PSPR - Formula Change

Very few tournament results that affected the IFPA top 250 were submitted since my last blog post. 2 massive tournaments took place: EPC in Malmö, Sweden and the Flip Out tournaments at Pinball Expo in Schaumburg, Il, USA. I look forward to seeing how the EPC results affect the power rankings soon and how the Flip Out results impact the IFPA rankings towards the end of the year.

Normally, I would have just skipped the post for this week, but I made a few changes to the way I calculate the Pinball Statistics Power Rankings now and in the future. First, I changed the PPI to give IFPA Rating more impact. In turn, I decreased the impact of the Eff% statistic. The IFPA Rating stat is more interesting for the power rankings because it is much more responsive to recent IFPA tournament submissions and it has daily decay. After putting version 1.0 of the Pinball Statistics Power Rankings together, I learned that Eff% only gets recalculated for a player after their most recent tournament result, even if previous events have dropped off their profile since the last database rebuild. This was quite disappointing to me when I watched the results of the 2019 Pinburgh tournament drop off everyone’s IFPA profiles without seeing anybody’s Eff% change.

This change alone was not that exciting. The vast majority of players moved up or down by 2 positions or less. The player who saw the most PSPR improvement from this change was Levi Nayman who moved up 9 places, from 91st to 82nd in the PSPR. The player who saw their rank drop the most was Mark Pearson who moved from 90th to 100th. Levi recently had a strong performance at the UK open, while Mark seemed to struggle in the first 4 events of the pinball super series, although he did end his weekend with an impressive 5th place in the 13 Round Matchplay tournament.

Still unsatisfied, I decided to make another change to a more heavily-weighted calculation in the Pinball Statistics Power Rankings: the Power 100 win percentage. Well, it was just the win percentage before. Now, I’ve taken into account the number of opponents that factor into that win percentage.

I really don’t know why I just factored in the raw percentage before. Nobody ever makes a chart of all baseball players’ batting averages with a minimum of 1 plate appearances; those players get filtered out immediately. Once I took a look at the “plate appearances” of players ranked in the IFPA top 250, I was quite surprised at the discrepancy. At the low end, you have Jason Wilson TN, who has faced only 23 other players ranked in the 250 in the past 3 years. I’m actually quite impressed that he has made it into the top 250 competing almost exclusively against players with a higher IFPA rank than he has. At the high end, you may not be surprised to find Neil Graf who has faced 2,927 other players in the past 3 years who are currently ranked in the IFPA top 250.

