Hi Terry -

With the New Year coming up, I would like to formally request removal and replacement of Champion ELO ratings in the Expert Game.
The reason is that I feel that the Champion ELO ratings are not meaningful for this game, and encourage undesirable player behaviors.

1) Ratings are not meaningful because ELO is meant to measure skill at a particular game, but performance in Expert can vary greatly by subject. Every one of us has areas of relative expertise. Say a professional physicist has a 1600 Expert Champion rating overall, but the topic of the hour is Physics. Naturally that player is going to do extremely well this hour, but finishing behind that player would unfairly penalize players with a higher rating accumulated through general trivia knowledge, even though for practical purposes, that physicists' rating is effectively much higher than 1600 in this subject. And the same goes for musicians, history buffs, celebrity fans, speakers of a foreign language, etc. Some people might only play areas they're super-expert in, to obtain an artificially inflated rating.

2) Ratings lead to undesirable behaviors because it's human nature to try to compete and maximize any public ranking. One means to improve one's ranking is to focus on your strong topics and play them repeatedly whenever they pop up, while avoiding one's weaker topics. Another is that as others such as Triviaballer have pointed out, the dominant strategy in non-speed topics is to wait until the end of the hour, identify the current best score, and then start the game knowing the target you need to beat - if you time it correctly, you start at a time when either you get it under the time limit and win the division, or if you don't beat the leading time, your entry isn't submitted because time runs out. "Sniping" is certainly not prohibited but it can leave a bad taste in the mouth of the person being sniped.

Since the ELO ratings are reset shortly after Jan 1, if there's going to be a change, in a week or two when the next reset occurs would be an excellent time to introduce a change. I propose the following replacement:

Instead of showing a rating in Champion division, show the top 7 personal high scores in this category for the calendar year (or, last 12 months if you don't want to have to worry about resets). Limit a player's appearance to just once in this list : so even if one player has the top 7 scores, their 2nd-6th best scores are thrown out and the highest score from 6 other players will appear instead. In that way, we always see the 7 players who have scored the highest in this topic for the year: the reigning champions, even if they happen to be away for the hour, their expertise is still recognized. This encourages some repeat play from past champions, but less "continually pounding one's strongest categories for a rating", and more branching out to their less-strong categories. You can even give players a crown for each current top 7 standing and build some badges around crown collection. Clear these rankings every year or on a rolling basis, so as to give new players a fresh start to compete against the old experts, who can't rest on the laurels of a particularly lucky game years ago.

What do you think?

I can't say much about your second point, but your first point is, to my mind, the whole point of the game. That someone who may not do particularly well most of the time gets a chance to shine now and then. Much like Heroes.

The changes you suggest seem to mean that the people who always win will continue to keep on always winning. And the people who seldom win will keep on seldom winning. Fine for the winners, I guess, but not so great for everyone else.

ELO:

I have no opinion either way to be honest -- it was added into Expert as a side-effect of being part of the hourly game engine. It certainly doesn't *mean* much in Expert because of the ability of players to bias what they play.

We can open it up for discussion here and I'll defer to Wesley to make a final decision as to whether it makes sense to keep ELOs or not.

Top Scores Per Topic:

I kind of like the idea of a "top scores per topic" regardless of what happens to ELO, and perhaps having that reset once a year would be a fun addition.

The solution a annual ranking, one score by expert topic.
But if you play a category twice, only your best score count.
For instance :
Cat À 1445 pts
Cat B 1443pts
Cat C 1447 pts
Cat À 1452 pts
This player has played cat A twice, only the score 1452 pts counts
Total Pts for this player 1443+1447+1452=4042 pts
You do that for each player.
For instance they are 100 categories experts
At the end of the year 100 best scores for each player.
If you don't play a category, your score is zero.
Conclusion the champion of the year is the one who has
The best total of 100 categories.

