Pick 'em competitions - Overall rankings

[steven]

Before the Miami pick 'em starts, it seemed like a good idea to copy over the most relevant stuff from the old forum about the overall pick 'em rankings. So, the first posts on this thread are designed to be a brief guide to how the pick 'em rankings came about and how they work.

Having said that, the very brief notes at the top of the ranking list itself will probably be more than enough explanation for most people!

1) The overall pick 'em rankings can be found at http://www.britishtennis.net/pickem/ranking.htm

2) Only pick 'ems that involve a team competition count towards the overall rankings. (i.e. 'practice' events like Hamburg 2007 are ignored)

3) If you have not scored any points for a pick 'em that you are sure you played in, it probably means that you entered with a different name, so please check via the '2007' links on the Hall of Fame page or in the individual tournament ranking point summaries below and let me know if two different names from different tournaments are actually the same person.

4) If it looks like you entered with the same name but there is still no score for you, it may mean you put an extra space after your name some of the times you entered or something like that - just let me know and I'll correct it, but please try to use exactly the same name in future pick 'ems to stop this happening.

N.B. The pick 'em ranking rules were set after RG 2007, with the following 'committee' helping me to choose from a number of options I had come up with - Bethan (who runs the pick 'ems with me), RobC (another BT.net rankings expert), ASE (one of AM.com's rankings experts) and Xenon (as AM.com's captain) - many thanks to them for their help! We tended to agree on the most important options, which is good.

[steven]

BRIEF GUIDE TO PICK 'EM OVERALL RANKING POINTS

N.B. Sections in italics are aimed at those who are more mathematically/statistically minded and can safely be ignored by those who aren't!

HOW DO I SCORE RANKING POINTS FOR ANY ONE TOURNAMENT?

Your total points for any given pick 'em are made up of position points + bonus points

Position points

1st place in a pick 'em scores 500 position points, last place scores 1. The points for all the other places are spread evenly between those values.

For those who want the formula, if you come Mth in a pick 'em with N entrants, your position points score is 1 + 499 (N - M) / (N - 1), rounded to the nearest whole number.

Ties are dealt with in the most mathematically sensible way, e.g. if you are tied for 7th with one other player, M is 7.5, if you are tied for 7th with two other players, M is 8, and so on.

Bonus points

From 2008 onwards, you score 2 bonus points for every 0.1% by which your score as a % of the maximum possible score (i.e. the right-hand column in each pick 'ems individual results table) exceeds the average for the entrants as a whole. e.g. if you scored 50.0% of the maximum possible and the average was 30.0%, you would score 400 bonus points.

N.B. In 2007, you only scored 1 bonus point per 0.1%, but the scoring system within each pick 'em was different and tended to result in the scores within each individual pick 'em being more spread out, so doubling the bonus points per 0.1% is just compensating for this and making sure that ranking points from tournaments in different years are broadly comparable.

Bonus points do not go negative, i.e. if your score for a pick 'em is below average, your total ranking points for that pick 'em are the same as your position points.

Advantages of this bonus system

Because having more entrants gives more chance of there being extreme outliers, winners of pick 'ems with more entrants will tend to score more bonus points. Also, because scores tend to be more spread out at each end of the table than in the middle, the bonus system will tend to give greater gaps between those near the top of the table than between those lower down. Thus, the bonuses should achieve two things that were seen to be desirable without us having to adjust for them directly.

In addition, this bonus system will tend to award more bonus points to those who correctly pick a tournament winner whom most other entrants do not pick than to those who play safe (by playing safe, I mean picking Rafa on clay, Fed everywhere else), which may partly compensate for the extra risk of doing this and give those who already do this at least some incentive not to be as 'boring' as the rest of us.

DO GRAND SLAM PICK 'EMs COUNT MORE THAN AMS PICK 'EMs?

The short answer is yes, but we have had to do this in quite a subtle way to avoid AMS pick 'ems becoming virtually irrelevant.

The way it works is that while GS scores don't count double, you are allowed to count each GS score (up to) twice in your Best 7, as if you got the same score in two different AMS events. If it is not clear what this means, it should be obvious when you look at the rankings page.

It says "(up to) twice" in the last paragraph, because if you had six higher scores than your score in one of the slams, you would only count that slam score once in your best 7.

Because it is so difficult to finish near the top of two consecutive pick 'ems, being able to count a very good GS score twice still gives those who finish near the top of GS pick 'ems a big advantage over those who finish near the top of AMS pick 'ems, but without unduly penalising those who have a bad GS and without giving rise to silly-looking anomalies, such as the score for finishing only just above the middle in a GS pick 'em outcounting the score for finishing in the top three of an AMS pick 'em.

HOW IS MY OVERALL RANKING WORKED OUT?

We intend to run pick 'ems for all four grand slams and for six of the AMS events each year, giving a total of ten tournaments. However, because grand slam scores can be counted twice (see above), this gives up to 14 individual pick 'em scores to choose from. We think you should be allowed to ignore up to half of them. So:

Your overall ranking points will be the total of your best 7 scores over the previous 12 months, or the total of all your scores over the previous 12 months if you have less than 7.

However, until we had been running for a full year, the maximum number of scores you counted were smaller, e.g. it was 4 after Wimbledon 2007.

Bold type lets you see at a glance which of your scores are counting.

