Can't be -ive, 1.0 is the lowest and best score.

I think 1300 is the starting rating in other games.

Then I think ratings should just become the "grade point average" score, maybe call it the "pond accumulation score system" or "p.a.s.s."

That way, you only care about lowering your score towards a perfect 1.0

So, if you come in 10th out of 66, 30th out of 212, 13th out of 102, and 4th out of 40, you have a "p.a.s.s." of...

[10x66 + 30x212 + 13x102 + 4x40] divided by
[66 + 212 + 102 + 40]

= 8506/420 = 20.25, a very meaningful number.

ok, i got the revised post. The inverted rating system is worth a shot, i'm trying to think of anywhere else a similar mode is in use.

i like it, the method and the acronym.

<20 player pond Ed's proposal
Z = 20
1st gets 40, 2nd gets 20, 3rd gets 10 , 4th gets 5, 5 to 8 get 0, 9th loses 24, 10th loses 27, 11th loses 30, 12th loses 33, 13th loses 36
14th loses 39, 15th loses 42, 16th loses 45
17th loses 48, 18th loses 51, 19th loses 54
20th loses 57
I suppose when two or more people drop on the same round the points would work the same. Or you could add up the total and divide equally rounding where necessary. Seems like it'd work. Start everyone at zero. Nothing wrong with a negative rating in my book. Or start at whatever is the starting point here and limit the lowest to 100. Tripling the score for the early droppers seems kind of harsh to me. Why not just double it or leave it single based on when you drop? Perhaps a scale would work to smooth out the edges too. A power function with 2 as the base? Or "e" the base of the natural logrithms?
Here's a formula that'd work as a smooth curve and wouldn't be too harsh to people that drop early while only awarding the most points to the very last players in. At the half way point the award for winning starts. Before then deduction takes place, less as you last longer.
Z = The starting amount of people
e = the base of the natural logrithms
P = final position of player
C = constant (this can be changed to increase or decrease award given. In my examples that follow I use a value of C = 1)
R = rating points awarded or deducted
Top half finishers award:
R = (Z/2) times [(e raised to the reciprocal of P)-C]
Bottom half finishers deduction:
R = (Z/2 - P) + .6 then rounded
In the 20 player game example the values would be
1st gets 17
2nd gets 6
3rd gets 4
4th gets 3
5th gets 2
6th gets 2
7th gets 2
8th, 9th, and 10th get 1
11th stays even
12th loses 1
13th loses 2
14th loses 3
15th loses 4
16th loses 5
17th loses 6
18th loses 7
19th loses 8
20th loses 9
You could double or triple the deductions if you wanted to.
In a 100 player pond the awards would be
1st 86, 2nd 32, 3rd 20, 4th 14, 5th 11
6th 9, 7th 8, 8th 7, 9th 6, 10th 5
11th 5, 12th 4, 13th 4, 14th 4, 15th 3
16th through 20th-- 3
21st through 33rd-- 2
34th through 50th-- 1
51st stays even
52nd loses 1 and so on

It's kind of hard to write mathematical formulars on this keyboard, but those that know this stuff can see what I'm angling at. A curve with a gentle slope until the very end when the reward for winning or coming in close increase a lot. If you make it half way, you'll not lose rating points. The deduction can be varied also, but keeping it a straight linear type of penality is easy to understand and most people go along with that. Lowering the constant C will increase the award. I hope the numbers line up after I enter them to post.
20 player pond
-------> C = 1 C =.5 C = 0 C = -.5
1st place 17 22 27 32
2nd place 6 11 16 21
3rd place 4 9 14 19
10th place 1 6 11 16
100 player pond
1st place 86 111 136 161
2nd place 32 57 82 107
3rd place 20 45 70 95
10th place 5 30 55 80
25th place 2 27 52 77
50th place 1 26 51 76
The divisor of Z can be varied to, but first this whole idea has to be figured with if it's acceptable for using as a rating system. Also using C = 1 you could multiply the whole award by some number to put the range of awards to whatever value seems appropriate for the size pond in question.

2¢

It appears that Ed has added some things to his earlier proposal while I was figuring out and typing mine in. I suppose a rating based on a low score could be used with the deal I came up with too.

since only one person walks away a winner...I think there should only be 2 ratings...winners and losers.

nah i dont think that'd really work

why not? only one wins....how would "partial" wins that are given ratings benefit anyone? does it just say "I'm not a total loser,but I still didnt win?"
IMO you either win or lose.

not ata ll, if you come 2nd, 3rd and a few places thereafter, you deserve more credit than the person that came 50th for example. winners and losers wouldnt to me seem logical

Myself, if Fencer can find a good way to do ratings for the Pond game, then good.

