ELO Ratings Updated

[steveflanuk]

The Professional Snooker ELO Ratings have been updated after the completion of the first round of the UK Championship.

Stephen Hendry's first round defeat to Stephen Lee sees the Scot fall to 15th in the rankings, whilst fellow first round losers Mark Selby and Ryan Day both fall down into 6th and 7th place respectively.

Mark Williams and Matthew Stevens both move back into the top 10 (into 9th and 10th spot) and Matthew Stevens' recent resurgence in form sees him take the lead in the race for the Player of the Year title.

First round wins for Peter Ebdon and Stephen Lee sees these two looking to get back into the ELO Top 16.

The fully updated list can be found here.

Another update will be given tomorrow after the conclusion of the second round.

[thinsy]

Mmmmm.......

This can lead to some anomolies. For example, imagine two ranking tournaments which carry the same number of points. Player A wins the first tournament, but beats the top 4 ranked players in the process. The second tournament is won by Player B (who is ranked the same as Player A), but he beats the 4 lowest ranked players in the tournament, as the higher ranked players were knocked out earlier on. In the official rankings, both players would get the same number of points, however, it is obvious that, basically, Player A performed better winning the first tournament than Player B did in the second tournament as Player A had to beat much better players than Player B did.

Surely the lower ranked players that player B had to beat had already beaten the higher ranked players, therefore, he shouldn't be punished and recieve less points just because, on the whole, that player is less consistent!!

This system shouldn't be used in regular competition. I can see how it would work well in a challenge match system, but nowhere else....

[steveflanuk]

Player B isn't punished. If he wins the tournament he gains points overall - he can't lose any points.

It works on the principle that if, say Neil Robertson as an example, whilst winning a tournament beats Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins, Stephen Maguire and Ali Carter then that is surely a better performance than, if he had beaten Steve Davis, Stephen Lee, Peter Ebdon and Graeme Dott (no disrespect meant to these players)?

However, the points gained in the official rankings would be exactly the same.

If, during the second example tournament above, the four players Neil beats had previously beaten the current top four (Ronnie, John, Stephen and Ali) then the number of points they would have gained in beating these players would easily outweigh the number of rating points they would lose against Neil and, thus, have a net gain in the tournament as a whole.

[thinsy]

Player B isn't punished. If he wins the tournament he gains points overall - he can't lose any points.

It works on the principle that if, say Neil Robertson as an example, whilst winning a tournament beats Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins, Stephen Maguire and Ali Carter then that is surely a better performance than, if he had beaten Steve Davis, Stephen Lee, Peter Ebdon and Graeme Dott (no disrespect meant to these players)?

The point i'm making is that, and i will use your example:

He would score less points for beating Graham Dott in the final than if he were to beat Ronnie O'sullivan in the final by the same scoreline? Yes?

But if Graham Dott had just beaten Ronnie in the previous Semi-final (god forbid ) Surely Graham should be considered a better Win than if he had to beat Ronnie on this occasion....

My point being, you cant pick and chose who you play so every player has to be considered as a position.. i.e. Q-Finalist, S-Finalist, etc.. To beat a Semi-finalist gets you into the Final regardless of who you play and the people you have beat or your opponent had beat previously.

[steveflanuk]

You are correct, in that he would gain less points for beating Graeme than Ronnie. However, if the final were Neil against Graeme then Neil would be expected to win more than if he was playing in the final against Ronnie - thus he would gain more points for beating Ronnie than Graeme.

Now depending on when Neil plays these players in the tournament, would affect (though possibly not that greatly) the number of rating points he could win or lose. For example, if Neil beat Graeme in the second round then he would gain points, however, the number of points gained by beating Graeme in the final would, most likely, be more - but would depend on who Graeme beat on his way - as the ratings are re-calculated on a match-by-match basis. So, if (for simplicity) Graeme were rated as 400 in his first match and gained, say, 20 points for winning that match then in his next match his rating would be 420, and so on.

