Please note that this page contains a lot of detail about the Tantrix tournament Elo ratings, which are the best estimates of each player's strength based on the tournament games they have played so far. Ratings based on only a few tournaments / TGs have a large confidence interval around them and hence are in the provisional list which comes after the established list.

If you are not interested in all this detail, please go straight to the seeding list which is based on these Elo ratings but is much easier to read and also has a link to a summary report.

Current Tantrix Tournament Elo Ratings

The December 2003 tournament Elo ratings for 383 players (around 100 of them new to tournaments this year) can be found below the following notes. The ratings are based on a total of 9351 tournament games - 4718 played between 1999-2002 and 4633 played in 2003 up to the end of the World Team Championship.

Please remember that deweighting last year's results by 50% for the tournaments played in 2003 means that whether a player's rating rises or falls partly depends on how he/she did compared to the same tournament a year ago in terms of actual results (margins) and the strength of opponents played, which does not necessarily mean how far they got in the tournament each year (though there is obviously a strong correlation with that!) and that the ratings of some players who did not play in this year's tournaments have also changed.

Established and Provisional lists:

Under a classical Elo rating system like this, you do not start with an arbitrary rating like 500 and slowly move away from it. Instead, the system calculates a best estimate of your rating based on all the available evidence, i.e. all the tournament games you have played, even if you have not played very many. This makes the system fairer on your future opponents and gives a better idea of your true strength quickly. However, 'best estimate' does not mean necessarily mean 'likely to be maintained'. Ratings based on a low number of games have a large confidence interval around them and this is taken into account when converting Elo ratings into seeding points.

For example, if you played your first tournament game against Matt Peek and beat him by a big margin, your rating for that game might be 2500. That is the level appropriate to someone who beats Matt Peek by a big margin in every game, and you have beaten him by a big margin in every (one!) game so far, but that is clearly not sustainable over 35 more games - compare some of the extreme WTTC ratings for established players with their overall ratings for more proof of this.

So, there are three rating lists below - "established", "provisional" and "very provisional" - these terms are explained at the top of each list. The criteria for appearing in the "established" list are continuing to gradually become more stringent as the average number of tournaments games played per player increases, as flagged on this page previously.

For full details of the criteria for being "established" and the new T' column, and to best compare those on the official and unofficial rating lists, please look at the Tournament Seeding List. This starts off with the Elo ratings then deducts points to allow for the greater confidence interval around non-established ratings.

Reading the lists:

To find yourself in the lists quickly (if using Internet Explorer), do Ctrl-F, type your lobby nickname and then click Find Next, then page up to the green text above the part of the list you are in to see how reliable your rating is. Please note that Elo ratings depend on who you play and how heavily you win or lose against them rather than directly on your final position in each tournament, so sometimes the order of ratings for a tournament differs slightly from the final positions, eg. someone who wins their qualification group by a long way and beats a few top players but does not win the tournament might get a higher rating than someone who wins the tournament after just scraping through qualification or having an easy draw. For more info on the ratings or to check that they have not been 'fixed', please see the links at the end of this page or email me.

     
  TANTRIX TOURNAMENT ELO RATINGS as at the end of 2003  
   
  (the rating lists can be found below these links)   2003 SINGLE TOURNAMENT FIGURES
   
  Click here for the current Tournament Seeding list   Single tournament ratings (and numbers of games) are shown below
  Tournament Master (TGM & ITM) norms awarded so far   together with the contribution to the overall rating of performances
  Introduction to Tantrix Tournament Elo Ratings   in tournaments from previous years after deweighting each one by
  History - the Elo Rating List at the end of 2002   1/2^n, where n is the number of complete years since the event took
  Click here to return to the main Tournament Results Page   place - deweighting will also change these numbers during the year
  Click here to return to the Tantrix Tournaments Home Page  
    2003 TGM norms (rating+g>=2050, G>=20, >= 5 opponents) are shown in red
  There is a key to what each column heading means at the bottom of the page   2003 ITM norms (rating+g>=2000, G>=7, >= 4 opponents) are shown in blue
 
  ESTABLISHED RATINGS (T'>=3, G>=36, active in 2003)   Remember that you need to have played 7 games in total against at least four different
    opponents in any given tournament to qualify for an ITM norm - this criterion is the
  This list includes players who have played more than 36 tournament games in total (after deweighting    reason why only one ITM norm was awarded for the 2002 WTTC. The extreme Elo
  games from prior years) and at least 6 games (before deweighting) in each of 3 or more tournaments.    values from this tournament for many players are a result of the low number of games.
  These ratings should be very reliable as a measure of performance in tournaments, though of course   In fact most individual game wins or losses produce quite extreme high or low ratings
  players could still show large improvements in future if their standard of play in tournaments rises.   and this is why averaging over a lot of games is so important.
  NB. players with equal whole number ratings are separated using ratings to 1 DP  
  PLAYER DETAILS Elo Change Current   INDIVIDUAL TOURNAMENTS THIS YEAR (bold lines denote where new starting values were used)
  Pos T30 Name Trn Country Est/ T T' P G * Elo * Since This Lobby 03SM/MM 03World 03 Chal. 03 WTTC 03BO/Hu 03Eu/PA 03NZ/Aus 03WJTC Prev. Yrs
  Chg Mstr Prv Rating 31-Jul Year Nickname G Elo G Elo G Elo G Elo G Elo G Elo G Elo G Elo G Elo
  Total tourn. games played in 2003: 4633.0 Time Decay Factors -> 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1… 0.0625
   
