Hrqls: don't ask me, I don't have any brains

Vikings: lol .. neither do i .. even the 2 of us combined have zero brains ;)

Vikings: Yes i am sorry, i didnt explian it correctly, yes your correct , i was talking about a non-started tournament.

Hrqls: The brains are deducted as soon as you put your name down for the tournament.

WatfordFC: ah ok ... then i dont know either .. good question :)

WatfordFC: i asked fencer and he told me that such tournaments (with entry fees (brains)) wont be removed over time .. they will just keep waiting until enough players are signed up

he will fix this so that the tournaments will be removed after time and when that happens then the players will get their entry fees returned to them

Hrqls: Yes i posted my post on the Brainking board, and he said the same, but thank you anyway. Lo)

I've decided to quit playing here and on Dailygammon to save time for other interests. Since I'm finishing my games and tournaments, I'll still be around for quite a while; but as I survey my standings here, it seems to me I have a pretty good claim to be the top player of gammon games (excluding antibackgammon) on the site. I'm presently in the top 5 in all 5 positive gammon games, and there is nobody who is ahead of me in two of them. Anyone else have a better claim?

alanback: I'm presently in the top 5 in all 5 positive gammon games, and there is nobody who is ahead of me in two of them. Anyone else have a better claim?

I have one: I claim that there is a number of years from now that both of us will would not be able to make any more claims....
While many can question your claim nobody can do the same with mine....

Chicago Bulls: I would amend your comment to say that eventually neither of us will care to make any claims, since we will have left ego behind; otherwise, I can't contradict you!

TMG is showing some of the matches live from the World Championship in Monte Carlo.

alanback: leaving on top is a good thing, but given a little bit of time(because I haven't completed as many games as yourself) I think I can make it into the top 5-10 players in 6 of 6 of the gammon variants(including anti-)
...and if not, the level you raised the bar to will be fun trying to accomplish...

LionsLair: dont worry, i will be there with you :)

(maybe i already was in the past ? ;))

LionsLair: I hope I am here long enough to see you accomplish your goal!

alanback: Well, I am not quite as good as you alanback, but I also hope to get there some day. I am top 30 in crowded, race, and hyper, but my backgammon and nackgammon rankings are rather low.

alanback: you can't leave, you aren't on top of all of your stairs

Vikings: hehe .. he will just tumble down head first ;)

alanback: it would seem fair to me that someone claiming the "top" would at least be #1 ranked in 1 of the variants. It appears to me you are not!! So I refute your claim. Your claim is a personal assessment of yourself and others and it not the perception of others. I would consider you "very very good" at best. Far far better than I

SafariGal: i wouldnt be surprised if he was #1 of one of them in the past though :)

SafariGal: Well, I asked for your opinion and you gave it. Thanks for your view. One reason for my posting was that I did feel somewhat deficient in not being #1 in any variant.

However, as has been pointed out, I have been in the #1 spot in most of them at one time or another in the past. Most recently I was #1 in Backgammon Race about a month ago.

SafariGal: But what if no one ranked #1 in one game has sufficiently strong credentials in the others to be considered the best overall player? As it turns out, of the five top-ranked players, only arpa has established BKRs in all five games. Do you really consider 54th, 4th, 10th, 1st, and 24th better than 5th, 3rd, 2nd, 5th, and 4th?

One reasonable measure of overall strength might be average BKR across the five games. I doubt you'll find anyone who can top alanback's 2160.

alanback: Leaving on top? Well yes if you define top as the top 5. But no, if you define it to be number 1. If you define it as the best overall with statistics on Brainking then probably yes.....
If you define it generally then no, we don't know for sure.....

You said: "I have been in the #1 spot in most of them at one time or another in the past"
The point is: If you start reminiscing the past for successes then you are already history!

Anyway it's a shame you will leave, but oh well. You know better:-) Do you intend to return someday.....?

KotDB: One reasonable measure of overall strength might be average BKR across the five games. I doubt you'll find anyone who can top alanback's 2160.

And what if someone has not played 3 variants for example? We will put 0 to calculate his mean BKR value? So i don't think this is a reasonable way.....
And to measure what...? Overall strength? How do you define overall strength......?

Chicago Bulls: No, not zero. The default BRK is 1300.

Yes, of course it's a question of definitions. This whole thread has essentially been about how to define overall strength in these five games. I've proposed one plausible quantitative definition. It's obviously not perfect; it inherits all the flaws of the BKR system, and it may have additional ones. I'm not convinced it's the best definition, but I haven't thought of one which is clearly better.

