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All sports in the world have their independent ratings; similarly expertise in the game of BackGammon is measured through one’s BackGammon rating. The experts in BackGammon have BackGammon ratings that range around 2800 while the BackGammon ratings of average BackGammon players are around 1600. Sometimes, BackGammon rating is referred to as Elo rating, in remembrance of the inventor of the BackGammon rating system.
When competing in BackGammon competitions, the players with the same rating have equal chances of winning when competing against each other. Players having different BackGammon ratings, with the same difference in the BackGammon ratings, have similar chances of winning at a game of BackGammon. This means that two BackGammon players having BackGammon ratings of 2100 and 1900 have equal chances of winning in a game of BackGammon as two players with BackGammon ratings of 1300 and 1100 as the difference in BackGammon ratings in both cases is 200 points. However remember that the BackGammon ratings that different agencies offer need not be the same or comparable with each other.
BackGammon players usually use their BackGammon ratings when introducing themselves when meeting each other for the first time. It was Garry Kasparov who was the first player to break the 2800 barrier in the year, 1989. This was in comparison with the other players; both current and historical.
The criterion employed in a BackGammon rating system seems to be rather mysterious, but a BackGammon rating is basically based on statistics of the players in their previous matches and BackGammon playing expertise. In 1959, the USCF rating system in BackGammon used 2000 as the upper level BackGammon rating level for strong club players. These BackGammon ratings then had divisions of 200 points that helped assign the different players in different classes of players. Elo had developed these measures as he thought that they were steep in the tradition of BackGammon playing.
There are lots of calculations associated in getting a BackGammon rating. The game results of a BackGammon game naturally play an important part in the calculation of the BackGammon rating. When calculating the BackGammon rating, the expected percentage of the results of a game and the difference with that expected result is taken into consideration. Along with this, the number of wins, losses and draws against the opposition in the BackGammon games too are taken into consideration.
With all this information, it is possible to calculate the initial BackGammon rating for a new and previously unrated player. However, the higher is the results of numerous games in the calculation of BackGammon rating, the more accurate is the initial BackGammon raging. The BackGammon rating is a very important factor determining the expertise and prowess of a BackGammon player in a BackGammon competition.
The players in a BackGammon competition are usually matched against each other, after taking into consideration their individual BackGammon ratings. This is why it is important to work at improving your BackGammon rating by playing as many BackGammon games with BackGammon players having similar, if not equivalent BackGammon ratings.
ELO BackGammon RATING
The most widely used BackGammon rating system that is in use today actually is of fairly recent origin. In fact, organizations like the United States BackGammon Federation and similar types of organizations and associations around the globe implemented what has become known as the Elo or the ELO system beginning in the early 1960s.
The so-called Elo or ELO system (hereinafter “ELO” for ease of reference in this article) was the creation of a gentleman born in Hungary but who was a physics professor in the United States named Arpad Elo -- hence the moniker Elo or ELO. The BackGammon rating scheme oftentimes if signified in all capital letters although it really is not an acronym.
The ELO BackGammon rating system actually was created in order to improve the overall BackGammon rating system that previously was in place. In time, ELO has been used in many other arenas beyond BackGammon rating. In addition to BackGammon rating, ELO can be used as an appropriate rating system for any competitive game situation that involves multiple players, including computer games. Indeed, the ELO BackGammon rating scheme has evolved so far as to be applied to such sports as international football, U.S. football and U.S. Major League Baseball.
At the heart of the ELO BackGammon rating system was the substitution of statistical estimation in place of a system that is based upon competitive rewards. Rather then subjective evaluations based on so-called “greatness” in relation to game related or play related achievements. An easy to understand example is to consider a BackGammon tournament. Previously, BackGammon rating could be based upon a rather arbitrary determination that one BackGammon tournament is three times more important than a less competition. Therefore, “points” would be awarded to the winner of this more significant BackGammon tournament in a more significant proportion under this subjective system of BackGammon rating.
On the other hand, the ELO BackGammon rating system engages a purely statistical model that considers the actual game or tournament results to underlying variables that are intended to reflect the actual abilities of a particular BackGammon player. Of course, competitors can still contend that the ELO BackGammon rating scheme still rewards success and failure in a particular situation; however, many experts in the field of BackGammon rating believe that this system more accurately evaluates and reflects the actual abilities of a BackGammon player. The contention is that the ELO BackGammon rating system is a much more reliable BackGammon rating scheme than anything else that has come before or anything else that might be available for utilization today.
In developing the ELO BackGammon rating system, ELO operated on the basic premise that the performance of each and every BackGammon player in any particular game is what technically is known as a “normally distributed random variable.” At the heart of the normally distributed random variable is the conclusion that while a BackGammon players performance will vary from one game to the next, sometimes even significantly, the mean or median “value” of a particular BackGammon player’s performance over time in fact would change only slowly.
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