Ties

The way the scoring for each tournament works should ensure that ties in overall ranking points are rare, but if they happen, the entrant who has needed fewer tournaments to get the same number of points will be placed higher. If that does not break the tie, the player with the higher single tournament score will be placed higher, followed by the higher next best score if necessary and so on.

What if I have to miss some tournaments because I am away and unable to make my picks?

Those who play every tournament will have a slight advantage, in that they can ignore more of their bad scores, but even if you only play the four grand slam pick 'ems each year (which will give you 8 scores to choose your best 7 from - see above) or only half of the AMS events and half of the grand slams, you will have a good chance of finishing very high up the rankings if you do well in those tournaments.

What if I have missed the first few pick 'ems?

Again, those who have played in every pick 'em in the last 12 months will have a slight advantage, but even if you don't make your pick 'em 'debut' until Roland Garros in a given year, you could still have 9 scores from 6 tournaments to choose your 7 from by the end of that year, and if you continue to enter pick 'ems after that, you will very quickly be on a level playing field with everyone who has been doing pick 'ems since the start as the earlier tournaments drop off the rankings.

If you start late, you will probably also be able to enjoy the fun of shooting up the rankings after your first few tournaments, even if it takes you a while to get right to the top!

Two players managed to end 2007 in the top 20 despite having played only half of the pick 'ems that year.

[steven]

So that we have all the ranking reports from 2008 in here (I don't think it's worth copying over the 2007 reports), here's the one from after the AO:

NEW OVERALL RANKINGS after the Australian Open

You can now see the updated Hall of Fame and the new Overall Rankings on the BT.net site.

Remember that the number of scores to be counted changed from Best 6 to Best 7 when this event was added.

TOP 10

The AO produced numerous changes in the overall top 10, with new AO Champion Richard Morris / ASE (AM) getting enough bonus points to rise 6 places to be the new World No. 1, making it a double celebration for him. He is followed by French Open Champion David Cox / sheddie (BT), who rises 3 places to 2nd after another top 5 grand slam finish at the AO, recovering well from a pretty bad start to the tournament. Spraggz (AM) rises 1 to 3rd after another good finish in a slam (31st/268) to add to his top 10 finishes at Wimby & the USO.

Previous World No. 1 Guy (BT) slips three places to 4th after failing to make the top 40 at the AO - he did actually finish as high as 45th, well into the top quartile, but a Fed found at the real AO, it can be tough staying at the top even if you don't do too badly! Indeed, Allan (AM), 3 places above Guy at the AO, also drops in the overall rankings, from 2nd to 6th.

Other risers in(to) the top 10 are AO top 15 finishers Wendy (AM), up 1 to 5th, cazza99 (AM), up 2 to 7th, and RobC (BT), up 3 to 8th, while goldfish (BT) drops 6 places to 9th after finishing outside the top 100 at the AO, but is still over 200 ranking points ahead of linda (AM), up 3 to 10th, and steven (GR), up 5 to 11th, who showed that once you get outside the rarefied atmosphere of the top 10, a top 50-ish finish at the AO can be enough for a move upwards.

RISERS

The fastest riser in the top 20 is seagull (BT), up 12 to 14th after a top 25 finish at the SO, while amalyn (MT), up 41 to 43rd, is the biggest riser in the top 50, following up her US Open win in her first tournament with a top 10 finish in this, her second! Ghandi (GR), up 84 to 73rd, is the fastest riser in the top 100 after a top 10 finish at the AO.

The biggest riser of all, however, is Riggelpop (AR), up 158 to 152nd, after improving from 2nd last at the USO to a top 30 finish at the AO.

NEW ENTRANTS

There are 128 new entrants (i.e. the AO had 140 entrants returning from previous pick 'ems and 128 debutants), meaning that outside the top 20 or so, a lot of people who had average performances at the AO are dropping lots of places withouth actually doing worse than before - so don't feel too bad if that has happened to you!

The two highest new entrants are, of course, the two debutants who finished in the top 3 at the AO - francky (RG), in at 112nd, and Kuda (TN), in at 117th, already mixing it with some people who have played in five or more tournaments!

LOOKING AHEAD

Things are going to get even more interesting once we start getting into tournaments where people have points to defend and as more people from the newer teams start getting up to 7 or more counting scores. I think I can safely predict that the AM/BT dominance of the top 40 is going to be showing a fair few cracks by the time the post-Wimby rankings are published in a few months time.

[Linda]

Is this going to be updated for Miami? (Though I would be better off myself if Miami was quietly forgotten about!)

[RoastLamb]

Well done our top ten am.commers - ASE, Spraggz, Allan, Wendy, Cazza and Linda! You guys ROCK!!!

[JAMES4578]

Well done allof you for the great showings!

[steven]

Originally Posted by Linda

Is this going to be updated for Miami? (Though I would be better off myself if Miami was quietly forgotten about!)

Yes, hopefully before entries for Monte Carlo (no rest for the wicked!) open at lunchtime on Saturday. I've been a bit busy recently.

[Shaun7879]

Im very happy with 25th overall. Thanks Steven

[JAMES4578]

Well done too Shaun! I am a bit lower down!, but haven't done as many.

[cazza99]

You can keep this old one as long as you like cos I will go down a bit when you update it.