League Points (1 Viewer)

[BGinGA]

An "Average" actually hurts those players willing to come more often because its rare for them to always finish in the top 3 or so, I want to keep it fair for someone who comes every week and plugs away to improve their score and someone who can only come the minimum. This seems to take that all into account, the straight average hurts those players who always come and most of the other systems reward attendance too much for my liking. I realize that I can do this manually but I like putting a nice neat little formula in there to do it for me, then I can change it next year to maybe top 4, 5, 6, or 7 scores without having to replug in everything manually.

It's a "wish list" item so we'll see if it is actually possible.

You just need a system that rewards performance and not attendance. Awarding no (or very few, relatively) points to the bottom 50% of the field helps accomplish this, as does making the awarded points for the top half (or quarter) of the field non-linear. I've never been a fan of only counting the 'top xx scores', as it is just another attendance incentive.

Show up, perform, get points. Show up, donk it, get few (if any) points. Don't show up, get no points. That's the way it should be, imo. You want more points? Play better. Trying to catch somebody with more points? Play better and play more often. Don't need no steekin' average.

 

[Bloody Marvelous]

I agree with BG in general, though I think attendance is something that should be rewarded in a poker league. Obviously not nearly as much as playing well, but if you're a loyal participant in the league rather than a sporadic one I feel you deserve a few extra points. Loyalty and attendance are what keep the league going after all.

The point of keeping score over a season is to see who's consistently a better player. The larger the sample size, the more reliable the number. Player X who scored high 2 out of 3 times (66.7%) may not be a better player than Player Y who scored high 18 out of 30 times (60%). Player X may just as easily have scored high once or thrice (33%~100%), whereas Player Y may have scored high 15 to 21 times (50%~70%). The variance in a sample size of 3 is too high to draw any conclusions about player performance.

You can't expect all players to show up at every game though. Situations may arise outside the players' field of influence that forces them to miss a couple of games, so you don't want to punish players too severely for missing a game or two (or 5, or 6, or however many works for your league). A player who played in 9 out of the 10 games still gets full points for participating, and isn't punished because he couldn't make it that one time because of an illness or an unexpected emergency.

Then there's the issue of variance. You can consider counting the top xx results as running the board multiple times. If a player plays more than xx times, it reduces variance. A freak low finish because of bad luck loses its significance.

If you count the top 8 out of 10 only, then three strokes of bad luck becomes only one stroke of bad luck.
One stroke of good fortune in 10 may become one in eight (from 10% to 12.5%), but six high finishes out of 10 becomes six out of eight (from 60% to 75%). Better players benefit more from counting the top xx points than luck-boxes.

Anyway, that's why I'm a proponent of counting top xx scores, but I can understand why others may be uncomfortable with the concept.

 

[abby99]

Do any of you folks know how to make an Excel or Google Spreadsheet formula to count a players top 5 scores only?

I have a spreadsheet which calculates a players total score across all the games he/sh

I've got one that doesn't involve a lookup table. I'll post it this evening. Nudge me if necessary.

 

[CO0LHand]

How would it work without the Lookup?

 

[Bloody Marvelous]

I've got one that doesn't involve a lookup table. I'll post it this evening. Nudge me if necessary.

Nudge

 

[abby99]

=AE7-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),1)-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),2)-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),3)-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),4)

AE7 is the total points for the season. From this we subtract the four smallest scores to get the best 8. If 8 or fewer games have been played, the dropped scores will be zeros. This formulas need zeros, not blanks, for the league game scores. This is from the CT leagues back in the day, and I credit Seitz333 for the spreadsheet.

 

[Bloody Marvelous]

=AE7-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),1)-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),2)-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),3)-SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),4)
AE7 is the total points for the season. From this we subtract the four smallest scores to get the best 8. If 8 or fewer games have been played, the dropped scores will be zeros. This formulas need zeros, not blanks, for the league game scores. This is from the CT leagues back in the day, and I credit Seitz333 for the spreadsheet.

