It would be cool to have some sort of horizontal graph showing your results per variant... kind-of like how the variant stats are displayed.

Graph I agree. I wanna click on :wins" and see what games you have won.
We need some sort of agreement in how stats are made. We make categories i.e. maps, per number of players?

Number of players or Maps are only 2 of view.

Someone may want separate stats for gunboat or press games. I've heard someone saying that winning gunboats it's not the same than winning full press games.Or PPSC/WTA. Or Anon/nonAnon. Or Random/Choose country.....
After that, as we got our separate stat for our full-press PPSC nonAnon Rinascimento games, someone may want separate stats for when you're French or when you're Naples, since the odds to win are not equal. After that, you would notice that Rinascimento is not the only unbalanced Map here....

Again... 1v1 and 1v1v1 are games in which you basically can choose ALL your opponents... you can PM each noob who joins the site and invite him to a 1v1 game. If he's weak enough you may play 4 or 5 games against him... in a few months your 1v1 stats can be: win=90%. 1v1 stats will always be totally meaningless.
Once, scrolling a guy's profile, I noticed he was playing 5 GvI against 5 different never-heard-of users. He was Germany in all 5 games...

Mission impossible.

I like instead cypeg's idea of a button "click on 'wins' and see what games that user has won". Or drawn. But I guess it'd be hard to code. And when many users will have hundreds of finished games, hard to use.

Basically I just argued about 1vs1 and multiplayer games. The concept is totally different.
The first is tactic, the latter is both diplomacy and tactic.
Moreover, the volume of 1vs1 games played exceeds the volume of multiplayer:

*data from the variant page*

1vs1:
8 variants per 2600+ games finished
(wihout taking into account variantID=42, 300 games, mostly used for duels too)

multiplayer:
66 variants per 2200+ games finished

So, I mean, when I look at a player's stat in order to understand what kind of person sits in front of me I may want to have an idea about his diplomatic ability.
This is hard to tell if the two kind of scores aren't separated...it's hard to tell because of 1vs1's volume.

I have made my profile easy for you to track my progress :P

I do agree on that premise that 1v1 is not multiplayer ergo no diplomacy thus should not be included.

though now that im adding more ww4 games into my stats..I m thinking how can we implement this. ex ww4 Wins 0 Draw 2 defeat 1 ?

If you want a true measure of skill/talent/achievement, then it might be helpful to matrix results with modifiers that take into account the number of players and the relative strengh of the opposition. Clearly beating up on a noob in a 1v1 game isn't equivalent to a solo against six other experienced experienced players. I wouldn't wieght the "diplomacy" as highly as some seem to here, frankly because that assumes that any is actually taking place in mutli-player games, and anonimous games offer interesting avenues of communication and "diplomacy" via actions. The bottom line is to get an accurate assement of player ratings, is going to require a good deal of record keeping and a rather complex formula of evaluating results.

In another threat I made, where we discussed stats, Headword said this:

"How about this formala as a summary of winningness?

w / (1/p1 + 1/p2 + 1/p3 ...)

Where w = # of wins, and p1 p2 etc. are the number of players in each of the games you've ever played. 1 = average or 'expected' number of wins. 2 = you win twice as often as expected by chance.

So if you played 6 classic games and one 1 of them, you'd have 1 / (1/7+1/7+1/7+1/7+1/7+1/7) = 7/6 = slightly better than average. If they were all 2-player games you'd have 1 / (.5*6) = 0.33 = significantly worse than average. Um, but yeah, a kindly coder would have to implement it for it to be much use."

Then Guaroz replied:

"@headward7: I like your idea for a formula as a summary of winningness and the "Victory-Weight" below it is smart and interesting. But I believe you should work on it a little longer and make it better. I've found 3 main flaws.

1 - Two or three players maps: quality of opponents and quality of diplomacy.
Quality of players is not an issue when we're talking about games with a lot of players, because you can assume that in a 35 or 15 or even only 6 players game you can find any kind of opponents. Things get different when we start talking about smaller maps and become almost paradoxal in 2-players maps. When you agree a 1v1, you usually know your opponent: it's not that random. So if you choose each time an opponent weak enough you can incredibly boost your ratio. I think that 2/3 of my wins are from 1v1 games, so I know what I'm saying.
Also, even if you usually don't choose your opponents and you let anyone join 1v1s you create, well... there's no diplomacy in 1v1s! You know who is your enemy, who will attack you and whom you need to attack: the other one. So, these games are basically worthless: they can prove something about your tactical skills and that's why many people (me included) like them, but they prove absolutely nothing about both your strategic and your diplomatic skills (that's one of the reasons why you can't bet more than 1 on them). And a 3-players game is not much different.
Recap: your formula says that a win in 1v1 is worth 2/7 of a win in a Classic. And a 1v1v1 is 3/7. I'm saying that they're not even comparable. Or, if you ask me and I must answer, I'd say 1/100 for 1v1 and 1/40 for 1v1v1.

