The current system works fine when there are similar attendances at each event. However, a particularly large event such as CO:LON, which has roughly double the number of players of an average event, carries so many points that it unjustifiably dwarfs a good result in a smaller event. For example, in 2018 when CO:LON was attended by 67 players and CO:Leeds by 33 players, first place at Leeds scored the same number of FOCAL points as 35th place at London. Given the quality of field at Leeds, it’s difficult to argue that these represent similar levels of achievement. I do think it’s reasonable to award a few more points for the larger events, however, so my proposal is as follows:
Each event has a maximum number of points (call it N) that can be scored that is determined and published at the start of the FOCAL year. The winner is awarded the maximum number of points (N) and everyone else’s points are distributed evenly between 0 and N based on their position. For example, if an event is worth 500 points and has 25 players, the winner gets 500 points, second gets 480, third 460 and so on down to 25th who gets 20.
The rest is a just a matter of determining how many points to award for each event. I suggest using numbers significantly higher than the number of players at the event to reduce the effect of rounding.
I’ve created a web page showing the current and proposed scoring systems, applied to the 2018 results so far. It lets you tweak the points available for each event. In my example, there are three tiers of events: tier 1, worth 600 points (COLIN, CO:LON, .co.mk), tier 2 worth 500 points (COLIN Hangover, CoBris, Co:Leeds, CoCam) and tier 3 worth 400 points (CoNuT, Co:Wat). I’ve based this on attendance in 2018. It means that larger events are still worth more than smaller ones but to a lesser degree than at present.
http://timdown.co.uk/code/countdown/focal.html
Notes
- I couldn’t find a list of placings from all events so mine are calculated from http://greem.co.uk/cgi-bin/coevents/event.py. My numbers don’t exactly match the most recently published standings (of which I only have the top 8) so I’ve clearly got something wrong somewhere. They’re close though. (EDIT: Graeme has now kindly furnished me with accurate placings so I'll update the page soon.)
- My own position is higher in my proposed scoring system. However, this isn’t a big surprise because what prompted me to look into this was my dismay at how much ground I’d lost after being unable to attend CO:LON. In any case, I’m not proposing changing the scoring for 2018 so I wouldn’t benefit anyway.