That can be shortened to: =AE7-SUM(SMALL((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),{1,2,3,4})) and is the same as =SUM(LARGE((F7,H7,J7,L7,N7,P7,R7,T7,V7,X7,Z7,AB7),{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}))
And this works great if you have the scores per player on one line.

CO0LHand didn't do that unfortunately. He has the games grouped vertically, and put the names in order of ranking. In that case you're gonna need VLOOKUPs unless you want to alter every formula after every game.

 

[abby99]

Elegant formula.

I hadn't seen COOLHand's spreadsheet, but from your description lookups are the way to go.

 

[CO0LHand]

Elegant formula.

I hadn't seen COOLHand's spreadsheet, but from your description lookups are the way to go.

I might have to bite the bullet and put the scores in horizontally since that seems to make life a lot easier. Thanks guys!

 

[abby99]

I might have to bite the bullet and put the scores in horizontally since that seems to make life a lot easier. Thanks guys!

You can freely sort the player rows to order them according to whatever criteria you choose.

This is a rather nostalgic thread for me. Most of my poker buddies know that I don't enjoy tournaments and I rarely play them these days. It's a little sad that what I liked the most about league play was tracking the standings. After winning, that is.

 

[CO0LHand]

Cool, I posted on a Excel board and they gave me this super nifty solution: =sum(QUERY({A:A,I:I},"select Col2 where Col1='Greg' order by Col2 desc limit 4"))

And it works!

 

[CO0LHand]

Note I changed this piece of code to this: =sum(QUERY({A:A,I:I},"select Col2 where Col1='"&A:A&"' order by Col2 desc limit 4"))

And now I don't need to put individual names in the search query so it just looks at the name in the column it is in. This enables me to make a really easily readable sheet for my league that records all the pertinent stats from each month's game.

Good stuff!

 

[CO0LHand]

You can freely sort the player rows to order them according to whatever criteria you choose.

This is a rather nostalgic thread for me. Most of my poker buddies know that I don't enjoy tournaments and I rarely play them these days. It's a little sad that what I liked the most about league play was tracking the standings. After winning, that is.

I have quite enjoyed coming up with a system to score/rank players. I might see how all the different systems compare at the end of the season just for shits and giggles but it's in-line with most of the other systems out there and doesn't reward/punish too much for attendance which with my group is important. Can't thank everyone enough for helping, it's funny to find a tiny little niche group of people who are into the same thing as you are when you have been convinced there isn't anyone out there as sick as you.

 

[PokerBillie]

Bloody, thanks for this! Indeed I've tried to measure what actually happens during a game. For those wondering, my game has had from 12 to 27 players. The buy-in is constant, and we don't have re-buys.

On thing I think this clearly demonstrates is that there is more than one way to do this. Since almost every game (by this I don't mean a single tournament but a group of tournaments by a particular group, and it could be a fixed or rotating location) is unique in some way, someone could pick something based on their unique circumstances. Best of all, no one can really say your method is invalid -- just different!

Here's some observations I'd like some feedback on.

1 -- How do you deal with a late player who comes after another player has been knocked out?
It seems with all of these formulas, there is a reward at the bottom for showing up late. That to me is not the kind of behavior I want to encourage. Example: Players A through X (since you primarily used 24) -- A-W start tournament. After 30 minutes (for us halfway through Round 2), W is KO'd. At the start of Round 3, X show up and enters. X goes all in on his second hand and loses. Yet, he finishes ahead of W because W was out before X started. Based on my experience, showing up late isn't an advantage. I've been tracking this for about 40 tournaments. A player who shows up late is far less likely to wind up in the money than one who is there on time. Maybe this is just my perception, but I see a rating system that puts X ahead of W as inherently flawed because it doesn't measure anything other than where they finished. On average, we payout just less than 27% of the field. For those who show up late, they average getting in the money way less than 27% of the time. Here's some actual numbers. Of the last 208 payout spots, only 4 went to players who showed up late (less than 2%), but that number by itself doesn't mean much. Of the last 65 players to show up late, only 4 made it into the money (6.15%). How do I define late? If you arrive after the first hand is played. I can see the argument that this is a small sample size, but those seem like very large gaps to make an argument that showing up late should help someone.