Hi agony, I don't see how removing ELO ratings impacts people's ability to shine in a specific playing. Without ratings, our friend the physicist can still dominate the regular winners in a game of Physics (when it appears) and win the Championship division. I'm just saying, for purposes of _rating_ a player relative to his or her peers, a rating may say more about a player's behavior (choosing to only play their stronger subjects), rather than their overall general strength. And if the behavior it encourages is not as fun as other behaviors, perhaps we should replace it with a different system.

I have proposed a system that still rewards people for deep knowledge in specialized categories - show annual site-wide personal bests for the topic. In fact, I believe that "someone who may not do particularly well most of the time" would actually get more of a "chance to shine now and then" under this revised system. If you put up an insanely good score in Needlework or Halo Games Mixture, you will be recognized for a long time whenever that topic appears.

I don’t pay much attention to the ELO rating of other players for the reason that eyhung outlines. There are very clear tactics available for those who wish to inflate the ELO in this game just as there were when the ELOs were present in Smartest and Piece of Cake.

It would be interesting to hear from someone that really supports the ELO system remaining in this game and read the reasons they would give.

Since I was asked, I'd be strongly in favor of removing ELO from Expert for several reasons:

1) It is a deprecated remnant of the previous level-based division structure of the hourlies. The other games lost it with the Champs division, Expert still has champs (because it means something completely different in that game), so the rating was kept more out of inertia than for any other reason (it was there, it still worked).

ELO can and should stay for the Global Challenge which is meant as a long-term game for which the algorithm is very suitable and to which it adds an extra layer of dept.

2) We have better things to put there. Annual / eternal high scores per category, personal bests.

3) ELO is by design a measure that depends on playing many comparable matchups. For it to work well, each single match should be using similar parameters - and a game that emphasizes in-depth niche knowledge is the opposite of that. For many players, some Expert categories are very good chances at a win, others are a success to finish second last on. Expert wants you to try and get better at the latter kind (so you might one day win), ELO wants you to skip them.

4) Most importantly, ELO goes against the play patterns we want for Expert. Expert is about trying and winning many different categories once (twice if we count champ), not a few of them over and over. ELO encourages tactical play and waiting for the last minute to snipe scores - repeat players who already won the category should have no incentive to do that. They should have incentive to just do their BEST at any time in the hour (for team scores and for fun), not "I'll try for one second faster than the leader which lets me be more careful and win more often". After winning champ once, it should not matter at what time in the hour you play for your chances. You should have your target (beat a personal or global best, get a great team score or just beat 1400 for a Symposium run) and be able to play any time in the hour.

Thus, I'd like to replace it with a best score per category - since we have seven lines, how about the best five of the current year, the single all time best score and the player's personal best. Ideally this would go with 1/100 second timing - for many of the fast categories, one second resolution is not going to give meaningful rankings over months.

TLDR: Let it go - high scores per category is strictly better.

I've never taken much notice of the ELO ratings. I normally play only topics I haven't won previously - ever or in Champions (thanks for making that information so accessible, by the way). The only times I might play my 'best' topics is when WTE crops up in my Daily Challenges.

I'd certainly prefer to see ELO replaced by best scores and Wes's explanation (which I did read) makes sense to me.

I like Wes's suggested modifications, although keeping everyone's personal best score in each topic for over 600 topics is going to take up some space. But I guess we already do that with Expert wins. Meanwhile a personal best in that topic will give people an incentive to keep doing better, which is good.

We probably already even have a spare database column for that - we kept number of opponents beaten and level. Those are no longer used, so I suppose one of them could be repurposed as the score.

The 5+1 global ones for each category would actually be a bit of new storage, but it's only ~4000 numbers, so probably not too tough to do. Now I can't promise it happening for Jan 1 however, especially since we also have some small addition already planned for the end of the year

Another vote in favour of scrapping ELO for this game. Not that I pay much attention to ELO in any game.

When ELO was first introduced I was fascinated and intrigued by it. I fear I was one of the cherry pickers who didn't want my rating to go down. That got old fast though for me as I missed just playing for the fun of it so I haven't paid any attention to the ELO for years.