But I would be happy with just having some cool "stats" on the game for each person.

For example:
Total amount of (finished) ponds entered:
Total wins: (amount & percent)
Total top 5's: (amount & percent)
Average fall time: (In percentage - so 50% means you make it 1/2 way through the pond - 8 place in a pond of 16 players, or 50th place in a pond of 100 players)

etc.... and any other cool stats we can think of.

Then possible have some list of "best users" after completing 25 ponds according to % wins or % of top fives

having 1 winner and 15 or more losers wouldn't work with the current rating system. It relies on the sum of the games equalling 1 (draw = 0.5 each). I do agree that winning should be considerably more than 2nd, but 2nd should be more than 3rd etc.

On the list you should see wins/games played as the statistic that is tracked however.

BIG BAD WOLF: stats make more sense...ratings in any form other than win/lose would be decieving,if not useless.

2nd,3rd,4th...etc...are all losers.

i give up

grenv: me to, i think we'll just have to agree to disagree

how about an "average place" stat, which could be given any denominator. ie: someone finishes 36th in a pond of 96, and then finishes 2nd in a pond of 16. We would probably make 16 the base denominator (although others are possible) and from the above example give the player an average placing of 4/16, meaning thus far they have finished 4th on the mean for every 16 players in their ponds. Of course, not all examples will be whole numbers, so we could round off to whole or 1 or 2 decimals. That way, the average placing out of 16 participants could replace a cumbersome 4-digit number and wouldn't have to be weighted either. Of course, show the wins and total ponds and other cool stats too. But this one would, like the usual BKR ratings, give a reasonable expectation of how a 5.0 and 9.6 would do in the same pond...the 5 would be expected to finish 4.6 places ahead of the 9.6. And of course, as the sample set increased, the numbers would flatten out to more accurate measures. I believe comparing expected placements is better than BKR because it is not head to head by any stretch of the imagination. Also, extremely easy for Fencer to program.

It attempts to reward close finishers and the winner and not penalize unduly early droppers. It would just be one rating number to have along with the win/loss percentage and other stats like entries and current ponds running. I think with the scale I devised and Ed's modification of having a low score show better play, one could come up with a rating that reflects good play and staying power. Instead of using Ed's for a low score, you could use the reciprocal and multiply it by some number, say 1000, and get a number simular to slugging percentage in baseball.
Just to keep track of winners and losers works too BBW, but other ways of tracking players have enterest for some people, just like baseball stats for various things interest some fans but not the ones that only care if their team won the game or not. If both or more ratings and stats are made available, you could look at just the win/loss record of a person you're interested whereas, grenv or someone else might want to check out some other thing about the person's record that you don't care about, but he does. As I said, I wouldn't mind having it stay just as it is, but with so many people clammoring for some kind of rating and others statistics we might as well pitch in and see what we can come up with.
Wins/Losses/Percent of them is easy and straight forward to track. Making a rating system that takes into account how far one goes before dropping out isn't as easy to devise. Plus some people would like to track a player's points along with how many rounds they last and average rounds and percentage of rounds completed out of rounds possible. That's five things to keep track of. Certainly doable, but is that enough or too much? Will those be what people want, or will modification be needed after we get familiar with how those stats look and feel?

redsales: Apparently you didn't give up.

Walter Montego: all ratings systems have some validity, but I do like the one I proposed because it has no inherent weighting, instead, one can see the average placing and judge for themselves how good a player is, without need for an arbitrary multiplicative or log factor. Again, not to say logs etc aren't valid, but when I look at someone's chess rating and they got to be 2500, it doesn't tell me if they skimmed along beating 2100s consistently to get there or if they beat 2300s and lose to 2700s. I can make the value judgement myself, and I would like to do that if ponds begin to be rated.

I can see bwild's idea as making perfect sense, only winning counts. That's why we play, no one ever plays to come in second.

