i accidently found something called ring game points and out of curiousity i clicked it to see what it means, it brought me to the help part of replay which explains what ring game points are. however there is an error in how the formula is explained:
If you play 25 hands and win 1,090 chips at a 50/100 table, you earn 31 ring game points.
25 hands with 3 players or more dealt in = 25 points.
10.9 Big blinds profit earns you (11 x 0.2) points = 5.5. (6*). - Wins are rounded up.
25+6=31 ring game points
there are two theoretical situations in there, the first one has a wrong calculation.
the main part is that where the win is explained they mention 11 x 0,2 = 5,5 (6) which is wrong and should be 11x 0,2 = 2,2 (3).
this part also affects the overall calculation because it makes the total 28 instead of 31
there is also a minor error in this phrase:
You score 1 point for every 5 Big Blinds won or lost in the session.
this phrase suggests you will always score points by investing more BB’s, no matter if you win or lose. a better way would be “you win or lose 1 point for every 5 big blinds won or lost in the session”
In addition to correcting this error, I also strongly recommend re-weighting the points system. It’s much, much easier to simply play one more hand than to win five big blinds, yet this promotion gives those two activities equal weight.
Over the past week and a half, I’ve been on a crazy heater. I’ve played eleven ring game sessions, winning over 1100BB over the course of just under 700 hands. There’s a massive difference between that and breaking even over 1000 hands, but this promotion would actually rank the latter “accomplishment” higher on the leaderboard. To me, this seems incredibly flawed.
Promotions run by Replay Poker should be driven primarily by skill. That’s one of the reasons why the “first 7” or “first 20” leaderboards for the SnG and MTT promotions were added - they’d started to be dominated by people who played double or triple that many in a week/month, and were able to crowd out others by selecting only their top finishes. As currently structured, however, this promotion moves us in the wrong direction, rewarding players who simply go for volume and play a lot of hands at a given stake.
To correct it, one big blind won/lost in a session should be given at least equal weight to one hand played, if not substantially more. Given the relative difficulty of winning chips compared to playing hands, I’d flip the current weightings, and award 5 ring game points per big blind won. That would skew the weighting back toward results, which is a decent proxy for skill.
Thanks for noticing. I must admit I was the original author and it took me several reads through before the penny dropped. Plus it was proof-read by others and must have been read quite a few times after it was up. Hidden in plain sight.
The formula will certainly be altered for some games in the future. Most likely by stake because winning 100BB in 2/4 is going to be a lesser achievement than winning 100BB in 2,000/4,000.
Game variants might also affect the difficulty. Hi/Lo and Omaha could be different from Hold’em. When we get a bigger sample size we will introduce different weighting.
It is interesting you recommend to turn the formula completely and weight wins more than hands played. The downside of that is the bad players will be punished more for their losses and playing for a long period will only make matters worse rather than repair some of the damage (assuming they are losing at less than 1 BB every 5 hand, which is not always the case)
Bad players need to be punished, not rewarded. They should be lined up and spanked with a wooden spoon, how else will they learn? Spank them, then send them to bed with no supper.
Rewarding anyone for “hands played” is like awarding participation medals. This seems to be a common theme here. Many of the tournament leaderboards can only be won by playing insane numbers of tournaments. The 'first 7" gemstone league boards, the “first 20” SnG boards, and the SnG monthly boards seem to be the exceptions.
One of the most common complaints I see is that the overall quality of play here is so low. This won’t change as long as “play more” is rewarded more than “play better.”
Let’s look at this another way. Playing full-ring here, if you fold every hand, you’re losing 1.5BB every 9 hands, an average of -1BB every six hands. Of course, sometimes you won’t be facing 8 opponents, as players leave and join the table, but in general the point remains. A well-calibrated promotion shouldn’t result in gaining points simply by auto-folding at 9-handed tables. And if a player is losing at a rate greater than if he folded all of his hands… maybe he should find a different game?
Eh. The entire point of a “promotion” is to get people to play more of a certain type of game. A promotion needs to give an incentive to play more - but playing better should also be rewarded.
This could be address by having separate leaderboards by stake level, as specified in the lobby filters. It would also allow you to differentiate the prize pool so that it’s more meaningful by players at each level - half a million chips could stake a 2/4 player for a year, but merely represents a mid-range buy-in for someone at 2K/4K.
In sum, thanks for addressing my concerns and recommendations. They come from a desire to make this the best (free, at least) site to play poker on the web. Even if it’s too late to make changes for this upcoming promotion, I think the team would do well to take it into consideration for future ring game promotions.
these are very good points imo.
i would also agree to make the formula more based towards BB’s won. they are leaderboards after all, which means they are usually based on whos the best, which means skill. not who has the most spare time.
i understand the site also has to be friendly to the new players. however i don’t think many new players would already understand how the ring game point formula works, even more so, how to use it profitably. if they did they probably aren’t beginners in the first place. and even if they do understand, it would be much more fun to have bragging rights of being the best then simply have played the most hands. but i have to add that this goal is already accomplished by several things like the freerolls, tourneys with standard overlays like the bankroll builders and sunday millions, the daily chip bonus, the forum contests and the possibility to get free chips after your chips get below 500. so what i’m trying to say is that the site already is friendly to beginning players and the leaderboards are kinda supposed to be skill based. which can be accomplished to grant more points towards BB’s won.
i also fully agree on the point that you can make a difference between which stake leaderboard you’re on (low, mid, high or elite) simply add more points towards BB’s won as you progress (example: low=1 point every 5 BB’s, mid= 1point every 2BB’s, high is 2 points every BB, elite is 5 points every BB)
I’m glad someone else is noticing this. I made mention of this same issue back in February:
In regards to the “ring game points” I see a potential way to exploit it:
•Sit at 6 tables with 9-Max seating and at least 3 players.
•Fold every hand.
•Gain 3 to 9 points per table per orbit just by sitting there (+ 18 to 54 pts).
•Lose 1.5BB per table per orbit (-1.8 pts, neglecting the rounding toward zero).
•Watch as you effortlessly climb the LB by clicking the fold box 6 times a minute.
It’s a good idea, in theory, but you may need to adjust the numbers a bit. I know you track the “flops seen” statistic, perhaps that or another stat would be a better metric to use? Feel free to weigh in on this idea.
@Chasetheriver Rob, I appreciate you taking the time to acknowledge this.
