Point remains:

If you are lucky enough to stumble across a player who for whatever reason plays worse than their current rank, making you get a positive yield in rank when playing them, will drop in rank while doing so, making their rank and their skill converge toward a common point.

Once there, it is no way for that player to magically get their rank up through playing others, apart from actually improving their skill. In which case you will NOT harvest the same yield when trying to play that player again at a later time.

A statistical utopia.

Unfortunately such a thing does not exist in Funkypool. I can understand every argument you (have ever) put towards me regarding the system. Everything you say is statistically true and is as per the ranking guide in the 'Help' section. It always has been and it always will be. And in a perfect world of everyone having exactly the same approach to the system no doubt the ranking table would reflect accurately those that choose to compete that way.

However it does ignore the reality of what happens. My example can, has, does and will happen again. There is no cheating involved in it whatsoever.

Besides, in a ranking system how can you possibly have a comment like 'we are evenly matched but my ranks are too high for me to risk all that'? That is just one comment from this thread, let alone the numerous other examples that you see posted time and time again. Why, when playing competitive games do you have the need to choose who you play? The only reason really is to give you the choice of who to play for your own enjoyment and that is perfectly understandable for an online game. From a competitive point of view though it is virtually unheard of. Auto-pairings, as per the other online sites have experienced, is the way it ought to be however you then lose the freedom of choice and might not be popular.

A tournament ranking, calculated fairly and accurately, would produce a table for those playing them that would be beyond argument.

How about if each player in say top 5 or 10 in each format of game is required to play other players in same position at least a number of times a month. If not a ranking forfeit could apply. Example - onua rarely (never) plays very high ranked pros in 8 b UK in ranked games (ignore tournies). Not picking on you adam but it is a good example.

So for instance if you dont play at least 5 (number picked from air) high ranking games each month the system could deduct 10 pts from said player (maybe more - I wudnt mind)

Those ranked games could be drawn randomly at start of each month to be played within set time frame. I can see probs with this if a player refuses to play a game which is why you would have 5 diff opponents each month to play within top 10. No deduction would apply if player refuses a game but you could feedback to admin....

I know this doesnt sound too feasible but it would stop a player getting to number 1 or 2 or 3 or whatever and then not playing any high ranked games and thus artifically retaining their no 1 , 2 or 3 spot .....

There is one simple answer to why you see such statements - summarized in a single word: Ignorance.

To date I still see people who manage to believe they should stay away from playing high ranked opponents because they think that is ranking-wise more risky than playing opponents of more similar rank to themselves or lower.

What we can agree on, which is the only way I will ever agree that the ranking system can be "manipulated" through choice of opponent, is that if you can somehow more or less reliably single out opponents who will perform worse than their current rank suggests, then you have a category that will be pay off to play as much as possible. Likewise, if you can single out skill vs. rank for your potential opponents, staying away from those who play better than their current rank will be a smart move. The problem is that knowing who will play better and who will play worse is for most practical purposes not possible. Believe me I try. Hard. Every day. Far from as easy as you make it sound.

The one aspect to this that is a little more clear is the unfortunate effect of resets/fake lowbies - who always represent more skill than rank. Even that is hard to single out.

Don't be blinkered into forgetting the fact that you will know the play of your regular friends inside out enough without having to risk dabbling into the rest of the Funky pool of players who could catch you out. Still no cheating involved I hasten to add.

As always we are diametrically apart on this and nothing wrong with that. However to say that those who make threads, posts, comments, or those from other gaming sites that have taken steps to address problems of abuse, are all ignorant of, or show a complete lack of understanding of, what is in reality a very straight forward system are very sweeping statements indeed.

Nothing wrong with it, just a simple matter of me being right and you less so




No idea what you are trying to say here at all - what has this got to do with other gaming sites? What has this got to do with abuse or countermeasures to such anyway?

Yeh sorry not the best paragraph ever written

What I meant is that you seem to view every dissenting comment against the system as being caused by ignorance or a lack of understanding of the system. Presumably this must also then apply to those running larger online gaming sites than this who have acted to stop abuse caused by selective pairing? It just seems such a sweeping statement against so many different people.



Nice one

Edited at 01:07 Sat 02/10/10 (BST)

I do, because in such a massive majority of all cases this far, it is true.



Games that work to stop abuse necessarily have systems that are exploitable. Something that should obviously be fought. Funkypool does not.

You are making a comparison where none exists.

well as the number 1 i think this ranking table is ok, i can get to what ever rank i want in the ovearll, its the easiest ranking table to get up, if you play just 8ball, 9ball or what ever its hard to get to ranks that are very high,

for me i believe its easy to get the overall rank up, and i cant be bothered, i have achieved a straight run of over 100 won lots of tournaments and got 4 out of 5 game type's to 910+

which al_ hasnt been able to do b4, and didnt do it on his last account, it was his straightpool and killer ranks that did it for him,

but al_ if you want to play, play me i had my time at the top it wasnt as fun as i thought, it just makes me not want to play so much when your up that high. i think its bettetr to just play.


i wish i was ranked around 710, and still a bad player, like i was b4 i got good at this game.

it is getting boring now, and its just the clan matches that keep me playing and the tournaments.