But I can also see why someone who consistently finishes 2nd, 3rd etc must be given their due level of respect as well! How much less respect than the winner? I think that is unquantifiable, and their mean place (M.P.) allows anyone to judge that for themselves.

grenv: my nickname is stubborn in Korean. Well, actually "blocker." I'm extrapolating and OFF TOPIC now, never mind.

redsales: Dude, basing it on 16 is the same thing as using percentages except that percentages are based on 100. That's why they're easy to compare. 4 of 16 is 25%, so is 24 of 96. ratios can quite easily be added too. Using your numbers 36 of 96 and 4 of 16 gives 40 of 112. Then you can make a percentage of that and it is easy to compare other people's percentages. Whether or not the number has much value for comparing is a whole different thing. That is why I and others devised a way to weight the numbers to try and make them more relavent for judging someone's ability ahead of actually playing them or using it as a rating so a game might be created with equally rated or narrow range of players like for other games instead of having it open to all comers. I doubt if any of the numbers will matter much in a game that has as high a factor of luck and unknowns in it as Run Around the Pond. Imagine if we tried to develope statistics like this for Backgammon? Number of pieces on the board when the game ends, total points, and all sorts of other things one can come up with, like number of doubles thrown you lucky people. All's that really matters is if one wins regularly or not, but someone might want the stats for some other reason. Seems like the same thing here except for the fact that there's usually only one or just a few losers. Everyone else beats someone during the course of the game. Ed proposed a system for keeping track of that too. Every person that you last longer than gives you more points is how he had it.

I don't have a knickname, but I'm stubborn too. I think I've said enough on the subject and will give it a rest for a week or so and let others have the floor. Thank you for your time all. And I hope Fencer has listened to all or comes up with something workable if he isn't going to leave the Pond game as it is.

Walter

A "rating", per se, does not apply to Ponds. Ratings measure the likely outcome of one player against another when the game has completely opposite goals -- in chess, checkmating the opponent.

Ponds is a "free for all" or "every person for themself" game.

So, a meaningful measurement would be how long you can stay in the pond.

An "average ranking" of your Pond performance, weighted by the number of players per pond, provides the most meaningful information.

In this case, the lower the number, the better.

But how can you qualitatively assess your overall performance?

Easy.

For each pond game you are in, multiply your final position by the number of players in that pond. Divide this by the sum of all players in every pond you played in.

For example, suppose you came in first place in 3 different pond games, each with 16 players. And you can in 14th place in a pond with 200 players.

How does this compare with someone who came in 2nd place in a pond of 50, 5th place in a pond of 75, and 11th place in a pond of 200?

It is not immediately apparent, so do this:

Player A

3 first place finishes:
(1 x 16) + (1 x 16) + (1 x 16) = 48

1 finish in 14th place
(14 x 200) = 2800

Sum of all pond players = 16 + 16 + 16 + 200 = 248

So add 2800 to 48, and divide by 248

Player A = 2848/248 = 11.48

Now Player B would have a performance rating of (2 x 50) + (5 x 75) + (11 x 200) = 2675 divided by (200 + 75 + 50), so...

Player B = 2675/325 = 8.23

Player B would actually have a better performance than Player A, overall.

True, I just think any numbers one could come up with to weight the "value" of finishing first over 2nd, 3rd over 4th etc. would be too arbitrary. I'm curious too to see what, if anything, Fencer comes up with.

Look at an extreme case. You come in 1st place in a pond of 3 players, then you come in 35th place in a pond of 100.

What should your performace be close to, 1, or 35?

In the system I showed, you would be at:

[(1 x 3) + (35 x 100)]/103 = 34.009

This makes sense.

Likewise, say you came in 1st place out of 300 players, but finished 15th out of 16 in another pond. Should you be penalized too much for the poorer performance?

[(1 x 300) + (15 x 16)]/316 = 1.708

Again, it treats the quality of your performances in a meaningful manner.

I would add one thing, and that is to take into account the ratings of the opponents in that pond. I the average rating of your opps = Av, then:

Sum of (Pos x Num x Av) / Sum of (Num)

or something like that.

There is no need for a "rating" since it is not a concept for a multiple player game.

A rating measures the likelihood of you defeating another opponent, based on their rating.

There is no system to predict the likelihood of how individuals would perform in a collective pool all acting in parallel, but there is a way to evaluate your performance independent of who your peers are.

A "rating" is very inaccurate at first, and corrects itself over time.

The "p.a.s.s." method does the same thing. Over time, your participation in a variety of pond games will effect your score. It does not matter if you are playing with an entire pond of perfect 1.0 players, or with a bunch of people who have repeatedly fallen out on the first run around.

