If I owned the local newspaper, I’d hire you to write a weekly poker column. Bridge was never my “cup of tea”
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When you incentivize chip accumulation by posing rankings based on chip stack, you get behavior that is mostly based on chip accumulation.
For example; If I’m in a 100 player tourney with a top 15 payout, I don’t value a 20th place finish above a 96th place finish. The reward is zero either way. In the first case I beat 80% of the field. In the 2nd, 95% of the field beat me. According to chip stack rankings, those are identical performances. That is not a very good measurement of poker skill. Add in the free chips, bought chips and bonus chips and chip stack becomes even less accurate.
If you incentivize performance against the field in the rankings you get a different behavior…a better behavior in my opinion.
Going all-in early in the tourney now carries a heavier possible penalty in the form of a hit to your ranking. For players with huge chip stacks, this is effectively the only penalty for bingo play. If you have 20 million chips, the loss of a 2,000 chip entry fee is virtually meaningless compared to the reward of doubling or tripling you tourney stack and reaching the money.
I think a poker-skill based ranking system would initiate a subtle but positive improvement in the quality of play.
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Its similar to the risk.reward choice a pro golfer faces in the early rounds of a tourney.
Does he go for the green over water on a par 5?
If the rankings are only based on money won, it might be the correct choice.
But pro golf ranks the players by finish against the field over a long time period. If that golfer values his world golf ranking he might be less inclined to take that risk.
Pro golf has decided that the best golfers in the world are the ones who outperform their opponents on the golf course, not the ones who won the most money, cars, bonuses, etc…
Replay has an opportunity here to implement a system that ranks the players based exclusively on poker-playing skill.
It will certainly upset some people. I hope they do it anyway.
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Just don’t pay me by the word or I’ll wind up bankrupting the paper 
All I can say to this post is…WELL SAID
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As we would say, back here in the hill’s, 1Warlock, SunPower Guru, Max Pokem, Seville, Scratch, and the many others that post here, you all are some smart folks. I truly enjoy all of you all’s suggestion’s and ideals, but really am not educated enough to understand much of what you are discussing, but I do think that different suggestions and ideal’s, will make this a better site for all of us. My wife bought me 250K almost 3 years ago for my birthday. I was able to get out of the 5/10 ring games and buy leaning some things about the game, I was able to grind that out to as well as I can remember, to 18 million, got up to playing higher tables and lost somewhere around 8 mil of that, but I learned another hard lesson, and it was don’t go to and gun fight armed with a knife. I have played with all the ones, mentioned above, and you all are real solid and respected players. i have been sort of hanging out, and not playing as much as I was because of health problems, but try to read all post daily, One of my post a while back was its poker and the ideal was to win anyway that you can, other then flat out cheating, I am not a bingo player but somethimes I enjoy one being on a table that I am on. win or lose, it’s the game, Good luck to all hope to be able to play on tables with you guys, Keep up the suggestions and ideals, maybe this old Hillbilly will catch on
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fully agreed.
the formula i made has also this point calculated, since the main goal is cashing and winning in poker they are both calculated in it and give extra value in skill points. and as you also said you need to play much better to end 20th then 96th, even when the prizes are the same thing, so also this is calculated in it. the combination of those things is balanced in the formula make everything matter skill based. i hope they add it too 
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Regarding Warlock1’s point 1. My experience over three years of build up and bust supports my own view that the system is rigged such that once a sizeable stake is achieved, quite suddenly it becomes next to impossible to win meaningfully again. One buys small to catch back up, then bigger and bigger, but constant hands of small pips drive one to bigger risks to feel like one is actually still “in” the game. Then you’re flat broke again. In the meantime, the most unlikely hands are displayed around the table. For instance, if a Q and 9 are dealt, you can find three players with a Q and 9. Then, after a run of quite normal hands, a guy is betting on an ace high straight, only for us to discover there’s also a flush in existence, and a full house as well. Naturally “all-ins” happen, which wipe out hitherto very successful players. It seems to me that the system profiles players who are willing to spend well to stay “in the game”, and arranges their wins and losses to ensure the chances of them “buying” for cash are optimized. None of this is technically impossible, so why wouldn’t RP do it? Principally, those cash purchases represent coverage of their costs (wages etc) and their profit. RP is not a charity after all. I am really following on from a statistician who commented along these lines from a “probability” viewpoint a few weeks back. He contended that the stats show a heap of “awards” and wins early in any cycle, with a total absence in the latter parts of it. My experience entirely.
