I wrote a fairly extensive program to track player rankings, and a huge variety of other game/player statistics. Before I wrote the program, I examined several ranking systems -- including PLOPS. PLOPS is an okay system, as long as you play with the same number of people each game. When you're dealing with a variable number of players, the system really breaks down -- and badly (i.e. there are instances in which you can win a game and lose overall ranking... likewise there are cases in which you can lose a game and gain overall ranking -- which, obviously, makes no sense). As a result, I adopted the ELO system (originally developed by American physicist Arpad Elo for the world wide chess community -- though it has seen extensive use in other competitive activities). It's a much more robust system, that also accounts for the strength of your competition. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 2 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com