ASORS - How to find your initial rating

Each player starts with a rating, based in part on his own evaluation of his skill level, as well as on a number of guidelines. The guidelines consist of the total number of games the player has played, rules knowledge, and a general evaluation.

A player wins approximately 2 games in 3 if playing against a player that is one level lower. This ratio increases, if playing against a player more than one level lower. The average start-rating is 1.500 points (skill level 3) and each skill level up adds 125 points and each level down subtracts 125 points.

The guidelines to assist finding the correct initial rating consists of three parts:

• Total number of games played: Estimate the total number of games you have played ever.

• Rules knowledge: Some guidelines to evaluate your rules knowledge and general ASL experience level

• General evaluation: Some guidelines that should help you compare yourself with other players.

Skill level 1: Start Rating = 1.750 – The best of the best:

Total number of games played: 250+

Rules knowledge: Very few or no rules-sections that the player does not know or has tried, even when counting the more exotic ones (airdrops, caves, night, DYO, seaborne assault, Campaign Games)

General evaluation: In an international tournament, you would expect to end in the top 15%, and you consider yourself better than most players you know. You have attended a few tournaments, which contained several players of other nationalities than you, or large national tournaments of 40+ players.

Skill level 2: Start Rating = 1.625 – Very good players

Total number of games played: 150+

Rules knowledge: Very few or no rules-sections that the player does not know or has tried, even when counting the more exotic ones (airdrops, caves, night, DYO, seaborne assault, Campaign Games)

General evaluation: You would be considered a very good player by most other people. If you have not attended an international tournament, you are probably one of the best players you know – maybe even the best. If you have attended international tournaments, you tend to do very well, but is generally not in the top 15%.

Skill level 3: Start Rating = 1.500 – Average players

Total number of games played: 50-250(+)

Rules knowledge: You know most rule sections pretty well, especially chapters A-D. You may or may not be familiar with the more exotic parts of the rulebook (airdrops, caves, night, DYO, seaborne assault, Campaign Games)

General evaluation: You would consider yourself somewhere in the middle of the field. You may be quite experienced, but is not an exceptional player. A lot of people never rise above this level. It is also possible that you are a relative newcomer to the game, but then you learn rather quickly

Skill level 4: Start Rating = 1.375 – The not so hot (yet)

Total number of games played: 20-75

Rules knowledge: You are beginning to get a pretty good grasp of the rules in chapter A (infantry), have tried a lot of different terrain, and know at least the basics of moving tanks and firing guns.

General evaluation: Some people never rise beyond this level, but most do. Most likely, you are a relative newcomer to the game, but is beginning to be able to put things in perspective. You still lose more than you win, and you feel pretty sure that you cannot beat the top players unless you are extremely lucky.

Skill level 5: Start Rating = 1.250 – Beginners

Total number of games played: 0-40

Rules knowledge: Limited rules knowledge

General evaluation: You are a beginner

 Keep in mind that these are only guidelines. It is certainly possible for a very bright player to be at skill level 2 while having only completed 100 games, but this would be the exception from the rule. Alternately, it is just as possible for at player whom has played in excess of 1.000 games to be in category 4, but that would be quite rare.

If you are in doubt which category to choose, choose the category closest to skill level 3. The distribution of players on a worldwide basis should be something like: 

Please keep in mind that this would be the approximate worldwide distribution, so this does not necessarily reflect the distribution at ASO. ASO is an international tournament, and a higher percentage of the players whom travel to another country to play ASL are above average players.

You might ask - why shouldn't all players just start at the same rating? Well, the reason why players should not start at the same rating is, that it is not fair, because of the math behind the system. For example, if a skilled player with a high rating plays a match agains a player who is new to the rating system, but who is also an extremely potent player. If all started out at the same rating, the "new" player would start out at 1.500 points (the average) and that would mean that the system "thinks" that the higher rated person has a, say, 85% chance of winning. But the "new" player is actually as good as the higher rated player, and is thus punished severely if he loses, by losing an amount of rating points that is disproportionate to the skill difference. Over time, when you play enough matches you are going to end up with approximately the same rating anyway (the math takes care of that), so all we are really doing by starting people at different ratings is speeding the process up. Please note that the theoretical "end rating" that I am referring to, not necessarily is the same as the start rating, but the start rating should be closer to that value, than if everybody just got 1.500 points before the first game.

Then you might argue, that some players are going to "cheat", and select a skill level much higher than they are really worth, in order to get a better seeding for the first round - i.e. they are more likely to meet a player in the first round, that they can actually beat. Personally, I believe that most ASL-players are pretty honest. For the "dirty few", it is going to be like pissing in your pants to keep warm (unless they can actually win games against players whom are more skilled than they are, by using some real cheating). Their inferior skill, combined with the math of the rating system is going to pound their rating back where it belongs - no problem, just a nuissance.

My hypothesis is that letting players select their own initial rating based on the guidelines above, should result of a much better approximation to that players rating in the long run, than if we assign the same start rating to everybody. In two or three years I am going to have enough data from the tournament, if not to prove, then at least to get an indication of the quality of my hypothesis.

For those of you whom are interested, the mathematical formulas can be found here. They are similar to the formulars used to calculate chess ratings.