Rating comparison FESA vs. PlayOK(Kurnik)

[Daniel Toebbens]

This might be interesting for those of us, which play online at the
PlayOK server (formerly Kurnik). I did a comparison of the ratings there
with the official FESA Elo rating. Here are the results:

There is a good proportionality between these data: FESA = 0.94 *
PlayOK. The scattering around this line is quite strong. Individual data
deviate up to 200 points on either of the rating scales.

Also prominent in the data cloud is the 1:1 line: FESA = PlayOK. This
line pretty much marks the upper limit for the FESA rating. An
individual FESA rating might be up to 50 points higher than the PlayOK
rating, but that's it. On the other hand, an individual FESA rating
might be up to 300 points lower than the corresponding rating at PlayOK.
Where this is the case, the players are generally from eastern Europe.
This means they are from peer groups that have grown much in recent
times. Two other cases are from Sweden and France, where the situation
is similar. In my opinion it is probable that the FESA rating of these
players is skewed. The PlayOK rating might be more up-to-date with the
actual strength of these players.

In summary: As I see it, the PlayOK rating is a pretty good 1:1 gauge of
the FESA-rated strength. If your FESA rating is lower than your PlayOK
rating you might want to visit a few international tournaments to gain a
grade or two.

This analysis is based on 20 European players, both western and eastern
Europe. I'll happily include American, Japanese, and all other players,
of course, but at the moment I know the nicknames of European players only.
The rating of those players are all in the range 1260-1959 FESA,
1490-2100 PlayOK. Outside of this range things might be different.

And finally: If you frequently play on PlayOK, and are rated in the FESA
list, please send me your nickname. I want to widen the database of this
analysis.

Daniel

[Oliver Orschiedt (Germany)]

Hi Daniel,

thanks for Your interestening analysis.

The main problem with the PlayOK rating is, that every player starts with a
rating of 1200 - no matter if he is a beginner, who doesn't even know the
rules or he is a 4 Dan.

So it takes a long time for a 2000-ELO-FESA rated player to reach this level
with his PlayOK rating. And on the other hand it is easy for a 10 kyu to get
a high PlayOK level by playing only against beginners (PlayOK 1200, FESA 1).
It was better to give not an initial ratig of 1200 but to give a rating only
after a minimum of five games (with minimum one win and one lose).

For me (4 kyu) it seems hard to get 1400 FESA but kind of easy to get 1600
PlayOK - but may be that was one or two years ago and changed now. I do not
play much at PlayOK nowadays. Does the ELO level at PlayOK change? I mean in
2007 1400 FESA was 1650 Kurnik and now 1400 FESA is 1490 PlayOK. What do You
think?

regards

Oliver

www.shoginet.de

[benjamin briffaud]

Hi,

As you asked in your mail, I give you my nickname on PlayOK and Brainking (it should be interesting to compare these two websites rating) :
Nivlinch (Playok) and Gouffnic (Brainking)
My FESA raiting is 1035 (Im not sur of it) and my grade 8 kyu and my Playok rating is 1455 (as far as I could remember), so as you supposed previously, this analysis could be good only from a certain strength.

Benjamin

2009/5/5 Daniel Toebbens <Daniel....@uibk.ac.at>

[Daniel Toebbens]

benjamin briffaud schrieb:

> As you asked in your mail, I give you my nickname on PlayOK and
> Brainking (it should be interesting to compare these two websites
> rating) :

I didn't even know that Brainking supports Shogi ^_^; How do you watch a
game at Brainking? The handling of that site is not really intuitive.

> My FESA raiting is 1035 (Im not sur of it) and my grade 8 kyu and my
> Playok rating is 1455 (as far as I could remember), so as you supposed
> previously, this analysis could be good only from a certain strength.

It fits the current trend - Colmar is also a region of recent growth in
numbers, so PlayOK should be high compared to the official rating.

Daniel

[Bernhard]

Hi,

> The main problem with the PlayOK rating is, that every player starts with a
> rating of 1200 - no matter if he is a beginner, who doesn't even know the
> rules or he is a 4 Dan.

yes, that's a stupid situation.
Also probably the used system at playok is not the best.
I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe at the chess server where I had
played before a long time, you also couldn't set your initial rating,
but the system is much better.
In the first game, the rating must make BIG changes.

For example if a new player starting with 1200 wins the game, he maybe
should get +400 for a win.
Even it's realy a player only knowing the rule, that doesn't matter.
Than he will get 1600 BUT also keeping in mind 1 game played. Playing
the next game against a 1600 rated player he will loose 300 rating
points immediately.
The more games played, the less will be the change-value.
And so again.
I believe I shouldn't go to deep into explanation of the ELO-system,
but at playok it's really not realized in a good way.

> For me (4 kyu) it seems hard to get 1400 FESA but kind of easy to get 1600
> PlayOK - but may be that was one or two years ago and changed now. I do not
> play much at PlayOK nowadays. Does the ELO level at PlayOK change? I mean in
> 2007 1400 FESA was 1650 Kurnik and now 1400 FESA is 1490 PlayOK. What do You
> think?