KotDB: Weigh the BKRs based on the number of games of each type played. That should give a decent BKR for all types. If a player has not played at least four (since that's what BK requires to have a rating in any game) games of each particular variant, then they would be unrated for purposes of this discussion and if they have not completed at least 25 games of each type, then they would be provisional. I'm not sure if anyone has completed enough games of all types, but perhaps someone else can look that up. ;-)

Might I suggest the following:

BKR * games played for each variant.

Then add the total and divide by total games played.

People playing only one variant are therefore not punihed and a somewhat realistic BKR is reached (i.e BKR based on 25 games not counting for as much as one based on 500 games).

grenv: Might I suggest the following:

BKR * games played for each variant.

Then add the total and divide by total games played.

Isn't that what I said? ;-)

Thad: Yes it would seem so, but I only skimmed the thread since so many messages were new.

But I disagree that the rating would be provisional just because one type was missing or low number of games. We need to stipulate that the games are essentially the same for this exersize.

Ouch. I didn't mean to post that all in bold. If I weren't a pawn I would fix that.

KotDB: Your second point is an excellent one.

I suppose you could compare each player's BKR in each game to the mean and find out who has the highest weighted average above each mean, highest deviation, or something similar.

This is getting quite complicated. ;-)

Thad: Yes, it is. It's too bad BrainKing doesn't use the Glicko rating system -- we could get RDs into the mix.

Perhaps, rather than looking at BKRs directly, we should look at percentile ranks.

KotDB: I suggested those to Fencer once. He didn't seem to interested. :-(

I would LOVE to have them on my main page right between my 'Your best BKR' & 'Your best rating positions'!

Thad: in december we had a somewhat similar list.

i dont think the 'show subject' link worked at that time already .. and i am not sure if alanback was on this site for real already :)

anyway here are 2 posts with lists :
http://brainking.com/nl/Board?bc=26&ngi=448298
http://brainking.com/nl/Board?bc=26&ngi=448120

My goal was to get into the top 50 in all gammon variants except anti and then start an invitational, multi-point, random gammon tournament with those 5 variants, inviting only those who were also top 50 in all 5. Even that list was very small at the time--5 or 6 players when I looked. But I'm not there yet, and alanback is leavning. Oh well.

KotDB: Good point about the rating medians, but that could be simply fixed by adjusting ratings for each game.

Personally I don't like crowded backgammon (takes too long) so I'll never win the pentathlon. Problem is many people only play 1-2 variants.

As far as the pentathlon analogy goes, it would really only work if there were 5 very different games, but these are all essentially the same.

Hrqls: I remember this list...it is one of the main reasons I started playing regular b'gammon, as I wanted to be ranked with the likes of the top players as well, but never played in all 6 variants to even get recognized as one of them...

grenv: I wouldn't go as far as calling them essentially the same. The share many similar qualities but each has its own, unique strategy.

grenv: I for one definitely wouldn't class Hyper as the same, as the other variants of gammon.

LionsLair: *nod* i even started to make a little program which would create those lists automagically .. but it got a bit stalled :)

the variants are definetly different
mostly they concentrate more on a specific aspect of ordinary bg

crowded and race more about building, race from the start, crowded from a specific point .. hyper is more about aggressive play and counting the chances to succeed or be hit .. nack is a bit more about the backgame than ordinary bg

but then again i am not a pro .. i only play this game for about 2 years .. and almost only on this site :)

skipinnz: Hyper is in fact a subset of regular backgammon, since it would be possible (though unlikely) to reach the hyper starting position at the end of a backgammon game.

alanback: As could Nackgammon.

alanback:When I said it wasn't the same, I was really refering to the chance/luck factor in Hyper. Too many doubles remove any skill factor IMHO

grenv: Correct.

skipinnz: I felt the same way until I started playing hypergammon with the doubling cube. I think adding the cube makes skill predominate over luck, assuming the match is long enough (say 7 points or more).

Also, of course, all luck evens out over time, so with enough experience, skill differences will still emerge.

alanback: agreed, my rating shot up when the doubling cube was introduced. In fact in hyper there are more difficult doubling decisions than in regular backgammon I think.

grenv: Definitely a thinking man's game, with the cube.

alanback: I'll have to take another look at Hyper and try it with the cube.

grenv: The cube decisions are definitely harder. But there is still a lot of luck even with the cube in hyper. In regular backgammon, a completely superior player will beat a weaker player 9 out of 10 times or more if they play a 7 point match with the cube. In hyper, I would say that number goes down to about 7 out of 10.

gambler104: Maybe, but I'd love you to show me tha math behind the numbers.

grenv: Maybe the math is that it defines what is a completely superior player !