Except the comparison does exist since all were using weighted ranking systems where you had the freedom to selectively choose your opponent. But the others have realised that this was being abused and changed to a system of 'auto pairings' with similarly ranked players, where victories ensured statistically harder opponents next time round. That has come from first hand knowledge, experience and research.

I'm not repeating the same facts that are already in numerous other similar threads on here but simply dismissing them doesn't make those facts go away.



I think you are sadly missing the point, and the pleasure, of what being at the top of a ranking table should mean - it is to play against all those players who want to dislodge you. If you lose and slip to second so be it - your challenge is then to beat that player to reclaim your position. Your apparent preoccupation with obtaining as high a score as possible sums up what 'ranked' games are on Funkypool at the moment and not what a 'ranking' table is.

This is, no offense intended, plain bull leftovers Chris. Can you document any of these claims?

You seem to miss the point about a weighted system in the first place: Who you play doesn't matter, which in turn means auto pairings being completely unnecessary.


You, and a lot of others seem to claim that you can somehow "beat the system" through careful selection of opponents.

I will end this debate for my part by giving you this challenge:

Set up a mathematical proof of why and how you can beat the system and gain rank beyond your skill through opponent selection.

And don't just repeat what you tried to say earlier - which I have already dismissed. I understand what you tried to say. I want you to document how what you claim is possible

Which is the problem

its evens out for those two players - not the whole system, so the system is just about selectively playing players who have a rank higher than their current skill to get your rank above your own skill. Not playing and beating the best players to become the best.

e.g. a player who is 900 then resets to 675 would be expected to beat a player ranked 850, but at the same time would gain a lot from each game won.

So that would leave both players with rank below their skill and when they play other players the system would become further distorted, so a lot of players end up having rank unreflective of skill, so unless you know the player you don't know what they are going to be like

Whereas where ranking is done by matching - this would be less apparent

And my claim is that consistently picking players who have better rank than skill is not possible since there is no real way for you to know who fall into that category and who do not.

well i play people ranked higher than me and tbh there is about 2

therefore means i can play any1 i want if the other ranked people are higher refuse,

I (a fictional I) am good enough to beat 'genuine' players up to for arguments sake 750 every time bar the odd fluked loss using skill, tactics, snookers whatever. I am not good enough to beat genuine 900 ranked players the majority of time. My record in tournament play and friendlies shows that.

I have a friend who is around 700-750 whose play I know inside out. I decide to play that person only and win, win, win again. Even if I lose the odd game I will always win enough to outweigh it. If we were mutually exclusive my friend would slip from 700-750 down to below 600 which would end up meaning I gain nothing from playing them. Except although I am mutually exclusive my friend isn't and in between times plays numerous other players at or around their ability hence recouping the points lost to me. Therefore when I return to play my friend instead of earning nothing I am back earning a reasonable yield. All the games are honest. I will lose the odd one but we will play enough for me to outweigh that.

I will by doing that work my way up the 'ranking' table and can even reach number one. Now by your argument that means I have justified my position statistically and I must be a highly skilled player to have done that and be in a rightful position. Well I may be in a justified position however the fact remains that my record against the 'best' players in tournaments or the like says otherwise .....

........and I am not prepared to let people know for sure because I refuse to play any other person.

If that is a way to generate a genuine ranking table as opposed to a high score table then I give up.

I asked you not to simply repeat your example, yet you did precisely that and nothing more.

You have a certain skill level. As does this opponent of yours.

Since your example claims that you will beat this opponent enough of the time to consistently gain rank from it (which he loses), that means his skill is significantly lower than yours.

Assuming you are already at your "correct" rank, where rank=skill, this means that your opponent started off with higher rank than skill, and that you bring this down toward his correct level by beating him more than you lose.

In turn, when this opponent plays other players, he will not gain back his lost rank like you seem to think. Sure, he may luck out now and then and find opponents having a bad day or otherwise playing worse than their rank, but on average, he will face players will their correct rank - in which case he too will break even and not climb.

The next time you play this opponent, his rank will still reflect that you brought him down to his correct level the last time, and therefore not grant you the same opportunity to milk rank from his as you did previously.


Fair enough, there exists a few players who for whatever reasons have real nervous breakdowns against certain, specific opponents, and who will therefore play a lot worse against them than they do in general, but those are extreme exceptions and you'd be stretching it if claiming it is possible to find players whose nemesis is YOU.

Because there is absolutely no chance of watching someone playing?

Or playing one or 2 frames and leaving against higher skill than rank over playing many more against lower skill than rank

Or even checking out their win ratio in the 30 seconds you get before it clicks (or even while you watch them)

Not everybody plays blindly, knowing absolutely nothing about their opponents. In a system where often rank and skill are not reflective of each other

What is my 'correct' rank - it is only based on my games against one player? Isn't that a major issue?

Through their multitude of games against me their rank goes artificially low which they actually recoup by playing others of a similar standard so that by the time I play them again are at a genuine rank ready for me to strip off them again and so the circle continues.

There is no mention of a nemesis - this player would also lose to other players as good as me - but can beat players worse.

I give up but at least hope that others see reality.

And I am not documenting what is readily available on the web.

Edited at 15:26 Sat 02/10/10 (BST)