For an overview of how the how the rating system works go here; to see the formulas behind it, and to see an Excel spreadsheet that can be used to see how your rating might change under various scenarios go here.  Feed back to Dan Hazelwood on these matters is appreciated. It is hoped that those DBM players with a statistical and/or competitive bent will enjoy the material presented here over time. Results will become statistically more reliable as more tournaments are held and more player scores are submitted. This may serve as an incentive for players to take to the table top more often and even organize their own local events for analysis here.

Within this website you will find various pages which include information on all players who have participated in rated DBM tournaments held in North America, past events, players by region, and armies used within these tournaments. If you poke around you’ll see the pages have quite a lot of auxiliary statistical data; such as this one that lists how much better or worse previous players have done with a given army as compared to their average when using all other armies – useful information whether you are looking for the latest killer tournament army or something with which to challenge yourself. Players are also rated in various ways: not only is there the standard cumulative record but there are also lists of players by the number of draws they have achieved (so you can see who really is King of the Corner Sitters), a Player of Year Race, and a Best Single Tournament page (which not only shows those with the best performance at a single tournament but also shows the level at which a player was playing at a given event).  After a player has 32 rated games his own personal arch-nemesis is determined.

The Top Dog Handicapping system can be used for handicapping games by army and/or player. Basically if handicapping by player only, each player simply subtracts their personal Top Dog handicap from their (10-0) score. If handicapping by army each player subtracts their army’s Top Dog handicap from their (10-0) score. If handicapping by both players and armies then subtract 1/3 of the army’s handicap and 2/3 of the player’s handicap from their (10-0) score. Either or both sorts of handicapping can be done by tournament organizers while running a standard (non-handicapped) tournament – this can be done to award additional prizes to encourage players to take challenging armies or to recognize players who played above their typical level.

I would like to thank all the people that have participated in various DBM tournaments held around America and the organizers who have sent in the results. The system used for generating these results is based on the Glicko system for rating chess players. I would also like to thank David Young of Australia who developed the software on which this is based and his technical assistance in getting this off the ground. Australia and Ireland are already using this Glicko based system, with Germany and the UK also experimenting with it.

Expected Future Updates
Tournament organizers are encouraged to submit results to Dan Hazelwood for inclusion in future updates to the Ratings Page. Results should include the name, location and date of the tournament; each player’s name, state/province of residence and army used; who played whom in each round of the tournament and what the result of each of these games was; as well as information on how many AP were used and what scoring system was used (10:0, 15:0, 32:0, 100+, WDL). Spreadsheet programs are ideal for this. A complete explanation of the required and optional data, and a sample spreadsheet can be found here.

Contacts
For details on ratings or suggested improvements to the website please contact Jeff Zorn or Dan Hazelwood.