People have asked me about this, so I thought I should post a quick thread about it: Some time in the next few weeks, we'll be updating the way we do Player Rankings, aka Statistics. The current system is just a placeholder.
We'll be using the Elo system. This is a system devised by physicist and Chess master Professor Arpad Elo ("ee-low") something like 30 years ago, which has served well for rankings in such diverse games as Chess and Croquet (both the Fédération Internationale des Échecs [World Chess Federation] and the World Croquet Federation -- yes, there really is one -- use it). Apparently Professor Elo was a statistician as well as a physicist and spent 10 years refining and proving the system, and it's well-regarded in statistics circles as well as game circles.
Like most sites, we'll start everyone at a certain level, and then we'll run through all of the games you've played here applying Elo's formulae. Note that even if you have an Elo ranking somewhere else, we'll start you at the same level as everyone else here on Pocket-Monkey. The primary reason for this is that Elo rankings are not absolute, they're valid within a body of players, so of course your ranking somewhere else doesn't apply to the body of players here at Pocket-Monkey. Even if you have a FIDE-approved Elo ranking for Chess, it won't apply here as you mostly won't be playing FIDE players here.
When we introduce the new system, naturally the player rankings will change, probably significantly. The current system gives higher rankings to people who play lots of games; the Elo system is largely immune to that effect (its accuracy improves the more games you play, but your ranking doesn't necessarily go up as a result).
Anyway, that's the story on Statistics -- we'll make a site announcment when we put the new system in place.
Thanks for your hard work on the site. Thanks to Jock, too.
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