About WBO Rankings...

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.
Nice read.
The problem I see with the ranking system right now is that placement should also give points. I've heard someone who lost one battle the entire tournament and won but got 0 points from that because of that one lost. In the most recent tournament I attended I was the highest ranking ther and won but didn't get very many points due to facing lower BR opponent but adding the bonus placement points would be benifical so higher ranking players can still make a decent amount if points.
Aye, thanks for the shout out tubitr 😎. I agree there are several flaws with the current ranking. The biggest flaw I’ve seen in the community is the gap from veteran/higher ranked players vs newer/lower ranked players. It’s detrimental because in chess, where Elo is common, you wouldn’t put a Master in a tournament of Beginners. Not just because of skill but also it affects the ranking of the Master if they just so happen to lose a match. He drops significantly. That is more of what I’ve seen because communities grow, but players with 4+ years of accumulating points versus someone who just started last week, will still compete in the same event and bracket. It has to be that way though because Beyblade competitions aren’t that big…yet. So we can’t have a tournament of all ranks 1300-1500, 1501-1700, etc. Beginners have to play with Vets until the community can grow on a larger scale to host skill/point separate events.

Within The Circuit I made a separate rank style based solely on wins and loses. The only difference is points gained and loss for the first stage is different from the finals. It also will reset seasonally. It isn’t full proof but it’s make it a little fair.

Regional rankings are the way to go I think. It’s best to rank yourself against your locals and then possibly get a bigger event to test yourself nationally or internationally. I honestly don’t care for ranking because it can be skewed in any aspect but winning is winning. So winning regional, national and international events is much more of a reward than accumulating points, in my opinion.

The Circuit was created to try to showcase that. No it’s not international but that’s because I can’t afford that right now 😂. It’s all on my attempt , with Four-Gaming, we just currently use the WBO formats for rules and also rank for those that enjoy getting ranked points. The competition though is what I think many will come out for and what I hope to build. Maybe internationally someday.

Overall great write up 😎
(May. 05, 2022  8:47 PM)StayCool Wrote: The biggest flaw I’ve seen in the community is the gap from veteran/higher ranked players vs newer/lower ranked players. It’s detrimental because in chess, where Elo is common, you wouldn’t put a Master in a tournament of Beginners. Not just because of skill but also it affects the ranking of the Master if they just so happen to lose a match. He drops significantly. That is more of what I’ve seen because communities grow, but players with 4+ years of accumulating points versus someone who just started last week, will still compete in the same event and bracket. It has to be that way though because Beyblade competitions aren’t that big…yet. So we can’t have a tournament of all ranks 1300-1500, 1501-1700, etc. Beginners have to play with Vets until the community can grow on a larger scale to host skill/point separate events.

I actually think it's really cool that newcomers get the chance to face off against veterans. In swiss/round robin brackets the newcomers eventually get to play vs less experienced players even if they get wrecked early on and for single/double elim brackets you can run ladder/side brackets/friendlies for people who got eliminated early. Plus you have the option to use other "less competitive" stadiums for these.

With a ranking that's more focused on placement rather than individual matches (or purely based on w/l ratio), one-off loses vs low ranked/new players wouldn't hurt your ranking too much either.
I've said this before in a tournament report, but it bears repeating.

We're using a chess style ranking system, which is for a game where the board and rules and pieces never change, on a game where the rules and pieces change every year, and now potentially boards.

As has been pointed out, Elo is not a proper ranking system when single or double elimination is involved, and doesn't function well in situations where very skilled and very new participants are mixed in the same tournament.
Our current beyranks are meaningless.

I am interested in the Tennis rankings systems. I found this wikipedia page on it, but I don't know if this is quite what is meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATP_rankings
I find it interesting that tournament points automatically age out after 52 months.

We should all dig further into how that would work.
(May. 05, 2022  10:09 PM)DeceasedCrab Wrote: I am interested in the Tennis rankings systems. I found this wikipedia page on it, but I don't know if this is quite what is meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATP_rankings
I find it interesting that tournament points automatically age out after 52 months.

Yep the ATP ranking was what I had in mind, the WBO could set their own time period (its 52 weeks for tennis btw, not months). Also imo it's good idea to only accept best "X" tournament placings of a player in that time period so that regions that can host weekly events don't have a huge advantage, a blader missing a tournament due to other responsibilities isnt immediately put out of the race for a top spot, one unlucky tournament doesn't ruin your ranking etc.
(May. 05, 2022  10:54 PM)tubitr Wrote:
(May. 05, 2022  10:09 PM)DeceasedCrab Wrote: I am interested in the Tennis rankings systems. I found this wikipedia page on it, but I don't know if this is quite what is meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATP_rankings
I find it interesting that tournament points automatically age out after 52 months.

Yep the ATP ranking was what I had in mind, the WBO could set their own time period (its 52 weeks for tennis btw, not months). Also imo it's good idea to only accept best "X" tournament placings of a player in that time period so that regions that can host weekly events don't have a huge advantage, a blader missing a tournament due to other responsibilities isnt immediately put out of the race for a top spot, one unlucky tournament doesn't ruin your ranking etc.

Only thing I dissagre with us the ranking reset, the idea is supposed to keep people engaged and  stuff but in reality it might do the opposite as unless you're in a very active area then there wouldn't be much point in trying to get BR if it'll just reset later