought long and hard about them.

That K factor is essential, because new players all start at 1500, which is almost guaranteed not a perfect rating for them (most newbies are worse than that average, but some might be a lot better too). So we need the system to move new players as fast as possible to where they belong. Normally, a game between two equals awards only 25 (or -25) points. If a new player is actually a 1900 or a 1100 player, those 400 points climb or descend would take a long time without that sensitivity Factor.

Right now, the K factor we settled on is:

As you can see, the first 3 games are worth a little bit more than double the later games.

We can talk about these values, they are not set in stone. But I want to emphasize the importance of bringing new players to their appropriate rating asap. The only alternative would be placement matches - this would mean that new players are not rated at all for their first 5-10 games and opponents would receive / lose just a fraction of the normal worth. I don’t like this option for us.

Now the other question concerning playoff ranking / seeding.

@AndrewAAGamer is correct, originally I planned to use the current year only for playoff seeding. He said he also prefers this and compared it to football, basketball, baseball and hockey.

Now that comparison has one gigantic flaw however: All of these sports are in a league system where every participant has a fixed number of games and the exact same opponents. So it makes sense to start a season with a clean slate.

However, this is not the case with our community. With OOB and PtV, players need to have 3 completed games, with BM4 they need 6. But 3 games are not nearly enough to properly rate a player, especially not if one of those games was an upset (an unexpected loss / win). If we had an entry requirement of 10+ games per year, I’d definitely go for a clean slate every Jan 1!

Our game is more like the other two sports you mentioned (golf or tennis), even though they are still a bit different: It’s impossible to burst onto the scene as a complete nobody and expect to participate in the biggest tournament with only 3 games completed. A first time participant of a Grand-Slam-Tournament has proven himself/herself over many matches beforehand in smaller tournaments. We don’t have that luxury.
I think our sports can probably best be compared to boxing, where everyone chooses their opponents and some have only very few matches per year, while others have some more.

I can change the system to rank playoff seedings only according to results in the current year. Which would mean everyone starts at 1500 (for playoff ranking only). But do we want that?

@oysteilo actually gave a great example!

Oysteilo started the year with OOB rating of 1669
He is 2-1 this year, with both of his wins being almost worthless (against dawgoneit), giving him only +3 each. He lost once against the #1 AndrewAAGamer for -16. Which gives oysteilo a final rating of 1659. Which is more or less the same rating he had for the last 7 years.

ArthurBomberHarris started the year with OOB rating of 1542
He went 5-0 this year, although only one of his opponents was really strong (he defeated #1 AndrewAAGamer!). He gained 110 in the process, which means he significantly improved his rating from 1542 to 1652. This is the highest OOB rating he ever achieved.

They are now almost identical in rating (1652 and 1659), with 32 or 41 total completed games. Which means the rating is very reliable, those two players are very likely extremely similar in strength.

Now it’s a personal decision: Do you think oysteilo should get the higher seed because of his slightly higher rating and the fact he mainainted roughly that rating for 7 years? Even though his rating basically stagnated this year? Then the system should stay as it is.

Or do you think ArthurBomberHarris should get the higher seed because he is on an upward trajectory this year? Remember, Arthur is probably not better than oysteilo (they are most likely equally strong right now) and it is the first time he achieved the same level as oysteilo. But if you think the improvement he showed this year is worth more the system should change to let everyone start at 1500 on Jan1.

Do you think AndrewAAGamer who sits comfortably at #1, with only farmboy being SOMEWHAT close should get the top seeding? He went 7-2 and increased his OOB rating from 1798 to 1830.

Or do you think the 5-0 of Arthur and the 4-0 of Booper this year is more impressive and should give both of them a higher seeding, despite both of them definitely being not as good as Andrew?

My personal preference is the first option, which is currently implemented.
But I can absolutely understand if you value recent results higher than overall strength! This is a system that should be backed by the majority of the community so please: WEIGH IN!

With AAB you mean ABH, ArthurBomberHarris?

We use the overall ranking right now and I would like to keep it as well in the future.

We wouldn’t need it if EVERYONE is like Myygames and plays one version only.

However, some people like Pejon or GeneralDisarray are playing 2 or even more versions. I find it interesting to see if someone is a specialist or a generalist.