How I've dealt with this issue -- My system doesn't rate players on where they finish unless they finish high enough to be among the better players. In theory, my system doesn't distinguish between the #11 finisher and the #30 finisher in a tournament based only on where they finish. They could distinguish themselves in other ways (by knocking out another player, for example).

2 -- What are most people trying to measure?
There is one formula you didn't include that I looked at, and that was Card Player magazine's formula. That's actually the one I based my system on, though I included things they did not. It based the formula on where the top 5 players finished and how many players entered. When I started our "league" almost 2.5 years ago, I looked at Card Player and one of the Dr. Neau formulas. I liked them both, but really sensed they were trying to measure something I wasn't. I think they were each trying to measure something that I wasn't, and I could be completely wrong about this. It seemed like Dr. Neau was trying to eliminate those players least deserving or identifying those players most deserving of getting to a championship game. Card Player was trying to rate thousands of players based on things easily measurable -- field size and top of the heap finishes. They approached things from seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum. Dr. Neau wanted to measure from the bottom up and measure everyone but with a limited number of players; Card Player wanted to measure from the top down but not go very deep, and used a system for an unlimited number of players. I liked elements of both but didn't think either by themselves got me what I wanted.

What I was trying to measure -- I was trying to determine, based on actual performance, who the best players were over 12 games (1 year) for those who played in at least 7 of those games and identify the player who performed the very best over those games. The games are almost identical -- same buy-in, though some are bounty games, no re-buys. The maximum # of players is 30, and the fewest I've had is 12. I think the same buy-in and no re-buys makes measuring this easier. In some games, players can get up to a 10% variation in starting chips (1-2 games a year this year, though I didn't do that the first 2 years).

Why it matters what you are trying to measure -- This seems obvious to me, but if you are trying to determine the best player over a given time with a finite number of players, you will likely do something different than if you are trying to determine which players in the group should make some type of championship game.

All formulas, or methods since you've probably correctly stated my system can't really be reduced to a formula, involve some level of value judgment about what should count the most, and that is somewhat arbitrary whether people want to admit it or not.

Bloody, I loved your explanation of the Poker Stars system -- that it had what it needed for you!

I'm fascinated with systems that try to rate players. I always try to see if there is something I can learn from a system that might help improve my own. I think knowing what someone is trying to measure and why helps evaluate whether they have something that can improve my system.

Hi TexRex,

Greetings from Cape Town, South Africa. I have been scrolling for some ideas on how to better allocate points over a one year period. I really resonated with your comments about what we are trying to measure and think our group is the same.

We have a group of 10 friends who play around 17 games a year (about every 3 weeks). Some nights we have 5-6 and other times 10 players. We have a single buy-in up-front with the same amount of chips allocated to each player regardless of the number of players on a given night.
[We have a Championship Game at the end of the year and in order to qualify, you have to win one of the 17 games. However, we also want to measure the best performance over the year and award prizes based on that]

So, like you, we are trying to determine, based on actual performance, who the best players were over these 17 odd games. Our current, very basic points system (every player earns some points) I think rewards players who play more games, so I like the part about "those who played in at least 7 of those games and identify the player who performed the very best over those games"

I am unfamiliar with etiquette on sharing resources/templates, but if you had a simple template that you would be prepared to share, I would be super grateful.

Kind regards
Lakes Poker, Cape Town

 

[TexRex]

Poker Billie, I'm happy to share resources. However, when we added 2 additional tournaments, my spreadsheet hasn't worked properly and is currently being updated. Since I lack the skills to update my sophisticated one, I'm waiting on someone else. There are, I think, several formulas that might work.

First, I'd set a "base" for attendance. I'll use 5 as the base, for example. For attendance, every player who comes gets for attendance the base, plus some additional for each additional player. I use 4%, but you could use 5%, or some other number. As long as it is a percentage and not a fixed number, your system won't be linear. I'd personally be inclined to throw out any number of players below 5, but it's not required. For example, using 4%, here would be the attendance points from 2-10.

