What is a ghost rating and where do you see them?

I've called the latest list "November", even though its about a week early. I will update it come the first of November.

On this site, Hardin:

http://phpdiplomacy.tournaments.googlepages.com/

@Ghostmaker - by the way, how come my rating has rocketed so high? I mean I know I took a couple of wins lately, but nothing compared to some people's win rates.

A couple of good wins does push your rating up. The idea is that G-Rating moves relatively quickly, to reflect changes in ability/form

Look at MarekP for a perfect example- he had the most amazing of purple patches in 2008, but has fallen a long way since.

What defines a "good" win for these purposes?

By a "good" win I mean one against "good" opponents, whereas a win against a group of players with ratings of around 40 isn't a "good" win. I describe it like that to emphasise that not all wins and draws are equivalent for Ghost-Rating.

Do you get extra Ghost points if you win with Italy as opposed to France or Rus?

No

Ghost: Are all draws equal in ghost ratings? I've never really been clear on this point. It's probably been asked, but I've read the page explaining it, and I don't think it says in detail...

What do you mean by that?

Assuming the players are the same in each game, how are the following ranked in ghost ratings.

A draw with the three best people in the game.
A draw with the three worst people in the game.
A draw with all seven people in the game.

If you finish second in a game with 1 SCs, does the Ghost ranking give you more credit than if you just survived with, say, 8 Scs?

Ghost, I think what Rlum means is that, if there is draw and you have 12 SCs, do you get the same credit as if you had 5 SCs when a draw was agreed.

Edit: If you finish second in a game with 11 SCs, does the Ghost ranking give you more credit than if you just survived with, say, 8 Scs?

let's say the people in the game are A, B, C, D, E,F and G.
And that their current ghost rankings suggest that A>B>C>D>E>F>G
if D draws with A, B and C then surely D gains points but A, B and C may even lose points if they ranking is so high that a win is expected from them.
if D draws with E,F and G then surely E, F and G raise their rankings but D may even lose points if his ranking suggests that he should at least draw with A,B,C
if all 7 draw then E,F,G raise their ranking, A,B,C lose points and D may stay put at the same ranking.
But it all depends on the ranking differences between the players.
Did I get it right?

No, I mean do the points you get in a draw rely on A. The number of people in the draw, and if so B. The quality of people in the draw

@Zman - if you are playing PPSC that is the case, not so if you are playing WTA.

@rlumley - the more people in the draw, the fewer ranking points anyone gets. a 7 person draw, if you are the highest ranked, could probably even set you back a bit. as for drawing with the three worst vs three best - i am not sure but i believe that would only make a difference in that if it's with the three worst (meaning the three best were defeated) then those three best will lose points while you gain, thereby increasing your position but not your rating per se. for the opposite situation, it keeps the players who are worse than you farther below you and the players above you just as much ahead of you.

A. Number of people: Yes
B. Which players also draw: No, only the players who played.

Ghost-Rating has exactly the same reward system as PPSC/WTA.

@ Dj and Ghost

Thanks, that clears it up. :-)

So when I was in a 4 way draw and one of the 4 had only 1 SC. We should have killed off the 1 SC player in order to improve the g-rating of the remaining 3 players who had about 10 SCs each...

That just seems like a shitty thing to do to someone who played so well and cooperated with everyone else...

It's what you should have done if you played for points as well. A 3-way draw is better for your points and your G-rating than a 4-way. It's cruel, but then this is Diplomacy, not tiddly-winks.

but then you'd have to risk that one player helping one of the other three to solo... or breaking the stalemate, or whatever. and realize that it's about having a good game sometimes, not always about getting the most SCs/points/rating.

Of course the exact opposite has happened to me...

I play for the challenge honestly. I admire good play and feel I have much yet to learn. I find the threshold I am on is a difficult one to cross. I think in time I will eventually cross over into the top 100...

Hey Ghost, with a proper database behind it, we could develop a running G-rating system where everytime a game completed, it would rerate each person G-rating instead of just once a month. That would give a more accurate perspective on skill improvements. It'd be kind of like compounding interest monthly versus daily.

Well, I'm hoping to do something like that, and have designed a MySQL database to store the data in. I'm waiting on Chris Babcock to write an XML schema and import program for it. When I have a populated database, I'll start writing the code to do the calculation. The idea is also that other sites can hook up to it as well (e.g. Babcock's judges).

I have started playing more anon games. If I play lower ranked players, even without knowing it, I could be hurting my G-rank, yes? I ask this only because I am surprised to see how fast I have moved up the rankings. 2 months ago I was in the 600's, today I sit at 287.

No, it shouldn't playing badly is what hurts you G-rating.