But, as you two have already agreed: Playoffs are never based on overall rankings, but rather on type specifics.

The last 100 BM4 games have almost exactly 50% Axis wins.
Bids in that timeframe hovered around +20 for Allies.

Since you are a new player, my assumption would be that an Allied bid of slightly over 20 would be fair if you are Allies or slightly below 20 if you are Axis

Alright, I can finally chime in, but before I do:

Happy new year everybody! It’s 10 am in Central Europe so I think most players on this community are in 2024 right, or do we have any Hawaiians here?

There are 3 issues I want to address:

1) How to handle new players.

I’d like to keep it as is. @pacifiersboard said that right now, new players “should be advised to play low rated League players first.”
This is generally a good idea, no matter the system! Think about it, it would be odd to see newcomers challenge the top of top or even reigning champions in other sports too, wouldn’t it?
And even concerning their ELO ranking: While some strategic choosing of opponents might lead to a higher ELO in the short run, long-term ELO can’t be “gamed”. You will end up where you belong, eventually.

2) K-factor (sensitivity)

@gamerman01 said in League General Discussion Thread:

I eliminated range 6-10 games and just made 6+ to 50 sensitivity as it was for 11+ before.

I’m actually not very fond of that change.
Right now, game 6 has a K-factor of 90 while game 7 has a K-factor of 50. Just as an explanation: Against an equal opponent, game 6 would award ± 45 points, while game 7 gives ±25. That’s a HUGE jump. Game 6 is almost double worth as game 7.

It feels horrible to lose game 6 before winning game 7.

One more reason: This gives the impression that ELO has more or less found the accurate place in the ranking after 6 (or 7) games. While I do trust the system to work for most new players after 6-7 games, any upsets or unusual results within these first couple of games would distort the ranking quite a lot. Imagine an upset (in any direction) happening in game 6, it would take longer for the system to “correct” the ranking afterwards.

I’m MUCH more in favour of a gradual K-factor decline. In fact, even the 4 values we had before

were not gradual enough for my liking.

I’d prefer the following table:

The only reason I haven’t implemented it yet is because I have to adapt the formula but I will probably do it later today.

3) Counting at the beginning or the end

Originally I was completely with @gamerman01 on this. Yes, games can go on for quite a while and your opponent might (and probably will) change ELO in that timeframe: But so is their skill. And yes, early rounds have a bigger impact, althought an argument can be made that the decisive battles occur later in the game. In any way, the effect is negligible in my opinion.
@mainah 's example is actually a great argument for that ;-)
Player B with 1500 ELO is expected to win but with Player A at 1400 in the end, player B will be awarded a higher ELO change as opposed to counting at the beginning (A started at 1300). Which is fair, since apparently A got better during the play.
Now player A loses more at 1400 of course, but on the other hand, with start-ELO-counting all of these values would be different anyway. Because those other games that ended during the game between A and B, that resulted in A’s ELO going from 1300 to 1400 - well they must have started some time. Some probably before starting the game against B, so the values wouldn’t be 1300 anyways.
TLDR: The difference is negligible and it doesn’t really make a difference to count at start or beginning.

HOWEVER!

You convinced me with the mass forfeits.
These do happen from time to time and even more often we have ghosts like @simon33 recently. I myself went AWOL in 2019, with multiple games against me being called as wins for my opponents.
Right now the results are entered in order of posting. so first results are being calculated first.
In @simon33 's case: The opponent who called the win first (that was @avner on Nov24) had the biggest advantage. After that call, simons Rating dropped from 1353 to 1330 so subsequents calls awarded less and less points - first @Sovietishcat on Dec 10, than myself on Dec 17 and finally @Adam514 on Dec 29.

The points awarded were
Avner - 23
Sovietishcat - 19
MrRoboto - 13
Adam514 - 1

Simon33 final rating: 1297

Now had we called the game in a different order (adam first, then me, then sovietishcat and avner last), the points awarded would have been:

Adam514 - 1
MrRoboto - 15
Sovietishcat - 20
Avner - 21

Simon33 final rating: 1296

So the order of calling benefitted the first callers over the last callers (except Adam because he is so far from simon, that game is always worthless).