Attendance	Att Pts
2​	0.889​
3​	0.925​
4​	0.962​
5​	1.000​
6​	1.040​
7​	1.082​
8​	1.125​
9​	1.170​
10​	1.217​

Second, for the finishing points, I follow the same concept. Each higher place is an identical percentage above the next lower place. However, with 10, I'd have no more than 3 or 4 extra points places. I'll use 4 as the example. You could use 25% to 60%. I'll use 40% for example.

Finish	Fin Pts
1​	3.842​
2​	2.744​
3​	1.960​
4​	1.400​
5​	1.000​
6​	1.000​
7​	1.000​
8​	1.000​
9​	1.000​
10​	1.000​

There are a couple of things I look for. I always want a 1+4 to equal more than a 2+3, or a 1+3 to be more than a 2+2. The higher finish always gets the edge when the finishing places are equal. Thus, the system is not linear.

Then I multiply the attendance points x finish points. I'm going to show you the scoring for 3 tournaments using this system. For this example, I'm going to measure 10, 8, and 6 players. The players are labeled A B C D E F G H I J.

Note: For the examples below, only attendance and finish are calculated. Re-buys and varying entry amounts are not calculated.

Player

T1 - 10

T1 - Att

T1 - Fin

T1-Total

T2 - 8

T2 - Att

T2 - Fin

T2 - Total

T3 - 6

T3 - Att

T3 - Fin

T3-Total

Total

A

1​

1.217​

3.842​

4.674​

5​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

3​

1.040​

1.960​

2.038​

7.837​

B

2​

1.217​

2.744​

3.338​

6​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

2​

1.040​

2.744​

2.854​

7.317​

C

3​

1.217​

1.960​

2.385​

0​

1.125​

0​

0.000​

6​

1.040​

1.000​

1.040​

3.425​

D

4​

1.217​

1.400​

1.703​

0​

1.125​

0​

0.000​

5​

1.040​

1.000​

1.040​

2.743​

E

5​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

8​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

1​

1.040​

3.842​

3.995​

6.337​

F

6​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

7​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

4​

1.040​

1.400​

1.456​

3.798​

G

7​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

4​

1.125​

1.400​

1.575​

0​

0​

0.000​

0.000​

2.791​

H

8​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

3​

1.125​

1.960​

2.205​

0​

0​

0.000​

0.000​

3.421​

I

9​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

2​

1.125​

2.744​

3.087​

0​

0​

0.000​

0.000​

4.303​

J

10​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

1​

1.125​

3.842​

4.321​

0​

0​

0.000​

0.000​

5.538​

I believe the ratio between attendance points and finish points is important. In this case, the ratio was 10:1. Thus, higher finishes will in theory count 10x as much as attendance. You can see that A and B had very similar performances -- both placing in the points twice in the same tournaments (A 1 & 3; b 2 & 2). Since their attendance was identical, A's edge is his 1st place finish.

I'll show one more example. Same finishes for A and B, but this time, the tournaments are 10, 8, and 10.

Player

T1 - 10

T1 - Att

T1 - Fin

T1-Total

T2 - 8

T2 - Att

T2 - Fin

T2 - Total

T3 - 10

T3 - Att

T3 - Fin

T3-Total

Total

A

1​

1.217​

3.842​

4.674​

5​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

3​

1.217​

1.960​

2.385​

8.183​

B

2​

1.217​

2.744​

3.338​

6​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

2​

1.217​

2.744​

3.338​

7.802​

C

3​

1.217​

1.960​

2.385​

0​

1.125​

0​

0.000​

6​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

3.601​

D

4​

1.217​

1.400​

1.703​

0​

1.125​

0​

0.000​

5​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

2.920​

E

5​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

8​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

1​

1.217​

3.842​

4.674​

7.015​

F

6​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

7​

1.125​

1.000​

1.125​

4​

1.217​

1.400​

1.703​

4.045​

G

7​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

4​

1.125​

1.400​

1.575​

10​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

4.008​

H

8​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

3​

1.125​

1.960​

2.205​

9​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

4.638​

I

9​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

2​

1.125​

2.744​

3.087​

8​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

5.520​

J

10​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

1​

1.125​

3.842​

4.321​

7​

1.217​

1.000​

1.217​

6.755​

You can see A still has the edge over B. A's 1+3 is slightly more than B's 2+2, so by A winning, this shows him to be the best overall player. E would finish 3rd. His win without another minimum finish wouldn't help him pass B.