For me the same. It was not hard to reach a 1600 PlayOK rating, but
looking at FESA, I would be happy with a rating of 1400 (actually:
1192, 8kyu by only 13 rated games).

Bernhard

[Bernhard]

Hi,

> I didn't even know that Brainking supports Shogi ^_^; How do you watch a
> game at Brainking? The handling of that site is not really intuitive.

simple use for example this link for played shogi-games of Gouffnic:
http://brainking.com/en/Profile?u=68117&eg=69&p=1

There select one and click at "japanese chess".

Bernhard

[benjamin briffaud]

2009/5/5 Daniel Toebbens <Daniel....@uibk.ac.at>

benjamin briffaud schrieb:

> As you asked in your mail, I give you my nickname on PlayOK and
> Brainking (it should be interesting to compare these two websites
> rating) :

I didn't even know that Brainking supports Shogi ^_^; How do you watch a
game at Brainking? The handling of that site is not really intuitive.

To watch a game on Brainking, you have to subscribe (freely or with differents fee). Then, you have an access to every available game. With the kifu on the right, it's easy to follow current and finished game of everyone, specially of the top player ;).

Benjamin

[Bernhard]

Hi,

> To watch a game on Brainking, you have to subscribe (freely or with
> differents fee).

for only watching, you needn't to subscirbe.

Regards,

Bernhard

[Daniel Toebbens]

Bernhard schrieb:

>
> For me the same. It was not hard to reach a 1600 PlayOK rating, but
> looking at FESA, I would be happy with a rating of 1400 (actually:
> 1192, 8kyu by only 13 rated games)

I say this actually supports my data. Your last FESA rated tournament
was in 2007 (shame on you :-). There you gained 118 points. Unless you
abandoned your training you should be seriously underrated by now.

Daniel

[Bernhard]

Hi,

On 5 Mai, 15:19, Daniel Toebbens <Daniel.Toebb...@uibk.ac.at> wrote:
> I say this actually supports my data. Your last FESA rated tournament
> was in 2007 (shame on you :-). There you gained 118 points. Unless you
> abandoned your training you should be seriously underrated by now.

yes, I had stopped playing shogi after this tournament (almost?)
completely.
My last 30 games (of 44) on playok I have played in the last 4 month.
In the past two years my strength wasn't grown and I have first regain
practice back, now.
Still I believe that by FESA I'm underrated, but 1400 seems a real
good estimating when I take care of my last FESA-games which all were
very close.

Bernhard

[Daniel Toebbens]

I now have 39 data points, nearly all from Europe. I pasted a list at
the end of this mail. I'm not going to post any nicknames to this list,
but if you send me a private mail I'll give you the full list. After
all, it's more fun to play at PlayOK, if you know whom you are playing.
:-) In any case, the ratings below are the normal rating of PlayOK, not
the tournament based rating. For the PanAtlantic rating I used the
current rating list. Overall there is a decent proportional relation,
with FESA = 0.91*PlayOK. Below 1500 PlayOK, there are some very strong
deviations. In the higher regions deviations are still up to +-300
points. But try to split the data into regios with fast growth in recent
times (Eastern Europe), fast growth a while back (Sweden, France), and
regions with mature population (rest of Western Europe). Eastern Europe
data have an average line of FESA = 0.8*PlayOK, the 'mature' regions
have FESA = 1.0*PlayOK, and France and Sweden are in between. This
indicates, that players from Eastern Europe are currently underrated by
about 200 points compared to players from i.e. Germany. I can send a
graphic plot to you, too, by private mail.

Daniel

Na FESA PlayOK Region Growth
USA 1686 1519 America, North no
AT 1825 1846 Europe, West no
BE 1799 1749 Europe, West no
DE 1359 1629 Europe, West no
DE 1591 1491 Europe, West no
DE 1795 1631 Europe, West no
DE 1637 1676 Europe, West no
DE 1399 1579 Europe, West no
DE 584 1504 Europe, West no
DE 1192 1598 Europe, West no
DE 1950 1935 Europe, West no
DE 966 1422 Europe, West no
DE 1165 1238 Europe, West no
DE 777 1386 Europe, West no
DE 1211 1619 Europe, West no
DE 1630 1580 Europe, West no
GB 1773 1766 Europe, West no
GB 1240 1282 Europe, West no
NL 1927 1874 Europe, West no
SE 1388 1671 Europe, West yes
SE 1384 1610 Europe, West yes
SE 1596 1760 Europe, West yes
SE 1838 1882 Europe, West yes
SE 1551 1274 Europe, West yes
SE 1797 1863 Europe, West yes
SE 1655 1745 Europe, West yes
SE 1797 1863 Europe, West yes
FR 1037 1367 Europe, West yes
FR 1182 1491 Europe, West yes
FR 1732 1846 Europe, West yes
BR 1459 1646 Europe, East yes
HU 1469 1865 Europe, East yes
HU 1517 1822 Europe, East yes
PL 1478 1770 Europe, East yes
RU 1851 2098 Europe, East yes
RU 1260 1617 Europe, East yes
RU 1605 1678 Europe, East yes
UA 1308 1614 Europe, East yes
UA 1671 1638 Europe, East yes