Oct 1 2015

Masters Ranking 2015 – some thoughts about rankings

Masters Ranking

The Masters top 10 is a competition among Czech OTW rowing Masters. The rules are quite simple:

  • Points are awarded for all races authorised by the Czech Rowing Association that have Masters categories
  • Points are allocated as follows
    • First place: 6 points
    • Second place: 5 points
    • Third place: 4 points, etc
  • In a race with multiple age categories, points are awarded according to your relative result in your age category, but
    • If you are beaten by one or more competitors from an older age category, your points are reduced accordingly. So if you are the first Masters C but a Masters D has won the overall race, you get only 5 points.
  • You also get points if you are the only boat in your age category, under the condition that you cross the finish line.
  • For competitors with the same amount of points, the older competitor will be ranked higher, as well as those who achieve the points with fewer starts
  • For the Czech National Masters Open Championships, points are multiplied by 2

So here is the standing for Men with just a few races to go:

Rank Name Club Cat. Starts Points Alternative
1 Černák Vojtěch OSTP C 65 36 258 165
2 Knopp Jiří SLAV E 60 32 220 145
3 Pešat Jan OSTP E 56 30 187 125
4 Šulc Josef SLAV E 58 18 125 98
5 Burda Vladimír BOHM F 52 14 114 97
6 Řepka Petr ÚSTÍ G 49 12 90 81
7 Krejza Zdeněk MĚLN F 52 13 88 77
8 Vránek Pavel ŠTĚT C 72 14 87 74
9 Malecký Jiří MĚLN B 77 15 86 71
10 Viktora Milan HODN C 66 15 85 71
11 Šimůnek Jan ÚSTÍ G 48 12 82 74
12 Blahout Rostislav SLAV E 56 11 79 73
13 Roosendaal Sander ČVKB C 72 10 79 76
14 Vyhnal Jiří TŘEB I 36 10 78 75
15 Zoubek Václav VKSM H 44 10 76 73
16 Šnajdr Vladimír MĚLN H 42 10 75 72
17 Prachař Josef SLAV F 55 8 72 75
18 Štancl Jan SLAV E 57 8 72 75
19 Mitáš Petr UHHR C 71 6 68 80
20 Vránek Petr ŠTĚT C 72 11 68 63

I copied just the top 20. There are actually 348 names on the list. I did some graphs:

masters1

Masters2

A few observations:

  1. Apart from the top 5 there is a fairly large group of Masters rowers who rowed between 5 and 15 races.
  2. The ranking really is about participation rather than winning often. Apart from the Masters Nationals, most races are regional events, with about 20 to 30 Masters rowers participating in total, spread over various age categories and boat classes. There are 23 events that count for the ranking. The leader started 36 times in 7 events of the 18 that have already taken place. In contrast, I started 10 times in 4 events (and will participate in 2 more).

This got me thinking about an alternative way of ranking. One could, for example  simply calculate the number of points divided by the number of starts, but then there are a whole lot of people who won one race at the Nationals and thus collect 12 points for 1 start.

My current thinking is that a fair system would be to rank based on p2 = points/log(1+starts). That would (raise me to a ninth place and) give the following graph:

Masters3

Apart from the top 5 it seems to make it much more interesting to compete with the persons around your position in the ranking, and it makes it more interesting for somebody who doesn’t have time to go to all events. Also, it raises the important of head races where you cannot participate in more than 1 race per day, plus makes it easier for Masters who also double as race organizer or official to catch a few points.

But of course, the formula has a “log” in it, so it is scary …

Any thoughts of interesting ways to calculate a ranking?

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