Actually,the.leaderboard…is.a.better.way.to.determine.ranking…you.have.to.earn.it…
sorry.for.the.periods…my.space.bar.is.defunct…waiting.on.a.new.keyboard…
x
There was a guy who was #1 with 70,000,000 chips.{ or more, I_ forget}_ His age was 19. I was wondering if he bought them. Someone told me he didn’t,
Last I checked, birba11 and 2outs4u were #1 and #2 on the site, each with over 7 billion chips. I have no idea whether either of them ever bought chips or not but I think its fairly safe to assume that if they did, the bought chips wouldn’t be a significant fraction of their totals now. Even at the most favorable “exchange rate” where $1 equals 36,000 chips, 7 billion chips is about $194,000.
I’ve had occasion to watch both play several times and its a pleasure. I can see where high-level players, like these 2, could amass a huge number of chips over time here.
He is 19 and he is extremely smart one. He have he’s own way to play. He is not buying chips.
Hi, I am unranked, formerly 2outs4u.
It is certainly interesting how often the topic of chip buying arises, especially with respect to the highest-ranked players. I would like to state that I have no issues whatsoever with chip buying. In fact, I strongly encourage it since it enables the running of this site that we all love.
With that said, I am fairly certain that neither birba11 nor any of the top 5 players have spent a single cent on chips. Of course I could be wrong, but hopefully this would put to rest how frequently such baseless claims arise.
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Birba is smart one
“3) Purchased chips should not count towards player rank since they were not earned…I hope that as an offshoot of this topic, a better ranking system will be devised.” 1Warlock
“RANK”, as used here at Replay, was never meant to be an indication of a player’s performance, it is based solely upon chips, that can be, and are, accumulated in ways other than at the tables. Really I see this as an unfortunate use of the term “rank” as it encourages this type of thinking. I don’t know whether or not this is by design, as purchasing “rank” is, after all, to the benefit of the site (a good thing for all), but why not just use “CHIP COUNT”, or some such, in place of “RANK” since that is all that it is?
As to “a better ranking system”, I don’t see Replay as having a “ranking system”, at all, if what is meant by that is a system to rate or evaluate performance or skill. However, there is little else to use, and there will be even less if “RANK”/chip count is no longer publicly displayed. Should there be a ranking system? That is the first question. I do have some thoughts, if the answer is yes…
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i don’t know if replay has the intention to make a new ranking formula. but i do know that i think it would be a good idea since that would be a much more accurate skill based ranking.
if you haven’t seen yet, sassy sarah has already gave it a try to make a new formula with much more in it then it is now. a while later i also gave it a try hoping it would help since the other one already existed for a while and people have more choise this way, i tried to give as many important skill related points in poker as possible in the ranking, without negative results coming at the same time (things like a skill calculation that would reward bad play at the same time, or go at cost of another thing).
but the point is, feel free to make a own formula in your own, or in a already existing topic. the more choices there are, the more chance one of them wil be good enough to be used.
here are the 2 formula’s:
sassy sarah’s formula
yiazmat’s (my) formula
hope this helps.
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Interesting opinion. However, if you are a bingo player or a bad poker player or have a ‘bad day’, you have the option to purchase chips. I certainly have lost a million or more chips in a day and have had to work to win my chip count back.
Ironically we all can choose to play on any table on the site and choose your style of play and who you play with. So I find it hard to believe the site is rigged. I placed in the top 10 in the freeroll last night and won free chips. Maybe because I am in the top 1% of players I have a different thought on how the site works and how to win? Just saying…
I’m not sure about this. People naturally want to compete against others so some leaderboards or ranking systems probably are beneficial. The more I am thinking about it though, the more I’m convinced that the best way for players to be able to measure their own skills is through the integration of analytical software. Without the ability to analyze your own play over time, it is virtually impossible to say with any degree of accuracy what the level of your game is or whether you are improving or not.