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SC2 Ladder Analysis: Part 2 - Page 9

Forum Index > SC2 General
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gondolin
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
France332 Posts
August 29 2010 01:30 GMT
#161
Thanks for all the details Excalibur_Z! That was really informative.
Do you also know how the displayed point evolves after a league promotion?

I have a friend who is stuck in gold, while playing against diamond. I told him it was normal, his winning ratio was too high for the system to be confident about his skill (sigma too large), and that when he would be promoted, he would be bumped directly into diamond.

However it looks like you lose a lot of points when you get promoted, so does it makes sense to lose on purpose to narrow your sigma sooner, and be promoted sooner without wasting all the points you get at plat?
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12235 Posts
August 29 2010 02:26 GMT
#162
On August 29 2010 10:30 gondolin wrote:
Thanks for all the details Excalibur_Z! That was really informative.
Do you also know how the displayed point evolves after a league promotion?

I have a friend who is stuck in gold, while playing against diamond. I told him it was normal, his winning ratio was too high for the system to be confident about his skill (sigma too large), and that when he would be promoted, he would be bumped directly into diamond.

However it looks like you lose a lot of points when you get promoted, so does it makes sense to lose on purpose to narrow your sigma sooner, and be promoted sooner without wasting all the points you get at plat?


We need more data on this, so I urge people to post full match histories like I did on page 8, if they haven't played any ladder matches yet in a particular bracket or team. One theory that Angstrom on the Bnet forums had was that the point deduction involves a "league multiplier", this was how he applied it to my point loss:

Disparity between points: 63
Net points from winning vs plat: 110
points lost vs plat: -8

1/2 points from plat toward diamond = -55
double points lost from losing plat = -8
There's your 63 points.

Wins from plat give 1/2 points toward diamond, and losses from plat cost 2x as much to your diamond points?

Refinement:
Assumptions:
You have points in every league within your bracket.
You can only play players in leagues directly under you, your leagues, and leagues above you.
Points shown are pre-adjusted to match your league. (i.e. 10pts from a win in -1 is actually a 20pt game, but pre-adjusted to show 20*.5)

Multipliers on adjusted (what you see when you win the game) points:

Wins in platinum league:
Versus a Gold player: 1x to platinum and under, .25x to diamond
Versus a Plat player: 1x to platinum and under, .5x to diamond
Versus a Diamond player: 1x to diamond and under

Losses in platinum league:
Versus a Gold player: 1x to platinum and under, 4x to diamond
Versus a Plat player: 1x to platinum and under, 2x to diamond
Versus a Diamond player: 1x to diamond and under


It would be interesting to see if that holds true for other point loss, as well as whether the point loss is more severe when you move across multiple leagues (because you'll have more games against players of lower leagues).
Moderator
gondolin
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
France332 Posts
August 29 2010 03:11 GMT
#163
Great, thanks a lot! It's really fun reverse engineering the system, you did a great job!

If this is true this mean two things:
1) When you get promoted to diamond, your points get converted as if you were in diamond since the beginning. So there is no reason to try to get promoted sooner.
2) Since the point loss depend on the match history, there is no way to compare points across leagues.

But it should be possible to compare points between division, when they have started to converge, right?
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12235 Posts
August 29 2010 19:09 GMT
#164
On August 29 2010 12:11 gondolin wrote:
Great, thanks a lot! It's really fun reverse engineering the system, you did a great job!

If this is true this mean two things:
1) When you get promoted to diamond, your points get converted as if you were in diamond since the beginning. So there is no reason to try to get promoted sooner.
2) Since the point loss depend on the match history, there is no way to compare points across leagues.

But it should be possible to compare points between division, when they have started to converge, right?


I have no reason to believe that points are not comparable across divisions. Of course, we have no proof, but some players have said that divisions carry some kind of point averaging which allows the highly-ranked players to prop up the casual players. The theory there is that if you play against someone from a division with a high point average and you are part of a low point division, you will earn more points for a win. If that is true, then points are almost completely meaningless because your points are weighted further against others in your division.

I don't believe this to be true. Everyone gets access to the same amount of bonus pool which means the rate of inflation is the same. Everyone plays against the same player pool (roughly). If you take a look at SC2Ranks, you can see that the point totals of players roughly coincide with the Blizzard Top 200 rankings which we know to not be based on points. It would just make too little sense to have divisions be that... well... divided from each other.
Moderator
Shadowed
Profile Joined August 2010
United States679 Posts
August 29 2010 19:17 GMT
#165
The only reason I would say the idea they keep track of your points across every league is wrong, is that seems far more complicated than it needs to be. Since it doesn't have to place your points exactly where you are, it just has to make sure you aren't going to be #1 in Diamond with 1,400 points cause you were promoted from 1,400 in Platinum.

