Rules and System

The rules are based on Bowen Kerins Rules and Regulations for the Pinball Rating System.

The Pinball Rating System is a way of determining the relative strength of any two players, if they were to meet in a head-to-head match. It can be used to determine seedings in a tournament, or to help a player find others at his or her approximate level.

Ranked and non-ranked
There are two categories of players: ranked and non-ranked. A new players is non-ranked until this player as played five "matches". These five matches can be Challenges (head to head, best out of three games, see further down for more info) or Tournament Matches.

After the fifth match, the player becomes a ranked player. The players rank are calculated by this formula:
(Avg. of Opponents' Ratings) + 200((W - L) / (Matches))

This means that if a player wins all his matches, his rating will be 200 higher than the average of the opponents. If he loses all of them, it will be 200 lower.

For the purposes of computing a rank, any non-ranked player is considered a 1400 player.

Example: Chris plays his first four matches. The first three is played against non-ranked players, and he wins two of them. The fourth match is played against Joe, who is a ranked player (with 1800 ranking-points (RP)). Chris loses the match against Joe, but wins the fifth match against Steve who is non-ranked.

Chris rank is calculated like this (the average of the opponents rank will be)
(1400 + 1400 + 1400 + 1800 + 1400) / 5 = 1480

Chris won three and lost two out of five matches. Chris RP will be:
200 * (3-2) / 5 = 40 Chris rank/RP: 1480 + 40 = 1520

Ranked players
After the five first matches the player becomes a ranked player and a different formula is used to determine their rank change in matches.

If two ranked players face each other, each has to pay a certain number of rank-points (RP) to enter the match. The winner takes all the points (always 32).

The chart gives the scale of points to pay for matches.

Difference in ranking-pointsThe better player puts up ... points,And the lesser player puts up ... points,
Less than 121616
12 -- 331715
34 -- 551814
56 -- 771913
78 -- 1002012
101 -- 1252111
126 -- 1502210
151 -- 176239
177 -- 205248
206 -- 238257
239 -- 272266
273 -- 314275
315 -- 365284
366 -- 445293
446 -- 525302
526 -- 715311
716 or more320


Example
Joe (2000 RP) plays Steve (1800 RP). According to the table Joe has to put up 24 RP and Steve 8 RP. The winner gets all ranking-points (32).

If Joe wins, his new rank will be 2000-24+32= 2008

Steves rank will be 1800-8= 1792

Tournament Matches
All tournament match results will be registered by the administrators of the site. Rank will be calculated on all registered tournament matches. For these matches, you don't have to do anything else than report the results during the tournament.

Challenges
- are played best out of three games. Thus, the player who first wins two matches are the winner of the challenge. The challenge results can be 2-0, but challenges with less than two played matches are not accepted.
- The challenge result cannot be a draw

Anything else that the players of the challenge agrees on (rulewise) is accepted.

However, you might consider following these guidelines:
- The player who challenged the other player should be Player 1 in the first game. On the 2nd game, the challenged player should be Player 1. And, on the 3rd game, the challenger should be Player 1, again
- All matches should be played with Extra Balls
- If a player gets a poor score due to a machine error (eg. a kickback that doesn't woek), the players in the challenge has to come up with a decision on how to compensate for this.

To challenge someone; go to the player/members personal page. You will find a link to challenge the player there. Questions regarding the challenges and the rules can be asked in the Forums.