Players get attendance points by showing up and playing, and every player in a tournament receives the same number for attendance. Some would count lower finishes as 0. That's not wrong -- just different. The only way I know of to compare all players to each other is to give something just for coming. For elite performances, I don't think it matters to determine the best overall player, but I like this better. It does reward attendance. Suppose a only shows for these 3 games, but D, with the lowest point total, only misses 3 games. He will pass A in points merely by showing up.

There are competing views on the third scenario.

View 1 -- If measuring performance over all games, D is ranked higher than A, but A performed better in the games he attended. Another way I'd rank them is by average performance, but set a minimum # of games used. I use 1/2 + 1 (9 games in your situation). This system does reward attendance, but it rewards elite performances much more heavily. A no-show is treated like a forfeit.

View 2 -- Total points is all that counts. That rewards attendance, but also rewards elite performances. A no-show is treated like a forfeit.

View 3 -- Players who finish below 4th get 0 finish points. Someone who showed to all 17 games and finished 5th gets fewer points than someone who finished 4 once, and 10th the other 16 times. Such a player is not going to stack up well against those with 9 games who have an elite performance above 4th. To me that makes no sense, but some are OK with it. Again, they aren't wrong, just different. It's simplicity is it only measures the best performances. A 5th or lower finish, or a no-show, is treated like a forfeit.

view 4 -- Some would let every player throw out some of their lowest performances. If we used 5 for example, the best 12 finishes for each player count. To me, that distorts a player's performance, but some like that. I does encourage players to come because they can't really put themselves in a worse position by showing up, and if they do better than another performance, they improve their standing.

I'm sure there are other views.

The reality is with 17 tournaments, some will attend way more than others, so it's hard to compare players who possibly never even played in the same tournament, or 2 players like A and D above. You have to decide what you are really going to count. Every system is somewhat arbitrary because everyone has a different view of what to measure and how to do it.

Other things to consider ~

1. You might do something like this. 8-10 get 1 finish points; 5-7 get 1.4x that, and 4th and above get the next lower number x 1.4. That makes not finishing at the bottom more painful, and rewards survival a little more.
2. You could do bottom gets 1, then each additional place gets 1.4x more. The problem with this is the winner with 10 players counts almost 4.67x as much as the winner with 5 players. I honestly don't think it should. I don't even think it should be 2x as much. If you only count the top 5 places, it is 1.217x more. I think that is better.
3. Re-buys might be counted. Some don't think re-buys should count the same as the original buy-in, some do, and others don't consider them at all.
4. Buy-in amount. Some think a $100 entry should count 2x as much as a $50 entry, some think it should count more but not as much as 2x, and some think it's irrelevant.
5. We've used a version of what I call Olympic scoring. We measure 8 categories (4 actually, but one for overall totals and one for average performance). The first, second, and third best at each of those 8 things could be counted. You would probably vary how much each thing counted depending on how important you thought each was. Our categories were [1] total points, [2] final table finishes, [3] in the points finishes, and [4] tournament wins.
6. How many player do you need to measure. Last year, we had 45 different players, but never more than 19 at one tournament. The more players you have, the more difficult the task of measuring.
7. Ultimately, you need to ask, "Why am I keeping score?" Is it to give an award for the year? Is it to have a championship tournament you have to earn your way to? Is it to get a bigger chip stack in that last game? Is it a combination of earn your way and build your stack? One might employ a different scoring system for each of those.

OK -- anyone who wants to PM me with your email address, I'll send the simple spreadsheet I used for the numbers in this post.