The people who do that are misguided. That's my bold, but sincere claim.

As long as we are talking about players that play on their true rank (the one reflecting their skill) - it makes 0.0 difference who you play.

The issue is when considering the player pool consisting of tons of players playing a lower or higher rank than their skill should suggest. The system cannot counter that in any way, and this affects results a great deal.

When picking opponents, what you obviously want to find is players who are worse than their current rank. What you want to avoid is players who are better than their rank.

Now for the ironic part: People somehow think you find the former among the lowbie part of the player pool. That is completely turning it upside down.

You find a lot more players on their way up among the lowbies, and few or none at all among the top 50.

As long as the options exist that allow a player to play at as low a rank as he/she pleases (which I can think of no way to prevent), you can hardly blame higher ranked players from avoiding them either.

The system works perfectly in terms of weighting scores as long as players all played on their correct ranks (which you inevitably would end up doing if all games were ranked, with no reset available), but as long as you have deviations, you have the results affected by those as well.

(That was for Nick - not going to argue about this with you yet again, arcade ;) )

That's your opinion. What you always seem to forget when we debate this tho, is that they do race at the expense of the players they meet.

It might seem like a reasonable thing to do if only considering the player who is climbing. If you consider what it does to his opponents tho, it's not fair at all.

The ranking system is designed to correctly reward/punish players based on the opponents rank compared to your own. If you play on a lower rank than your skill suggests, you inflict rank losses on your opponent that are way higher than they ought to be if you had played on your correct rank.

At the very least, resetters should be clearly, permanently tagged.

(That was for Nick - not going to argue about this with you yet again, arcade ;) )

there is no argument anymore - the system is a technically very sound one and works perfectly if everyone played anyone else (or was forced to) - then everything would even out eventually, even your same old argument about people on false ranks because eventually every player will run up against them and lose big time (maybe) - as always technically sound systems get undermined by human nature!!

Its been proved that the player at the top of a ranking needs only a 12:1 win ratio against very low ranked players to preserve status. That is eminently simple to do and allows for the one time you mess up either by choosing a player who is falsely ranked or by fouling the black - i think that player will be top for a long time because they will get no credible challenge directly against them

Edited at 10:26 Wed 16/07/08 (BST)

if another online site has realised the same problem and has altered its system accordingly just maybe there is a flaw to everything you say and therefore maybe we could try and find ways to improve upon it.

I accept Nick's point about automatic pairings being hard to introduce and he should know if anyone but that kind of system would eventually produce a true ladder of ability



quite right Nick

Edited at 10:28 Wed 16/07/08 (BST)

OK, I'm adding ranking to killer at the moment.

Basically it will work the same way as other games, the winner having a victory against each player in turn. This means wins and losses will be available too (a win in 10 man killer will give you +9 wins, a loss in any case will give you +1 to your losses).

A few notes:
- The wins and losses vs friends on your profile wont be updated for killer games
- The order the results will be processed in sequentially from 10th place to 2nd place. Meaning it will be *slightly* better to get 2nd place.

Ok Nick so if you came 2nd in the killer game would you get +8 wins to your profile or is it just for the actual winner?

1st place: +9
2nd place: -1
...
10th place: -1

Therefore if you're average you'll have wins and losses about the same.

Ah right, thanks for clarifying that for me.

My display picture must need changing.

Killer now has rankings introduced as described above. Push ups now give ball in hand to the next player to bring the rules in line with US games. There's also a few more stats tables to look at.

http://www.funkypool.com/viewRankingsSummary.do?gameName=killer

Edited at 12:57 Mon 11/08/08 (BST)

It's wrong now. I will restart to fix this in an hour and reset the killer rankings at the same time.

OK it's restarted. Apologies if you lost some score but the values were calculated incorrectly (due to newbie bonus problems).

What does everyone think on adding killer score to your overall ranking?

I haven't made my mind up as yet, just wandering!

Its ok but as i said before it would be great if there was a reset killer only button !

Must disagree, if you choose to reset you choose to reset all!

The killer rule page could use an update to reflect this. (ranking instead of the old point system).

Also, is there any daily reductions planned for this rank? (as well as the necessary win bonus associated with such reductions)

I hope so - daily reductions are great for keeping people from retiring at the top but instead make people work to maintain their status as the top dog

Completely agree.

In my opinio, reset (as well as making new accounts) shouldn't be possible at all - but that's neither wanted or possible to enforce so a moot point really. Also a bit off topicish for this thread.

Yep same ranking system as other games including daily deduction.

2 things that could change:
- we can remove points and games completely (there's no real point as far as I can see now, and games being different to wins + losses is confusing).
- whether to use killer in the overall ranking table.

please please dont use killer in the overall ranking table. i hate you mich for bringing that up.

I see killer as a fun little side game to the site like golf. Please dont make it part of the overall rankings.

i do agree if you reset one you should reset all though.
And i agree with nicks first point about removing points, although if i had spent as much time building my points up as alan i definitly would not agree.....


But please no killer in the overall ranking table

being top of the points table i dont have a problem if this is removed, would've been better if all killer stats were reset before the new rank system started, the rank system is the same as the other games now so why not include it in the overall table, go for it.

i think ill cry if you introduce killer to the overall rankings. Most of the current top ten would be wiped out the top ten as well lol wouldnt they.

Guess id get used to it eventually but right here right now i dont want it