Pinball by the numbers

[FHF]

Eh, just because I love graphs...... Feel free to post any other number related stuff though!


Here's the total boints by ranking for the two Showdowns. Definitely a bit more clustered this year, with some people scrapping for the final spot! Also, seems like both years there was a handful of people that just killed it!!

[Legs]

thanks for that big red reminder of all my personal failings.

[FHF]

Classics....tight, tight, tight!! In some ways I think it would have been cool to take the top 12 for this...

[FHF]

[FHF]

Here's one for the top 100 players based on their WPPR boints. Looks pretty lonely at the top!!

[Opto]

A great example of how the WPR system works. It's true, you can get your ranking pretty high up there by winning many smaller events, but in order to crack the top 20-30, you really have to bring some big titles home.

[FHF]

[Dropshot]

I would assume the decay doesn't count, only the initial boints you earned, wants the expire they no longer count. Head to head is coming back, and so are a few more things.

[FHF]

Aaron had mentioned how he hasn't moved up in the rankings forever, so I thought I would post this. It gets steep pretty quick after about 75!

[ROM]

Yeah, the system is built with a safeguard against us weekly players gaining too much ground. There's only so far we can go on weeklies alone.

Dropshot, you gotta start traveling the world, playing at least one big one a month! Make it your career.

Or not.

[ROM]

Speaking of pizoints. I passed Opto. We were neck in neck for a long while. But then he made the tactical error of having a baby.

[Opto]

Yes but when we're both gone from this world CFD's WPR ranking will live on - so shall it be!

[FHF]

Hahahha! CFD! I doubt you could underestimate the significance of those initials going up for the first time!

But, yes, I would say that it would be very hard to crack the top 100 without playing in a major. In fact, if you look at anyone in the top 10, they could basically win all four weeklies at one location and the boints wouldn't even be active for them!!!

[Dropshot]

Rom is also one weekly win away from passing Steve.

[Dropshot]

Also, the rankings by country now lists the top 50 on the first page instead of only 25. Now includes Rom, Jake, Noah, Maka, Fred and Bob Skinner. All of whom will be at Cascadia!

[FHF]

OK, I think I may have a had a breakthrough regarding casual flow!!! Below, you will see that I have created four mutually orthogonal latin squares. Mutually orthogonal means the same combinations only occur once in the same position across the four squares, sort of guaranteeing that you would not play the same person twice. The first one is created by starting with 1-7, then moving each subsequent row left one. The second starts with 1-7 then moves each subsequent row left two. the third moves left three, and the fourth left four. The major problem, as you can probably see is that the player "1s" in each group are playing together the whole time. Although this satisfies the requirements for a set of mutually orthogonal latin squares, you can't have four people playing together the whole time. This was no good and had me stumped for quite a while, so I just used random latin squares and said to hell with orthogonality! People would just have to randomly play each other two, or maybe even three times. But then.....




1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2 3 4 5 6 7 1
3 4 5 6 7 1 2
4 5 6 7 1 2 3
5 6 7 1 2 3 4
6 7 1 2 3 4 5
7 1 2 3 4 5 6

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3 4 5 6 7 1 2
5 6 7 1 2 3 4
7 1 2 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 6 7 1
4 5 6 7 1 2 3
6 7 1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
4 5 6 7 1 2 3
7 1 2 3 4 5 6
3 4 5 6 7 1 2
6 7 1 2 3 4 5
2 3 4 5 6 7 1
5 6 7 1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5 6 7 1 2 3 4
2 3 4 5 6 7 1
6 7 1 2 3 4 5
3 4 5 6 7 1 2
7 1 2 3 4 5 6
4 5 6 7 1 2 3

[FHF]

I realized that if you rotate the last 3 squares by 90 degrees, the problem is totally solved and the squares remain orthogonal!!!!!!!!! What?!?! Haha! yes, look for yourself, everybody plays each machine once and nobody plays anybody twice!!

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2 3 4 5 6 7 1
3 4 5 6 7 1 2
4 5 6 7 1 2 3
5 6 7 1 2 3 4
6 7 1 2 3 4 5
7 1 2 3 4 5 6

1 3 5 7 2 4 6
2 4 6 1 3 5 7
3 5 7 2 4 6 1
4 6 1 3 5 7 2
5 7 2 4 6 1 3
6 1 3 5 7 2 4
7 2 4 6 1 3 5

1 4 7 3 6 2 5
2 5 1 4 7 3 6
3 6 2 5 1 4 7
4 7 3 6 2 5 1
5 1 4 7 3 6 2
6 2 5 1 4 7 3
7 3 6 2 5 1 4

1 5 2 6 3 7 4
2 6 3 7 4 1 5
3 7 4 1 5 2 6
4 1 5 2 6 3 7
5 2 6 3 7 4 1
6 3 7 4 1 5 2
7 4 1 5 2 6 3

Well, ok. This only works for prime numbers, which means it only works for tournaments where the number of participants is four times a prime number. But whatever.

[Opto]

Fred - you rule. So, I guess that means a 28 person bracket and 7 machines would be perfect, right?

[FHF]

yep! 20, 28, 44, or 56. Other multiples of four (like 48) will still work, but people will randomly be matched up multiple times. I don't really think it's a huge problem since everyone is randomly placed to begin with, but the ideal bracket would use four times a prime number!

[Dropshot]

So we plan to run the closest possible bracket to one of the multiple of 4's and if we have say 26 people there would just be 2 byes floating about.