2 - Formula's results can be doped.
Let's consoder some examples:
a) (Yours) So if you played 6 classic games and won one 1 of them, you'd have 1 / (1/7+1/7+1/7+1/7+1/7+1/7) = 7/6 = 1.166 that you said being "slightly better than average".
b) Now say you played 6 1v1s and you won 4 of them: you'd have 4 / (.5*6) = 1.333 So who won 4 1v1s would be better than who won a Classic? Really?
c) Again 6 games, but this time it's 3 1v1s you won and 3 Classics you lost. You'd have:
3 / (.5*3 + 3/7) = 1.555 In comparison with "b", you've won 1 game less but you have a much better score because you lost Classics instead of 1v1s. Isn't it weird? +55% better than average?
d) Again 6 games, but this time it's 3 1v1s you won and 3 WWIVs you lost. You'd have:
3 / (.5*3 + 3/35) = 1.891 In comparison with "c", you've won the same games but you have an incredibly high ratio because of the games you lost!
What the conclusions? I don't want to say that anyone could purposely play some 1v1 against someone he's sure to beat and then play only Chaos or WWIV to keep his ratio high, but surely this formula (the way it is now) advantages 1v1 addict-players (like I am). Or it advantages players who like "extreme" maps (2-3 and 34-35 players) over those who usually play average maps (from 6 to 12 players). However, it brings weird results.

3 - Draws. What about the draws? IMO, a draw is a victory because nobody did better than you while some (or many) did worse. You may not agree with my assumption, but I'm sure you'd agree with this:
a) Player A played 6 classic games, won one of them and defeated in the rest;
b) Player B played 6 classic games and take part in a draw in all of them.
Wouldn't you consider player B almost a champion, while A could be whatever? Maybe A is a poor player who once just had the luck of a neighbour CDing at the right time?
So perhaps you should add something about draws into your formula or, at least, make up a summary formula for "drawingness" :-)

Again, headward7, the idea-base is very smart, but the formula needs a good fine tuning, IMHO."

I'm sure that's a great idea, but it made my head hurt reading it!

Well RUFF if you read it, you'll discover that I was basically saying that it's NOT a great idea. Unless someone was able to invent a much more complex formula (yeah..."good fine tuning" was a bit euphemistic...).
Perhaps cypeg posted it because there are several arguments that are quite related to the current discussion and expecially to your post right before it.

I wonder if the search engine could be changed to allow searching on multiple variants instead of just one. That way we could search all the 1v1 games on a person (or ourselves) and get the stats on 1v1 games for that person. It might take a little more work, but we could customize it however we like.

One tangible you can't make into a statistic, how do you measure NMR's and that by far is how many games are won or lost. A very good player going against two other very good players does not move, while a "rookie" is moving swiftly in a game due to NMR's, how would that be handled.

A "GhostRating" type system takes the skill levels of the opponents into account. In that type of system, players who NMR will have poor skill ratings, and will not improve the rating of the skilled players very much.

It is basically a system where the "skill" buy in is greater for higher skilled players, and less for lower skilled players. For example, the buy in might be 5% of your current skill level. Rookies begin with a skill level of 100. So, 6 rookie players with a 100 skill, playing against an experienced player with 1000 skill, each rookie player "invests" 5 skill points, and the experienced player "invests" 50 skill points to enter. The skill points that are disbursed at the end of the game would be 6*5+50=80 . If a player wins, the winner gets all 80, but if there is a draw, it gets distributed equally to the players who draw, and the players who lost lose their investment, and a new skill rating is calculated for everyone.

Ghost rating is a good system if you can alter it to take variants into account.