It is an interesting theory though.
Vei
Profile Joined March 2010
United States2845 Posts
August 29 2010 21:40 GMT
#166
I have one question: if you only play when you have bonus pool points available and stop when you run out, is this "abusing" the system (getting to a bigger point value than you would if you just massed games)?
www.justin.tv/veisc2 ~ 720p + commentary
gondolin
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
France332 Posts
August 30 2010 05:22 GMT
#167
No. You can think of the bonus pool as a constant inflation in the number of points. This is useful to prevent people from having lucky streaks and stop playing before reaching equilibrium: if they stop playing, the will be depassed by people at equilibrium using the bonus pool.

So you can't really "abuse" the system with the bonus pool, you just need to consume it so that you can use the inflation induced by it. Once you have reached the equilibrium (assuming you don't progress), you will hover at it, with a bonus pool or not. The only difference is that with the bonus pool, your equilibrium point will be moving up (because of the inflation).
Subversion
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
South Africa3627 Posts
August 30 2010 06:53 GMT
#168
this is really cool and all, but the system just so often seems to do the weirdest things that aren't accounted for by this kind of analysis

i dont know if its just buggy as hell or if we're missing something.

for example its been pretty much proven that you will not be promoted without losing any games. but the OP flat out denies this.

meh, i dont really understand how to apply this to the actual BS we see online =/
Shadowed
Profile Joined August 2010
United States679 Posts
August 30 2010 08:34 GMT
#169
Also you can definitely play against people below your league, played someone in Bronze while in Gold after losing a bunch of games.
Dionyseus
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
United States2068 Posts
August 30 2010 11:41 GMT
#170
On August 30 2010 06:40 Vei wrote:
I have one question: if you only play when you have bonus pool points available and stop when you run out, is this "abusing" the system (getting to a bigger point value than you would if you just massed games)?


No because the bonus pool system is designed to quickly get you to where the system believes you belong. If the inflation is 100 points a week and you stop playing for two weeks, you'd probably have close to 200 points in the bank when you come back, but even if you earn all those points you'd still be on par with people who didn't take a break.
9/5/10 P acct: NA D 10,683 651pts 69w56L http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/290365/LetoAtreides T acct: NA D 16,137 553pts 70w67L http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/1560008/Khrone Z: NA G 16,058 465pts 28w26L http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/1997354/Omnius
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12235 Posts
August 30 2010 18:31 GMT
#171
On August 30 2010 15:53 Subversion wrote:
this is really cool and all, but the system just so often seems to do the weirdest things that aren't accounted for by this kind of analysis

i dont know if its just buggy as hell or if we're missing something.

for example its been pretty much proven that you will not be promoted without losing any games. but the OP flat out denies this.

meh, i dont really understand how to apply this to the actual BS we see online =/


I have no doubt that we're missing some things because obviously there are some unanswered questions out there. I had this sweet sample game list to illustrate the concept but it was going to have so many inaccuracies that it wouldn't be reliable and people would just get hung up on analyzing the made-up numbers rather than following the trend.

Anyway, Shadowed hooked us up with some numbers that showed several examples of people with perfect records getting promoted. It all has to do with who you play against. If you're winning games you're expected to win and sigma decreases enough, you'll get promoted. Losing games you're expected to lose will cause sigma to decrease as well. It's all about reaching that MMR-sigma*3 > threshold point.

You can get a rough estimate of how close you are to promotion by the range of opponents you're facing. Playing a 300 Diamond followed by an 800 Diamond? You may still be far from promotion. Playing a 500 Diamond followed by a 450 Diamond? You may be pretty close. There are some factors that confuse things like how much bonus pool your opponents have consumed (for best accuracy they'd need to have consumed most or all of it) and how many games they've played (whether or not their point value is close to their MMR), but you should be able to get some vague idea of where you stand.
Moderator
kabuto202
Profile Joined August 2010
United States4 Posts
August 30 2010 18:54 GMT
#172
Can someone explain to me why during my placement matches I got paired up against 3 Plat lost to all of them, 1 Bronze, and 1 Silv won against both. It put me in Bronze, and now I'm sitting there playing against people who's w/l are in the hundreds, and when I do get promoted to Silver, the match making starts putting me up against plat players? I'm roughly 10-20 right now. Now, it may be just me, but I don't think Match Making is working correctly, since I beta I was in Gold the entire time (After one of the wipes I was thrown into silver and then climbed my way back to gold.) And now I'm having difficulty winning games in copper >.>
Match Making makes me want to punch babies.
gondolin
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
France332 Posts
August 30 2010 19:10 GMT
#173
On August 30 2010 06:40 Vei wrote:
I have one question: if you only play when you have bonus pool points available and stop when you run out, is this "abusing" the system (getting to a bigger point value than you would if you just massed games)?