Basically, in order to gain points overall in a tournament, the top ranked players need to get further, or win the tournament, as they will, in all liklehood be playing lower ranked players in the early rounds and thus the number of points gained by winning these matches would be fairly low (whilst the number of poitns lost is a lot greater) - whereas the lower ranked players will, probably, gain overall if they win their first match - as they gain more points by beating a higher ranked player than they would lose.

[thinsy]

Well, i hope working this out and having your own little world ranking system gives you pleasure and passes the time for you.... Somehow though, i don't think it will replace the official ranking system.

However, lets get the pro's to put their own money up and run a ladder climbing challenge system against each other all around the country in different clubs so we all get to see good snooker... Use your system and transfer the points into money... i.e.

If Andrew Higginson is worth 386 points
And Ronnie is worth 1018 points


Then the match would be Ronnies £10180.00 against Andrews £3860.00

:snooker::snooker:

[steveflanuk]

Well, i hope working this out and having your own little world ranking system gives you pleasure and passes the time for you.... Somehow though, i don't think it will replace the official ranking system.

However, lets get the pro's to put their own money up and run a ladder climbing challenge system against each other all around the country in different clubs so we all get to see good snooker... Use your system and transfer the points into money... i.e.

If Andrew Higginson is worth 386 points
And Ronnie is worth 1018 points


Then the match would be Ronnies £10180.00 against Andrews £3860.00

:snooker::snooker:

I wasn't expecting it to replace the official rankings, and have never said they should.

Admittedly I'm not a great fan of the official rankings as I think it gives too much of an advantage to the higher ranked players (especially with points carried over from the previous season) - I mean do you honestly think that Stephen Maguire is the second best player in the world at the moment (which according to the official rankings and the provisional rankings he is)?

The purpose of the ELO ratings is to give anyone who takes any interest in them to see where their favourite player ranks - at the moment (something the official rankings can't and don't do) with the addition that you can see how strong certain players are against each other. For example, if you do believe that Stephen Maguire is currently the second best player in the world, then how much stronger is Ronnie? The current ratings indicate that Ronnie should win a match between them 70% of the time - but that is should (and not would) as no rating system can take into account unknown factors such as a player's mental state, possible tiredness, cloth conditions, etc.

BTW, I like your idea of a ladder system.

[bongo]

What does ELO actually mean?

[steveflanuk]

Elo is actually a man's name rather than an acronym. Elo ratings were first created by Dr. Arpand Elo as a rating measure in chess, whereby the stronger your opponent, the more rating points you could potentially win against them, thus they take into account not just the fact whether you won or lost a match - but whether you were expected to win or lose.

The ratings I produce are based on Dr. Elo's original calculations with some slight modifications. Similar ratings are produced for football (although I don't have any invovement in producing those).

[thinsy]

The current ranking system has been running for a long time now and i think it has got some downsides, but like any idea or system anyone can come up with different people will find different faults in each...

Sorry if i sounded a little like i was belittling what you are doing, i didn't mean to, and only when i read it back i thought 'Ohhhh, that sounds a little rude!'

I think it is too difficult to run a ranking system based on one year results, and to be honest, a bit unfair on the lower ranked pro's as their livelyhood would never be certain and deserve a second season to re-prove themselves....

However, there was a post on her a while back regarding the ranking system where someone came up with the idea of running i think a 2 year system using full points for the current season, half points for the previous season.... something like that!!!

That made a little sense

[steveflanuk]

Thinsy, no offence was taken in what you said - honestly. If it sounded like I did (take offence that is) - then apologies, the correct use of the English language is not one of our strong points up here in Liverpool!!

Of course, you're correct - no system is perfect (in fact, no system can be perfect, logically speaking) - but I think World snooker can do something a lot better than what there is at present.

I actually preferred the original ranking/merit/A points system. Very easy to use and understand and, if you're talking about the thread I think you are, then someone suggested returning to that with points earned the season before carrying half their original value - which I think is a very worthwhile proposition.

However, slightly modified versions of the Elo system are put to good use in other sports/games (in fact the majority of football statto's prefer the football based Elo system to FIFA's own system) - and this is just another way of looking at professional snooker.