Tantrix Tournament Elo Ratings

The 31 December 2007 online and table tournament Elo ratings for nearly 800 players can be found below the following notes. The ratings are based on a total of 33765 online tournament games, 7713 of which (a new record) were played in 2007, and 4045 table tournament games, 1435 of them (also a new record) played in 2007.

Please remember that whether a player's rating rises or falls depends partly 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. This does not necessarily mean how far they got in the tournament each year, though there is obviously a strong correlation with that. Because results from the same tournament a year before are deweighted by 50% in the calculation of the weighted average Elo (and results from the same tournament two years earlier are deweighted by another 50%, i.e. reduced to 25% of their original weighting, and so on), the ratings of some players who did not play in the latest tournaments but did play in them a year or two ago have also changed.

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 the world no. 1 and beat him by a big margin, your rating for that game might be 2500. That is the level appropriate to someone who beats the world no. 1 by a big margin in every game, and you have beaten the world no. 1 by a big margin in every (one!) game so far, but that is clearly not sustainable over 35 more games ... or if it is, you are probably going to be the next World Champion! :-)

So, some players below have "established" ratings and some are "provisional". The best way to compare established and provisional players is to look at the seeding lists. These start off with the Elo ratings then points are deducted to allow for the greater confidence interval around provisional ratings.

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, please see the links at the end of this page or email me.