Ladder League Scoring System
Fundamentals
One of the primary aims of the SE Uni Ladder League is to get teams out and about, playing each other in competitive games, so they can fare better when faced up against a range of other teams at national events.
The primary aim of this scoring system therefore is to reward activity, to encourage teams to travel to other universities and play tough games, without having to rely on winning the match for it to be worth it.
With this in mind, when calculating the ranking points awarded to a team after any game, the scoring system takes into account many factors:
- Whether the game is played at home or away
- The difference between the ranks of the two teams
- Who won the match
- The scoreline
The final result should be a balanced reward, which values points scored against teams with much higher ranks, and doesn't over-value wins gained against much weaker teams.
Weightings
The importance attached to each of the above factors is a vital consideration for creating a well balanced scoring system.
Firstly, the points awarded to your team after a game are multiplied by 110% if the game was played away, or 90% if it was at home. So, a base score of 70 ranking points would become 77 if it was an away game, or 63 if it were played at home.
The difference in ranks is a very important factor - it will be this mutiplication value which can stop highly ranked teams from accelerating out of reach by playing tons of games against much weaker teams, but will reward lower ranked teams who get plenty of points against or even beat much higher ranked teams. This value is worked out initially by the formula:
(Other teams rank)
(My teams rank)
So, a team with rank 1350 playing a 1200 ranked team will have a multiplication factor of 1200/1350 = 0.89, and conversely the 1200 ranked team will have a multiplication factor of 1350/1200 = 1.125.
This value is not powerful enough to make a significant impact on the final rewards to each team, so a little calculation is run on it to exaggerate it (I can't explain how it works but it does):
(Other teams rank)
(My teams rank)
|
x 2 - 1
|
This effectively doubles the importance of the rank difference. 0.89 becomes 0.78, and 1.125 becomes 1.25.
The next consideration is the reward for points scored & a victory. These have been weighted so winning a game automatically gives you 20% of the base reward points (the fixed number of ranking points available for each match - set at 150), with the other 80% divided equally according to the scoreline. Because the winning team will always have over 50% of the score, this means a win effectively guarantees you 20% + 40% = 60% of the points available. In a really close match, the losers could notch up nearly 40% of the reward points for themselves.
A simple formula of;
My teams points
(My teams points + other teams points) | | x 0.80 |
works out the what fraction of the base reward points are due to you. The winner of the match will obviously then have 20% of the base reward points added to their score.
So, in a match which is won 15-10, the losers points scored percentage will be:
So they are entitled to 0.4 x 0.8 = 0.32 - 32% of the base reward points. The winners are entitled to ( (15/25) x 0.8 ) = 0.48, + 0.2 for the win = 0.68, 68% of the base reward points.
Calculations
These two percentages are then multiplied by the factors detailed above; the home/away multiplier and the rank difference multiplier to give a final percentage of the base reward points due to be allocated to each team. The base reward points for each game is 150, so the full calculations for an example look like this:
| W Rank | W Team | Score | – | Score | L Team | L Rank |
|---|
| 1350 | Mohawks | 15 | - | 10 | Kings | 1200 |
Assume game is played at Mohawks' ground.
Mohawks rank for win:
150 * 0.9 (home/away multiplier) * 0.78 (rank diff multiplier) * 0.20 (20% for win) = 21.0
+
Mohawks rank awarded for points:
150 * 0.9 (home/away multiplier) * 0.78 (rank diff multiplier) * 0.60 (% of points) * 0.80 (80% for points) = 50.4
Total rank awarded to Mohawks: 71.4
Mohawks new rank: 1421
Kings' rank awarded for points:
150 * 1.1 (home/away multiplier) * 1.25 (rank diff multiplier) * 0.40 (% of points) * 0.80 (80% for points) = 66.0
Total rank awarded to Kings: 66.0
Kings new rank: 1266
You will notice that Kings picked up almost as many points as Mohawks, despite losing the game. This is because of three factors in their favor; it was an away game, they were notably out-ranked, and they still managed to score 40% of the points.
Examples
The examples below (detailed in this spreadsheet) show what happens (1) when an outranked team wins a match, (2) when a team is dominated by one with a much higher rank, and (3) when two closely ranked teams have a close game, the slightly lower ranked of the two getting the victory. If you download the spreadsheet you can also change the values to experiment with scorelines of your own.
(1)
| W Rank | W Team | Score | – | Score | L Team | L Rank |
|---|
| 1150 | LSE | 13 | - | 8 | Holloway | 1500 |
Hosts: Holloway
Total rank awarded to LSE: 151.0
LSE's new rank: 1301
Total rank awarded to Holloway: 26.8
Holloway's new rank: 1527
(2)
| W Rank | W Team | Score | – | Score | L Team | L Rank |
|---|
| 1500 | Holloway | 13 | - | 4 | LSE | 1150 |
Hosts: LSE
Total rank awarded to Holloway: 58.4
Holloway's new rank: 1558
Total rank awarded to LSE: 50.0
LSE's new rank: 1200
(3)
| W Rank | W Team | Score | – | Score | L Team | L Rank |
|---|
| 1450 | dD | 12 | - | 10 | UCL | 1520 |
Hosts: dD
Total rank awarded to dD: 115.1
dD's new rank: 1565
Total rank awarded to UCL: 44.6
UCL's new rank: 1565
In this last example, by proving themselves at home against a higher ranked team, dD have brought their rank up to equal UCL's. UCL were not awarded many points because although they scored 10 away points, they outranked dD by 70 and so were expected to win.
Exceptions
In the event of a draw, the points awarded for each team are worked out by: 150 x 0.5 x (rank difference multiplier) x (home/away multiplier).
It is down to the captains to decide upon time/points limits and hard/soft caps before the game begins.
If both teams are playing away from their home turf, their home/away multipliers are set at 1.1. When they play the host team at such an event, they have the usual 1.1/0.9 advantage. If two teams are the 'home' team (for example dD and Thrown at Hyde Park), their multipliers are set at 0.9.
As soon as a game is finished, the teams theoretically adopt their new ranks, so any games immediately following are calculated according to their new rank scores.
If a team is found to have fielded a non-student player for any game without permission from their opponent's captain, their points for that game are declared void, and their opponents gain the 150 x 0.2 x (rank diff multiplier) x (home/away multiplier) win bonus.
None of the teams in these examples represent real teams, results or rankings in the South East, any similarities are mere coincidences and the author is not responsible for any grudges, rivalries or flamewars spawned as a reaction to reading this page.
|