TruSpot™ Ranking System

TruSpot™ rates pool players worldwide on the same scale based on matches won and lost against opponents of a known rating. Since pool players/pocket billiards players have no absolute measure of performance, a player's skill at pool is determined a lot like a player's skill at chess and must be based on relative performance. That performance is measured on not only who beats who, but also how that individual player performed in the match by tracking innings (times at table), safeties played (defensive shots) and the number of points or games earned.

In a match the rating difference between two players determines what the race will be for the match. Players earn 1 point for each ball pocketed and 8 points for the 8 Ball, totaling 15 points for a rack won. Players continue to play racks until one or both of the players reach or exceed their rating. If both players earn enough points to reach or exceed their rating, then the player who wins the final rack of the match is the winner.

Since IBA Ratings are defined by performance, they do take on a relative meaning. Once players become accustom to IBA Ratings, the rating becomes the focal point of discussions about a player's ability.

IBA Ratings have the following correspondence:

An IBA starter rating is a rating assigned to a new player who doesn't have an existing IBA rating and doesn't have a known ability. It's a preliminary rating that the new player plays 3 matches with to provide a measure of the players skill level in reference to the players they competed against. After the 3rd match the new player will have a calculated rating.

The TruSpot™ system calculates a performance rating based on match results during the preliminary period. A player is considered to be in the preliminary period when they have less than 32 calculated scores in their history. Once a player has 33 or more calculated scores in their history, the player is considered established and the starter ratings are ignored. From that point forward, a player's rating is calculated solely off their calculated scores.

Robustness is a measure of the reliability of a player's IBA Rating. This is simply the number of matches played in a player's history that contribute to his or her rating. A robustness of 33 is the minimum number of scores needed in a player's history to be considered as having an established IBA Rating. In general, a rating is more reliable not only by being based on more matches in a player's history, but also by more of those recent matches being played against opponents with an established rating. Players with a robustness under 33, i.e., those with an unestablished rating, has a rating that is influenced by a starter rating.

Most handicapping systems or rating systems can be manipulated. And such manipulation is a serious problem. A small number of unscrupulous players begin trying to cheat any new system. While tens of thousands of people play 8-ball every week, there is another group for which 8-ball is only one of the games they’re playing. A secret rating algorithm that depends prominently on inning counts, and a player capable of running out against a weaker opponent is also capable bunting balls around for a couple innings like a cat plays with a mouse, padding the inning count while still winning the game. Making the secret, proprietary formula more complex to try to stem this problem is tempting, but it just fuels the game and the true gamers. This problem is one that IBA takes seriously and has a few safeguards in place to attempt to thwart such behavior. One thing the TruSpot™ system does is flag suspicious match results. With millions of matches played in the TruSpot™ system, there is a vast amount of match result history in the system which the system uses to compare newly submitted results against. If the submitted result falls outside the standard deviation of what’s expected for the two players involved in a match, the system flags the match for further investigation. This notifies someone on the IBA staff to look at the match a bit closer to decide if the match results are acceptable. If the match results are deemned unacceptable, the match results are rejected and not recorded in the players match history. These players are then flagged in the system and any future match results submitted for players on the flagged list are scrutinized more vigorously by an IBA staff member.

Another tool the TruSpot™ system uses to try and combat sandbagging is not allowing a player's rating to fall more than 10 points below their highest recorded rating. This helps guard against players "tanking", but the biggest deterrent though, is the consequence of players believing in the system and after 36+ years of existence, players certainly do. It's clear after using the system for so long, the vast majority of players strive for a higher rating. Nearly every 50 wants to be a 60 and nearly every 85 wants to be a 100.

The best way to deal with this problem is to devise a system that is open, transparent, and naturally resistant to manipulation. While the possibility of manipulating the system can never completely be eliminated, the fact that every single match against every opponent contributes to a player’s rating makes that manipulation much more difficult. Also, there are a number of features of the system described here that mitigate the problem. A player generally cannot get intentional losses in the system without paying for them. For example, to enter a double-elimination tournament with the intent of losing two matches comes at the expense of the tournament entry fee. Furthermore, if a player does this three tournaments in a row, he or she has squandered three tournament entry fees only to find all that nefarious effort thwarted by a single good tournament, where the player plays six or eight matches rather than the two in the losing tournaments.