Coming back to your post: if you want to "abuse" the system, you could procede as follow. Let assume that you are able to determine your equilibrium rating A and your sigma. By definition of the equilibrium, and forgetting about bonus points for now you will hover at A + or - \lambda sigma, according to whether you have lucky or unlucky streaks. And the higher the lambda the more unlikely it is to reach it (it is quite easier to reach A +sigma than A+3sigma). So without inflation, when you reach A+3sigma, you could stop playing.

Now with the bonus pool, this won't work. But you could use a strategy like that: while my rating - unused bonus pool is larger than A+2 sigma I don't play, and when it goes below play until my rating -unused bonus pool is larger than A + used bonus pool + 3sigma. This way you can keep being +2-3 sigma above your 'true' rank.
heishe
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Germany2284 Posts
August 30 2010 19:29 GMT
#174
Excalibur_Z: How can it be that I'm constantly matched with much higher (visibly) rated players (like +100 - 300 points more than me, I'm diamond 750), but it's even matched all the time so I get few points when I win and lose a lot when I lose? I thought the system tries to bring me close to my MMR as soon as possible, whereas I have the impression that it's slowing me down.
If you value your soul, never look into the eye of a horse. Your soul will forever be lost in the void of the horse.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12235 Posts
August 30 2010 21:52 GMT
#175
On August 31 2010 04:29 heishe wrote:
Excalibur_Z: How can it be that I'm constantly matched with much higher (visibly) rated players (like +100 - 300 points more than me, I'm diamond 750), but it's even matched all the time so I get few points when I win and lose a lot when I lose? I thought the system tries to bring me close to my MMR as soon as possible, whereas I have the impression that it's slowing me down.


I have no idea, sorry. Maybe those people just came off some losses and pushed their MMR down to "even" levels with you? Maybe 300 points still qualifies as "even"? Do you have a large amount of unspent bonus pool? There are a lot of possibilities for this, unfortunately.
Moderator
guitarizt
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States1492 Posts
August 31 2010 04:44 GMT
#176
I'm too lazy to read all the posts and even the op but I skimmed some. I just had an even game against a gold player and I got about 20 points for the win. I'm in diamond. I've been getting about 20 points beating 700-900 diamond players. At the end of the game it said I was evenly matched with the gold player. The games with the 700-900 players it also said I was evenly matched and I had half their points at the time. I wonder if it accounts for matchups or maps or something since I go random?

User was warned for this post
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” - Hemingway
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12235 Posts
August 31 2010 05:16 GMT
#177
On August 31 2010 13:44 guitarizt wrote:
I'm too lazy to read all the posts and even the op but I skimmed some. I just had an even game against a gold player and I got about 20 points for the win. I'm in diamond. I've been getting about 20 points beating 700-900 diamond players. At the end of the game it said I was evenly matched with the gold player. The games with the 700-900 players it also said I was evenly matched and I had half their points at the time. I wonder if it accounts for matchups or maps or something since I go random?


Please don't bring the "I'm too lazy to read this thread or even the OP" into this thread. It's too easy for long posts like the OP to be ignored and this thread cluttered with posts like yours. Go back and look at the Gold player you played that it said was an even match. Chances are he's been playing Diamond-level players for a while or his win ratio is very high with few games played. His MMR is close to your displayed rating, so it was an even match. He saw you as favored on the loading screen and lost minimal points for that game.
Moderator
noD
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
2230 Posts
August 31 2010 22:25 GMT
#178
Let's see if I Got this straight
if i were the lowest possible bronze and the highest diammond logged in my acc and done, let's say ... 30 wins in a row, he would still need to lose and probably would be climbed straight to gold or plat ?
coZen
Profile Joined August 2010
United States192 Posts
August 31 2010 23:23 GMT
#179
im currently a statistics major and after reading through this I am glad that I understand most, if not all of this analysis. excellent work
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12235 Posts
September 01 2010 00:24 GMT
#180
On August 30 2010 06:40 Vei wrote:
I have one question: if you only play when you have bonus pool points available and stop when you run out, is this "abusing" the system (getting to a bigger point value than you would if you just massed games)?


The short answer is yes. If you are maintaining a 50% win ratio, then the extra bonus points will push you higher than if you had massed games. The chances for a net loss of points are increased through massing games because you don't have bonus points to cushion your losses, and there are factors beyond the game such as mental fatigue that can contribute to an overall decline.

Relatively speaking, though, it doesn't have much of an overall impact because everyone the bonus pool accumulates at the same rate for everyone. At a 50% win ratio, you'll basically be riding the wave of inflation just like everyone else.
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