HOWEVER HOWEVER

As you can see, the differences in points are marginal at best! We arrived at a point in the discussion, where we are trying to tweak the absolute nuances. Counting at beginning or end won’t shake up the rankings, nor will it lead to any substantial rating changes.
There are arguments for counting at the end (better reflects the improvements opponents make, especially when not absolute veterans with 100+games under their belt), there are arguments for counting at the beginning (fairer for mass forfeits and ghosts).
My nod goes to counting at the beginning, if that’s also fine with @gamerman01 and some others.

One last note

I enjoy the eagerness of everybody to find loopholes in the system and to close any doors that some might try to exploit.
But remember: You might be able to “game” the system and thus artifically increase your ELO higher than it should be by maybe 30-50 points (if at all!), but that would only be a momentary snapshot! A higher ELO will subsequently decrease the worth of future wins and also INCREASE the worth of future losses.
You WILL end up exactly where your skill level is eventually, there is no way around that. It’s like the algorithms of social media feeds. You can tell yourself you’re not interested in this or that, but the algorithm can’t be tricked and knows the truth ;-)

The ONLY way to climb the rankings sustainable beyond a short-term burst is to actually get better.

And because it’s so much fun, some more data :-)

Who has played the most BM4 games? That would be our beloved @simon33 who unfortunately went AWOL a couple of weeks ago.

You can see clearly how he improved a lot, from his lowest point in March 2017 (1077 ELO) to his highest Rating in May 2019 (1693 ELO). Which is to be expected!

Now from then on his rating gradually declined - slowly but steady. Did he become worse? Maybe.

But remember, we are not measuring an absolute value. Your ELO rating is actually only a number that gives you a relation to the other players. So it’s not absolute, it’s relative to every other player.
I’d interpret this graph differently: I think over the past ~4 years his skill level plateaued or stagnated but A) more and more other people did improve while he did not and B) more and more new people joined the league who are on average better than him.

And now a completely different graph. The player with the 3rd most completed BM4-games, after @simon33 and @Giallo ?
Our very own @axis-dominion

Here is your graph, Mister:

A steady climb at the beginning where he chose mostly average players and won consistently almost all of those games.
The opponents were weaker than him, but still reasonably close so the games were still worth something. The climb could have been a lot faster had he won against the top players from the get go - but he didn’t! The matches against already strong Adam514 back then were almost all losses.

An unbelievable streak of 30 wins in 31 games between July 18 and March 19 (the only loss was against, of course, Adam514) rewarded him his all-time high of 2101.

3 losses on 16 Apr 2019 (probably mass forfeit?) saw him drop a whopping 158 points before his break.
A steady climb after his return brought him back to the top, although his rating seems to have plateaued around 2030

@crockett36 said in League General Discussion Thread:

@crockett36 This is my interview with AAAgamer, champion 2021.

At the 12 minute mark, Andrew talks about how he’d love some kind of all-time ranking to see who’s the best ever.

We have that now! :-)

Sicily seems to be connected to mainland Italy. This needs to be visualized a bit better, since there are actually maps where that’s the case.

Speaking of Adam:
His Axis defeat my Allies+18 in BM4 in a dominating manner.

If anything, I think the dice even favoured me over the course of the game, but it made no difference.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40040/l23-bm4-adam514-axis-vs-mrroboto-allies-18/76

I have too! Back in the days cheating was impossible to hide - they just had to rely on the opponents not checking.

But that’s over for now, I’m afraid.

And that’s why I took part in the discussion with the current uncertainness.
I noticed it a couple weeks ago in another game and I posted several bug reports on tripleA and also on this site because I want this resolved asap.

Now I didn’t want to go into details yet, but since the issue has come up and caused some confusion, I guess I have to indulge now.

A while back @gamerman01 asked around if someone wants to be backup for the rankings spreadsheet in case something happened to him. I volunteered and subsequently got admin rights from him.

While trying to dive deep into it, I noticed some flaws with the current spreadsheet however. The most severe one: Circular referencing.

A player’s PPG determines the players Tier ranking. This determines how many points opponents get when playing that player. These points influence the PPG of the opponents and therefore the Tier ranking of all of them. The Tier ranking of the opponents however determine how many points the original player gets. This might change the tier ranking of the player and the whole cycle starts over.

