The WBO uses Elo rankings, which has some flaws especially when running non swiss/round robin brackets.
The most important one being that Elo and double elimination brackets have compatibility issues; The highest seed in bracket would be expected to win the tournament from winners but doing so would be sub-optimal for their Elo rating. By losing round 1 and then winning the event from losers they would end up playing close the double the amount of matches and thus receiving more Elo points. (An extreme example: Lets say you (2nd seed) and the 1st seed have roughly equal points; Losing round 1, making a losers run, resetting the bracket and then placing 2nd could result in you getting more points than the the guy placing 1st)
In single elimination brackets you need to keep winning to play more matches, which leads to people who lose early on to not get the points they might have gotten if it was a swiss/rr bracket (which Elo was designed for). This creates relatively larger point gap between top and bottom places.
Playing in a pool of relatively low skill opponents inflates ratings. WBO rankings are a worldwide thing, which is cool, but there are many communities whose players are unlikely to play each other. It's possible to farm 8-16 man swiss brackets consisting of family/friends until you place above wbo members who are actually in competitive environments. (Stuff like "The Circuit" is amazing but even that is currently NA only and qualifying for it doesn't cover travel costs).
You'd expect the number of participants in a tournament to be roughly proportional to the overall skill of participants in that region (the idea being more people to compete against -> more chances to improve). However with the current ranking system and the organizers guide recommending double/single elimination for larger tournaments, being in a region of tournaments with a high number of attendees could be detrimental for those who aren't landing in the top spots of those tournaments.
So how do I think WBO ranking could be better:
-If sticking with Elo, do not recommend single/double elim brackets. (Time constraints might not allow this though).
-New ranking system that is more like Tennis'. Tournaments give out points based on how you placed in them. Only your best X results in the last Y months effect your score/ranking. Number of attendees, quality of attendees, how competitive the region where the tournament takes place is, prize pool of the tournament etc. could all be factors determining the value of a tournament. Quality of attendees and competitiveness of a region are somewhat subjective but could be calculated based on more objective data like current wbo rankings, frequency of tournaments in the region, number of active competitors in the region etc.
-More focus on regional rankings. How the bladers who travel to other states/countries perform in each region is a decent way to compare those regions but there are a lot of "closed pools" too. Each region with a TO who's willing could have their own separate ranking from the "WBO World Rankings". Whether it's an Elo/Glicko/True Skill ranking or a panel based ranking etc. could be up to the TO (whichever they see more suitable to the types of brackets/events they run). These rankings would only include results from tournaments held in that region.
Maybe a yearly "regions ranking" based on larger tournaments with attendees from multiple regions.
I'd like to recommend https://braacket.com/ . You can directly import challonge brackets to this website and it gives you various ranking options and is an easy way for anyone to check stats like overall winrate, change in ranking over time, head to head vs certain bladers etc.
The most important one being that Elo and double elimination brackets have compatibility issues; The highest seed in bracket would be expected to win the tournament from winners but doing so would be sub-optimal for their Elo rating. By losing round 1 and then winning the event from losers they would end up playing close the double the amount of matches and thus receiving more Elo points. (An extreme example: Lets say you (2nd seed) and the 1st seed have roughly equal points; Losing round 1, making a losers run, resetting the bracket and then placing 2nd could result in you getting more points than the the guy placing 1st)
In single elimination brackets you need to keep winning to play more matches, which leads to people who lose early on to not get the points they might have gotten if it was a swiss/rr bracket (which Elo was designed for). This creates relatively larger point gap between top and bottom places.
Playing in a pool of relatively low skill opponents inflates ratings. WBO rankings are a worldwide thing, which is cool, but there are many communities whose players are unlikely to play each other. It's possible to farm 8-16 man swiss brackets consisting of family/friends until you place above wbo members who are actually in competitive environments. (Stuff like "The Circuit" is amazing but even that is currently NA only and qualifying for it doesn't cover travel costs).
You'd expect the number of participants in a tournament to be roughly proportional to the overall skill of participants in that region (the idea being more people to compete against -> more chances to improve). However with the current ranking system and the organizers guide recommending double/single elimination for larger tournaments, being in a region of tournaments with a high number of attendees could be detrimental for those who aren't landing in the top spots of those tournaments.
So how do I think WBO ranking could be better:
-If sticking with Elo, do not recommend single/double elim brackets. (Time constraints might not allow this though).
-New ranking system that is more like Tennis'. Tournaments give out points based on how you placed in them. Only your best X results in the last Y months effect your score/ranking. Number of attendees, quality of attendees, how competitive the region where the tournament takes place is, prize pool of the tournament etc. could all be factors determining the value of a tournament. Quality of attendees and competitiveness of a region are somewhat subjective but could be calculated based on more objective data like current wbo rankings, frequency of tournaments in the region, number of active competitors in the region etc.
-More focus on regional rankings. How the bladers who travel to other states/countries perform in each region is a decent way to compare those regions but there are a lot of "closed pools" too. Each region with a TO who's willing could have their own separate ranking from the "WBO World Rankings". Whether it's an Elo/Glicko/True Skill ranking or a panel based ranking etc. could be up to the TO (whichever they see more suitable to the types of brackets/events they run). These rankings would only include results from tournaments held in that region.
Maybe a yearly "regions ranking" based on larger tournaments with attendees from multiple regions.
I'd like to recommend https://braacket.com/ . You can directly import challonge brackets to this website and it gives you various ranking options and is an easy way for anyone to check stats like overall winrate, change in ranking over time, head to head vs certain bladers etc.