Over time, the result will be the same...the scores will all approach their own performance, as surely as "water seeks its own level" in the natural world.

I disagree that it isn't a multiplayer concept. The word "rating" in english only means how is that player rated compared to others. What on earth do you mean it is only a two player concept? That makes no sense at all.

A "weighted average of your pond performance" is not a rating. I came up with "p.a.s.s." as the acronym for it.

You can see that the range of values for your "p.a.s.s." designation will always be 1.0 as the best score possible, to whatever the limit is for the largest pond.

This is completely differnt that the range of a person's "rating", as, by default, I think a rating can never be below some arbitrary floor, such as 600 I think.

What does it mean when you are rated 2200? In the United States Chess Federation, this number is higher than 98% of the rated population, so this is the minimum threshhold for the Master Class.

It also means when pitted against someone 400 points or more below you, your chances of winning are functionally 100%. So, a 2200 player should be able to beat a 1799 player almost all the time.

This is an ideal situation, of course.

But understand the "rating" measures the likelihood of an outcome of one player versus another.

This is the definition of the term "rating".

In a pond game, you are not diametrically opposed to any one player. "Diametric opposition" is the mathematical framework upon which is built the concept of "ratings".

In the domain of computer science and mathematics, "ponds" would be described as a collective, parallel game of minimal elimination.

As such, it does not fit the defined parameters of what has been labeled "ratings".

We need a new working definition to underscore a player's performance in this group environment.

I offered one.

If you read and understand papers on mathematics, you would agree with me on the nomenclature.

It is not possible to assign an "Elo rating" to a game where there is more than two combatants.

Read this for more info:


http://www.glicko.com/glicko.doc/glicko.html

More papers on the subject:

http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/research.html

What's the point of this endless discussion? I already have a rating system for pond games, it's just not activated yet. The goal is to keep the things easy and simple, which is the fact certain people still refuse to accept.

I have a math degree, i'm not arguing that an ELO rating can be assigned in a multiplayer game, I am arguing that the word rating has a broader definition than that, and by considering the rating, or p.a.s.s or fryglesturger, or whatever of your opponents is valid in this context.

Then you agree with the concept, and just are saying that my "p.a.s.s." is equivalent to what you are calling a "rating".

I am just narrowing the scope of "rating" to two player games, and calling the rating by a different name so as not to confuse the two.

Since Fencer has decided on a system, there is no need to continue this.

To answer his question, I thought we were still in search of a system. I was asked by CzuchCheckers to post it in his "Ponds Plus" DB, and the suggestion was to also post it in here for discussion.

As it is no longer needed, I will no longer post on the topic.

Can't there ever be a game.. without worry about the stats?? Geez peeps.. is Fencer going to be put through a nightmare because he offers another game and now is horded from the players to figure out who is the best at it.. There are too many variables with this type of game..

Why is it that every game HAS to show who is the most powerful.. Cripes... talk about taking the fun out of a game..

I recommend this link to all of you ez!!!

http://www.scrolllock.nl/3.cfm

ScarletRose: Why can't we discuss possible ways to create rankings? This is a *discussion* board isn't it?

ScarletRose:
I agree with you.I play for the fun of the game not how good i am or whether not to fall in.
Maybe in a Pond Tourny stats would be ok but not in the everyday games.

But is that not like saying all games on BK should not have BKR??

Its not just a competition thing...it also indicates to yourself if you are improving etc etc

I guess no one read Fencers post?

Foxy, Scarlett: I also play for the fun of the game, but the BKR is a part of that fun.

bwildman:
I'm guilty of that no i didn't read it.Still in Tournys yes but not in fun games.

Foxy Lady: I guess it's a man thing girlie girl.. hehe.. Oh well..

did you see the cute link?

Stevie:
True but Ponds is more fun than a game of Chess (used as ex) where stats really mean something to the players.

ScarletRose:
Yup it's a man thingy so i think i'll stay out of it and still fall in......No but i'll check that link out.

Its not a man thing or a girl thing.
All games are fun Foxy, and as pedro said...the ratings are all part of the fun

Stevie:
All games nahhhhhhh Chess gives me a headache

ScarletRose:
Hubba Hubba whooooo hoooooooo got that link put away.

now back to topic please ;o)

I can't wait until we can look through past moves.

I've very curious in THIS POND how I've ended up with about 2,000 more points then everyone else

BIG BAD WOLF: you probably cheated..... LOL

Bry: That is one sinister-looking icon.