  1 = Matt Peek TGM NZL
E 12 11 Y 169.5 2008 -009 -026 Pekko   48 2022 5 1851 30 1979 30 1993 56.5 2035
  2 = Shaun Cooper ITM NZL
E 10 9 Y 111.5 1980 +010 +007 scoop   49 1987 25 1978 37.5 1974
  3 = Péter Petrecz ITM HUN
E 18 16 Y 183.0 1974 +015 +001 Pepe   8 2145 43 1986 5 2130 30 1985 30 1909 14 1905 53.0 1973
  4 Up 11 Rob Morton GBR
E 5 5 Y 108.0 1941 +031 +090 cheekymbk   31 1985 20 1932 14 1994 26 1925 17.0 1851
  5 Up 4 Mike McManaway NZL
E 10 9 Y 85.5 1935 +016 +017 mikem   31 1957 30 1925 24.5 1918
  6 Dn 2 Catherine Moxham NZL
Z*
E 5 4 Y 94.0 1930 -018 +031 Bastet   32 1878 30 1966 22 1972 10.0 1899
  7 Dn 1 Zoltán Németh HUN
E 9 7 Y 143.0 1928 -012 +010 Zormac   8 1822 6 1564 5 2079 30 1977 30 1882 40 1988 24.0 1918
  8 Dn 3 Jérôme Papillon FRA
E 14 12 Y 112.0 1926 -016 +029 papillon   22 1805 5 2067 15 1940 39 1993 31.0 1896
  9 Up 2 János Püspöki ITM HUN
E 14 12 Y 138.5 1916 +001 +048 pusi   8 2052 24 1860 5 2094 30 2020 14 1840 14 1870 43.5 1868
  10 Up 7 László Szobonya HUN
E 7 6 Y 126.0 1912 +012 +152 SiRPi   8 1786 45 1933 5 2011 30 1903 14 1928 21 1918 3.0 1760
  11 Up 28 Frank Heyer FRA
E 9 8 Y 91.0 1912 +070 +058 blob   24 2031 15 1896 14 1881 38.0 1854
  12 Dn 2 Tom McCoy GBR
E 7 6 Y 75.0 1907 -009 -034 LittleTom   12 1865 20 1840 14 1969 29.0 1941
  13 Up 11 James Preen CAN
E 5 4 Y 86.0 1906 +026 +155 bluedog   24 1943 5 1712 15 1948 30 1951 12.0 1751
  14 Dn 2 Leah Sanders AUS
E 6 5 Y 59.5 1905 -008 -053 Bell   15 1882 12 1789 32.5 1958
  15 Dn 7 Murray Pharaoh NZL
E 13 13 Y 120.0 1903 -018 +037 Scarab   22 1737 30 1990 29 1988 39.0 1866
  16 Dn 3 Ben Polman NED
E 10 9 Y 134.0 1898 -014 +004 benopi   26 1856 5 1738 15 1821 14 2005 39 1941 35.0 1894
  17 Up 2 Steven Trezise ITM GBR
E 14 13 Y 94.0 1897 +003 -038 steven2   18 1907 20 1848 14 1843 42.0 1935
  18 Up 25 Rick Yagodich GBR
E 8 6 Y 119.5 1895 +064 +167 RickY   46 1986 5 1675 20 1982 14 1900 19 1774 15.5 1728
  19 Dn 1 Heli Niemi FIN
E 10 9 Y 107.5 1894 -004 -018 Helly   15 1807 14 1802 40 1942 38.5 1913
  20 Up 1 Bevan Chong NZL
E 11 11 Y 100.5 1893 +006 -005 Mighty   12 1884 30 1911 19 1860 39.5 1897
  21 Up 5 Brad Swanlund USA
E 9 8 Y 95.0 1889 +012 -038 brad   22 1899 15 1926 30 1827 28.0 1927
  22 Dn 8 Wolfgang Schwarz GER
E 8 8 Y 79.5 1885 -027 -030 space   13 1771 30 1971 20 1806 16.5 1915
  23 Dn 3 Britta Steude NZL
E 9 9 Y 54.0 1884 -004 -029 Bdot   6 1786 30 1886 18.0 1913
  24 Dn 8 Kevin Scott GBR
E 10 9 Y 133.5 1881 -023 -029 cuthbert   18 1745 20 1863 14 1930 26 1900 55.5 1910
  25 Dn 6 Martin Harlow GBR
E 8 7 Y 86.5 1880 -017 -004 RufusT   6 1701 20 1873 27 1920 33.5 1884
  26 wasPr Markku Saarikoski FIN
E 3