Why FargoRate & What is it?

........ FargoRate has replaced other methods of rating pool players and has quickly become the most trusted and universally accepted rating system in existence. Other classifications such as Open-Advanced-Master, A-B-C, 1-2-3, etc. are a thing of the past. The days of inconsistent ratings, biased subjective judgement, rating committees, and difficult score keeping are over. And the best part, if someone wants to sandbag, the only way to do so is to take a loss.

 is they are easily manipulated, and such manipulation is a serious problem. A small number of unscrupulous players may begin trying to cheat the system. Other players hear about this and believe they must do the same to stay competitive. It soon becomes an inherent part of the league where “gaming” the system is just as important as playing pool. 

Many of those who make it to the championship events using these older systems are often those most adept at “managing” their ratings. For example, some rating systems depend heavily on inning counts. Many players capable of running out against weaker opponents are also capable of bunting balls around for a few innings like a cat plays with a mouse, padding the inning count while still winning the game. Sound familiar? 

Unlike high jumpers, who have height, swimmers, who have time, and javelin throwers, who have distance, pool players –pocket billiard players—have no absolute measure of performance. Skill at pool, like skill at chess, must be based on relative performance—upon who beats whom.

FargoRate rates pool players worldwide on the same scale based on games won and lost against opponents of known rating. We compute the optimum set of ratings—also known as maximum likelihood ratings—as those that best predict the outcome of all of the games amongst all of the players.

Professional players generally have ratings between 700 and 800. A random company holiday party might have many players rated between 50 and 200. Most people who play pool in leagues and tournaments are between these ranges, i.e., between 200 and 700. There is no top and no bottom to the scale.

The rating difference between two players determines the chance each will win a game.

Two players with the same rating, i.e., a 300 and another 300, or a 600 and another 600, have equal chances of winning a game between them. If the two players play multiple games, they will tend to win them in a ratio of 1:1 (one to one).

When two players are 100 points apart, say a 300 versus a 400, the ratio of game wins will be near 1:2, as in 5 games to 10 games, or 50 games to 100 games.

A 200-point gap leads to a game win ratio of 1:4

A 300-point gap leads to a game win ratio of 1:8

A 400-point gap leads to a game win ratio of 1:16

Two players with a 34-point gap, like a 530 and a 564, will win games in a 4:5 ratio. A 50-point gap predicts a 5:7 win ratio.

You can send a email to support@fargorate.com with your name and city. A new player can establish a rating by performance against an opponent of any rating. For instance, a new player who consistently wins 2 out of 3 games against a 350 is performing like a 450. That is, the two win games in a 2:1 ratio and thus are separated by about 100 points. A group of players who are well coupled to one another, like in a local league, can become coupled to the rest of the world by a few players or even a single player playing outside the group.

Games are added to our dataset every day. And a new rating optimization, coupling everybody together around the globe, is performed every day.

The result is a system that is as useful for rating two-dozen players in a small-town league as it is for rating players in a regional tournament tour as it is for rating world-class completion. And a byproduct is each of these groups knows exactly where it stands relative to the others.

The result is a system that is as useful for rating two-dozen players in a small-town league as it is for rating players in a regional tournament tour as it is for rating world-class completion. And a byproduct is each of these groups knows exactly where it stands relative to the others. I mean..... don't you want to know where you stand next to the current greats?

 Robustness is a measure of the reliability of a player’s Fargo Rating. For now, it is simply the number of games a player has played that contribute to his or her rating. A robustness of 200 is a minimum standard for us to consider a rating “established.” In general, a rating is more reliable not only by being based on more games but also by more of those games being recent and by more of those games being against opponents with established ratings. Robustness will likely incorporate these latter two factors in the future, and that is why we don’t simply call it number of games. Players with a robustness under 200, i.e., those with an unestablished rating, have an official rating that may be influenced by a starter rating.

A starter rating—aka a starter guess—is part of an optional approach to incorporate local knowledge/prior knowledge in assigning a useful preliminary rating for players who don’t yet have a Fargo Rating.   It is not part of the FargoRate system.

The FargoRate system computes a performance rating based on data.   When that performance rating is based on 200 or more games, it is called a Fargo Rating.  Because a performance  rating based on only a few games is unreliable as a measure of skill, it can be supplemented with prior knowledge to generate a sensible guess of skill for players without a Fargo Rating.

The preliminary rating the player sees is a weighted blend of the performance rating (with influence determined by the number of games it is based upon) and the starter rating (with influence based on the remaining games to 200.)

For instance, a player with performance rating of 580 based upon 50 games and a starter rating of 540 will see a preliminary rating of 550.

Once a player has 200 games the starter rating is ignored.

..........on the FargoRate system, for help getting added to it, or anything else FargoRate related, feel free to reach out to us here at the Lone Wolf Pool League at our normal phone number and email or to the great folks at FargoRate by email at support@fargorate.com