Love Wes' idea of the best score grouping.

Regarding the seven lines, instead of all time best, top 5 of the year, and player personal best.

What if top 3 all time best, top 3 of the year, and player personal best

I'm an old school pinball player, I like Grand Champion plus the several occasionally erased scores

The charm of having more per-year slots and just one Grand Champ is that it will allow more players a shot of making the rankings, so it provides more motivation. 3 current plus 3 eternal will likely lead to a situation where the same 3 appear on both lists and no one else has much of a chance after March.

I like these suggestions but want to throw in one question as food for thought before the changes are made.

Will the high scores reflect those earned in all divisions or just those in Champions division? My preference would be to include all divisions so someone who has a really good set with their first win in a topic gets to make the list for that topic.

"Will the high scores reflect those earned in all divisions or just those in Champions division? My preference would be to include all divisions so someone who has a really good set with their first win in a topic gets to make the list for that topic."

I would say all divisions.

All divisions - you shouldn't miss out on credit for a superb scorejust because you got it at the wrong time.

Seems like there's support for this idea and the New Year has passed. Any idea when it will be implemented?

I really like what I'm reading here about the Expert game changes. The ELO encourages the wrong play style in my opinion for this particular game. I think the recommended changes showing top scores and personal bests are a lot more meaningful. They've been brought up before so I'll piggyback on other ideas that have been thrown out for the Expert game that I think are good ideas: have upcoming topics show the full category dropdown, have plays to hundredths of a second (for all-time/yearly/personal rankings too) and most importantly expand the number of categories in rotation past the 600 or so that are in there. Happy Trivia-ing in 2021 everyone.

Nice, it looks like the Expert game now shows the top 7 scores on the right side rather than the top champion ELO ratings. 1470 in Disney for eyhung and TimBentley (I imagine those names will show up quite a bit), jeez that's Buzz Lightyear to Infinity and Beyond speed.

Sorry to keep messaging but one thing I notice is it lists the Top 7 Winning Scores. So if someone scored 1469 and lost to a 1470 that wouldn't show even though he/she is the third fastest player over the past 6 months?

"Sorry to keep messaging but one thing I notice is it lists the Top 7 Winning Scores. So if someone scored 1469 and lost to a 1470 that wouldn't show even though he/she is the third fastest player over the past 6 months?"

That is correct, which is why it is currently labelled "Top WINNING Scores".

The way you describe (counting all scores, no matter of finishing position) would certainly be fairer and offer a more accurate "who's best" listing, and maybe I'll program that in someday if people think it's worth doing.

Unfortunately the current data set and the way the data is currently stored in Expert only stores WINNING historical scores, so what's there is the best that can be done given the current data setup.

Thanks for implementing the change, Terry!

Maybe remove the link to the Champion Ratings now, or archive them so that they're frozen? I also like all of Triviaballer's suggestions: in particular, the one about increasing the precision of the timings.

Also, if you have score data for the past 6 months, would you mind checking the category-picking algorithm? Non-specialized categories which are supposedly in rotation such as Rock and Roll, Art, Baseball, and Europe (Geography) are supposed to come up regularly but do not, while the similar categories of Country Music, Mythology & Legends, Basketball, and Asia (Geography) are in frequent rotation. Also, the perk "Change the Future" doesn't have access to all the categories in the list, so certain specialized topics such as Aerosmith or Wales take months, if not years, to see play.

Switching over to 1/100 second timing would be great for all competitive games, especially since it would vastly reduce tiebreakers in the leagues.

You have removed all incentives for playing the Expert game at Champion level except for the small number of players able to compete with the previous top scores.
The changes could have been better communicated to players, not everybody reads the forum or Buzz (not sure if it was on the latter.) It would have been helpful (and still would be) if something could be put on the main pages for Who's the Expert. I was puzzled by what was going on and I am likely not the only one, I finally was enlightened (but disappointed) when I came here and saw this discussion.