I don't think NMRs could ever be truly taken into account. That almost like trying to factor the weather into a sports team's won/loss record. NMRs suck. But the knee jerk assumption used by almost everyone that they *benefit* players is laughable. We ONLY ever discuss the assumed windfall profits of the NMR. No one ever discusses the lost options of allaince and cooperation that come as a result. NMRs in diplomacy are almost like winning the lottery. At first the assumption is that you've stumble upon great forturne, lots of new units and SCs, and all is great unitl.... All you neighbors start getting jealous of your new found wealth. And everyone else thinks that they deserve a piece of your good forturne, and that you should be sharing with them. Add in the fact that you suddenly have more wealth than you are capable of managining and you earned so much of it that you don't know what to do with it. Trying to factor all of that into a player rating is beyond insane. NMRs are like the weather. Playing through them is part of the game.

Likewise the whole rookie player concept is over hyped as well. Some rookie players are eager to learn and accept mentoring roles, and are just easily lead/manipulated by veteran players as goobled up. And some rookies are excellent communicators and tacticians, and ttake to the game immediately whereas some "veteran" players couldn't score in a whore house with a fistfull of fifties. I can accept that the relative strength of opposition is a factor, but nation placement plays just a much or more into determining outcomes of games.

The larger point I'm trying to make is that no rating system is ever going to be perfect. There are larks in ever method of statistical tracking. In the end there's nothing like head to head competition to clear up the picture. Otherwise we're just like Ty Webb/Chevy Chase, measuring other golfers by height.

Possibly the best method would be to submit all of your games to a panel of judges, who give a score for each one :D I think that's the only method that would really be fair, and even then they'd have to be expert judges (and have a lot of free time)...

Ruffhaus,
We all have seen what good players can do with NMR's, they can kick ass. I am not saying we can calculate them and I am with you that it is like factoring weather in sports games, but they do impact a game and players. I have been in the recieving end and the other, maybe over time they just just even out, just hate them, can destroy the integrity of the game.

I am not suggesting that NMRs do not *affect* games (they do not impact them though, as they are not explosive, or capable of literal force). I'm arguing that they affect games in more ways than the so called easy pick up of centers, which seems to be the primary and solitatry complaint here. So called good players are just as much adversely affected by NMRs as they might benefit by them because an absent player is not *always* necessarily a victim. But this conversation is about player ratings, and/or assessing statistics that measure performance. Trying to attach NMRs to that is like suggesting that weather be a factor in the won loss colomn of a sports league. NMRs are part of the game. They always will be, just like rain in football games. Adapt. Overcome. Improvise.

fair enough.

80% of the games have nmrs, so by removing this factor we will end with no stats.

not to mention now games with no default solo win-center :P

I remember seeing a ww4 with 8 sc solo!

a link to a players wins/defeats etc is an easy solution? Plus, we have statistics and graphs for games anyway so the code should be tweaked? to accomodate a playes stats as the country stat per variant?

I dont see how my Chaos win can ever compare to a 1v1.

speaking of nmr's in important games............................ :)

Check, please!

There is also the matter of %. Bozo who curently is n1 has earned more points.
but statistically, there are players with more % wins than him

Win percentage is only valid if you're also analzing wins against whom? I think it's pretty clear to anyone with half a clue and a few minutes to discern that a lot of players have manufactured "wins" here. But it's not just the matter of 1v1 (or other small sided) games. The level of opposition is such a broad spectrum here that many draw results by players represent far more appliaed skill than wins in other games.

@cypeg. I don't see your point, could you please explain?
Stats are supposed to be a mathematical recap of occurrencies into a sample.
D-points are what you earn from your bets. If you join only 8 buy-in games you'll never have a lot even if you're a good player. You should not believe that points are a measure of skill only because players that suck will never have a lot. Points are rather a measure of many other things: gambling attitude, greed, shyness (when you see a player with good stats & little points, what do you think? Either he plays only 1v1 or he doesn't know he's good at Diplomacy!), concreteness...
So points are not supposed to give the same informations stats give. They might complete stats. If stats were choerent and meaningful.

No need to explain further, Ruffhaus and you have sum it up better than I could have :)
that is D-points are problematic as stats and do not give the whole picture.

I agree that win percentage is only valid when compared to whom, that is why I suggested a variation of the Ghost Rating. It takes the skill of the opponents into consideration. I think it would be a good enhancement to this site. It will encourage skilled players to only play skilled players.

I am not sure I understand your statement that players have manufactured wins. Can you clarify it?

**@Ruffhaus