So:
Player A’s PPG -> A’s Tier ranking -> PPG of A’s opponents -> Tier ranking of A’s opponents -> Player A’s PPG…

So the question is: What is the starting Tier of everyone? @gamerman01 uses past years as an indicator. However, there are some inconsistencies with new players.
Look at the overall spreadsheet right now:

Gorshak is 2-0 with 8.0 PPG, but Tier 1
jkeller is 0-1 with 4.0 PPG, but Tier M

The starting Tier is also heavily influenced by the timing and order of reults.
Use me as an example: I started this year with 4-0 and the spreadsheet therefore put me in Tier M. This meant that all of my opponents got a lot of points against me, even when they lost. Even though I have lost a lot since then, I caused a big points inflation and am therefore still E (because all of my opponents are ranked very high too because of the points inflation). @dawgoneit is another example, he started the year with a higher ranking and since he has so many games there is a huge points inflation.

Now I am a huge Excel / Google sheets nerd and I noticed all this while I was working on a side project: Currently @gamerman01 updates and maintains everything manually himself. This is a huge workload, thanks by the way for all the hours these past years!
I created an alternative spreadsheet, that heavily uses formulae and therefore is updated completely automatically!

My spreadsheet has the same problem with circular references of course. I can create dozens of different results with the same games as input!
The one I settled for is the following: All games are already put into the system (instead of one after another) and all players starting Tier is Tier 1. THEN I activate the points given for wins and losses.

I have not yet shared this with all of you since I am still consulting with @gamerman01 and want to hear his opinion first. However, he is preoccupied with real life right now so you guys have to be a bit patient.

By the way, I have made a proposal to him on how to fix these (and more) issues with the current system in the following years, but again: I want his opinion and more importantly his blessings first.

Now, @wizmark and @farmboy have rightfully wondered and questioned the above graphs. So I want to share the rankings these graphs are based on:

Overall:

OOB:

BM4:

PtV:

Well if I’m not mistaken, chess sites like chess.com don’t even use seasons or yearly ratings at all. Isn’t it basically just a lifelong Rating, that you work on as long and as much as you are willing to?

Because in the end, for the reasons you stated, there would be no big reason to reset ratings on Jan 1st at all.
Do we want that? We could…

Actually, the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to agree with that sentiment.

I genuinely appreciate your feedback, @farmboy !
Always good to hear some different opinions.

Your idea of a fix would help combat the points inflation, for sure.
But as I said, that is the smallest of the issues. It would not fix any of the 7 major problems the current system has.
Now how broken is the system? I guess that’s subjective. It IS working, for sure. It creates a somewhat realistic ranking and most of the times the lower PPG player actually loses against the higher PPG player.
So in general, the higher the PPG, the better the player.

But in my opinion, that is a very low bar. If it didn’t fulfill this basic requirement, it wouldn’t be a working system at all. Our demand on a system should be higher than that, even if we are only an amateur league. We can still strive to be as professional as possible.

@farmboy said in League General Discussion Thread:

And I don’t think changes in scoring will dramatically shift how the final standings look.

This is the current ranking in the official spreadsheet.

This is the ranking in my automated spreadsheet:

But this is another ranking with the exact same rules. No formulas changed, no other entries, everything is the same. Just the order of calculations shifted.

Notice how gamerman went from rank 4 to rank 13!

Or another ranking. Again: same rules, same results, same formulas.

Now I don’t know about you but if a system can produce multiple different rankings depending on HOW you apply the rules, I personally would consider that system broken. We don’t even know who #1 is right now…

You did raise 2 concerns with an ELO system however and I want to address those:

The small number of games is offset in my system: The first few games have a bigger impact on ELO change. This gradually diminishes with the number of games until it settles at 10 completed games (exact number up for debate).
It would be completely negated by the way, if we use a lifelong ELO rating.

The other concern is how difficult it is for new players to enter the top ranks.
This is actually done super fast. If you win a handful of games against current top players, you will climb the ELO extremely fast and can reach the top spots.
I just tested it with my ELO system. A new player could claim the #1 rank in my ELO system after going 4-0 with 2 wins against top player Adam and another 2 wins against GeneralDisarray and ArthurBomberHarris.

That being said: How we choose the participants for yearly playoffs is another matter. We could only count the results of the calendar year. We could (and should) require a certain number of games played this year.
Right now the participants are largely the same group of players too. This would actually even change with ELO, for the better!

I am working on the post to show it to you, as we speak!