My main goal with this change, which I’ll call the Weighted Power 100%, is to de-emphasize results from players who rarely compete against their WPPR peers. The previous formula was not as predictive as I had hoped it would be when it came to major tournament performances in players with less experience in those tournament settings. Experience is a predictor of future success, 2/3rds of all major championships have been won by players who have multiple major championship wins.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	Name	NEW Rank 10.25.2022	Rank 10.25.2022	Rank Change (NEW Formula)	Current PPI	Old PPI	PPI Change (NEW Formula)
2	Escher Lefkoff	1	1	0	29.54	27.79	1.75
3	Raymond Davidson	2	4	2	26.29	22.45	3.84
4	Jason Zahler	3	2	-1	23.30	23.85	-0.55
5	Eric Stone	4	3	-1	20.38	22.49	-2.11
6	Johannes Ostermeier	5	5	0	19.76	22.34	-2.59
7	Cayle George	6	6	0	19.47	18.09	1.38
8	Jared August	7	8	1	19.09	17.65	1.44
9	Keith Elwin	8	9	1	16.29	17.52	-1.23
10	Colin Urban	9	7	-2	16.26	17.93	-1.67
11	Karl DeAngelo	10	10	0	15.75	15.66	0.08
12	Walt Wood	11	11	0	14.51	15.47	-0.95
13	Daniele Celestino Acciari	12	13	1	14.38	14.75	-0.37
14	Colin MacAlpine	13	18	5	13.86	12.49	1.38
15	Peter Andersen	14	17	3	13.61	13.09	0.51
16	Bowen Kerins	15	12	-3	13.11	15.44	-2.32
17	Neil Graf	16	24	8	12.93	11.02	1.91
18	Zach McCarthy	17	14	-3	12.79	13.89	-1.11
19	Germain Mariolle	18	21	3	12.73	11.89	0.83
20	Viggo Löwgren	19	25	6	12.58	10.96	1.61
21	Josh Sharpe	20	23	3	12.43	11.14	1.30
22	Paul Englert	21	26	5	12.01	10.49	1.52
23	Arvid Flygare	22	28	6	11.86	9.80	2.06
24	Stephen Prusa	23	16	-7	11.81	13.21	-1.40
25	Andy Rosa	24	22	-2	11.67	11.73	-0.06
26	Carlos Delaserda	25	27	2	11.61	10.44	1.17
27	Dalton Ely	26	19	-7	11.09	12.29	-1.21
28	David Daluga	27	29	2	11.04	9.69	1.36
29	Aleksander Kaczmarczyk	28	15	-13	10.95	13.39	-2.44
30	Julio Vicario Soriano	29	20	-9	10.16	12.02	-1.87
31	John Delzoppo	30	30	0	9.92	9.57	0.35
32	Robert Sutter	31	31	0	9.43	9.54	-0.11
33	Luke Nahorniak	32	40	8	9.14	7.66	1.47
34	Jim Belsito	33	34	1	8.99	8.70	0.29
35	Andrew Foster	34	38	4	8.57	8.12	0.46
36	Markus Stix	35	33	-2	8.48	9.09	-0.61
37	Robert Byers	36	41	5	8.26	7.49	0.77
38	Flavio Baddaria	37	42	5	8.08	7.30	0.78
39	Matthew Stacks	38	32	-6	7.70	9.46	-1.76
40	Andrei Massenkoff	39	39	0	7.54	7.86	-0.31
41	Marcus Hugosson	40	37	-3	7.41	8.21	-0.80
42	Steven Bowden	41	44	3	7.08	6.27	0.81
43	Jason Werdrick	42	51	9	6.79	5.79	1.00
44	Travis Murie	43	46	3	6.75	6.10	0.65
45	Joe Lemire	44	45	1	6.39	6.25	0.14
46	Timber Engelbeen	45	36	-9	6.20	8.21	-2.01
47	Elliott Keith	46	48	2	6.16	5.94	0.22
48	Gabor Solymosi	47	35	-12	6.08	8.59	-2.51
49	Zach Sharpe	48	52	4	5.97	5.63	0.34
50	Derek Price	49	53	4	5.87	5.47	0.40
51	Markus Virtanen	50	50	0	5.59	5.84	-0.25
52	Lonnie Langford	51	47	-4	5.46	6.08	-0.61
53	David Riel	52	57	5	5.41	5.09	0.32
54	Jason Lambert	53	43	-10	5.12	6.91	-1.79
55	Lewis Bevans	54	55	1	4.83	5.16	-0.33
56	John Miller MO	55	49	-6	4.60	5.87	-1.27
57	Tim Sexton	56	67	11	4.50	3.79	0.71
58	Jack Tadman	57	61	4	4.47	4.25	0.21
59	Andy Bagwell	58	63	5	4.44	4.17	0.26
60	Chris Frame	59	66	7	4.38	3.95	0.43
61	Alberto Santana	60	58	-2	4.37	4.53	-0.16
62	Phil Grimaldi	61	59	-2	4.22	4.42	-0.20
63	Jesse Baker	62	68	6	4.12	3.68	0.44
64	Brian Shepherd	63	71	8	4.07	3.57	0.50
65	Brian O'Neill NH	64	73	9	4.00	3.54	0.46
66	Bill Mason	65	75	10	3.76	3.46	0.30
67	John Shopple	66	74	8	3.74	3.48	0.26
68	Jerry Bernard	67	60	-7	3.73	4.42	-0.68
69	Nico Wicke	68	54	-14	3.68	5.27	-1.59
70	Adam Becker	69	65	-4	3.61	4.09	-0.47
71	Mads Kristensen	70	64	-6	3.52	4.12	-0.59
72	Jason Wilson TN	71	76	5	3.50	3.27	0.23
73	Will McKinney	72	72	0	3.47	3.55	-0.08
74	Gregory Kennedy	73	69	-4	3.34	3.64	-0.29
75	Roberto Pedroni	74	56	-18	3.31	5.14	-1.84
76	Timothy Street	75	79	4	3.26	2.91	0.34
77	Dave Hubbard	76	62	-14	3.12	4.20	-1.07
78	Robert Gagno	77	78	1	2.88	3.07	-0.19
79	Franck Bona	78	70	-8	2.79	3.57	-0.79
80	Matthew Richardson	79	81	2	2.74	2.62	0.12
81	Adam McKinnie	80	83	3	2.70	2.46	0.24
82	Paul Jongma	81	77	-4	2.68	3.17	-0.49
83	Bob Choate	82	89	7	2.59	1.98	0.61
84	Levi Nayman	83	91	8	2.58	1.64	0.94
85	Paul Jones AUS	84	80	-4	2.21	2.66	-0.45
86	Mike Tzanakos	85	85	0	2.01	2.30	-0.29
87	Derek Thomson	86	97	11	1.89	1.36	0.53
88	Kevin Rodriguez	87	117	30	1.81	0.16	1.66
89	Trent Augenstein	88	87	-1	1.81	2.06	-0.25
90	Bart Volman	89	101	12	1.74	1.20	0.54
91	Andreas Frid	90	84	-6	1.67	2.38	-0.71
92	Mitchell Stewart NZ	91	92	1	1.64	1.58	0.06
93	Sebastian Bobbio	92	102	10	1.62	1.10	0.52
94	Emil ED Dreiborg	93	99	6	1.53	1.26	0.27
95	Nate Grant	94	98	4	1.48	1.34	0.14
96	Craig Pullen	95	82	-13	1.44	2.60	-1.16
97	Jonas Valström	96	88	-8	1.41	2.01	-0.61
98	Olli-Mikko Ojamies	97	86	-11	1.39	2.19	-0.80
99	Derek Fugate	98	93	-5	1.39	1.51	-0.12
100	Tobias Wagemann	99	100	1	1.37	1.23	0.14
101	Johnny Modica	100	95	-5	1.33	1.43	-0.10