3 reasons:

1. I was tired- the basic game count was broken because of stupid microsoft
2. The files are getting bigger, and there is a 1MB per file upload limit on Googledocs for a spreadsheet.
3. I hope to be adding a couple of filters on at some point, so that cancelled games don't count, and the ordering system can be improved.

wwooooooo number 231 up 297 spots yay, even with a loss on my hands

Ghostmaker - many thanks for all your hard work in doing this. Hope your exams went well too, and it hasn't been too difficult.

Just to see the keen reaction of players must be good testimony to your skills in doing this!

Interesting to see that despite getting eliminated in one game, the only one I've finished since last month, I still go up a spot to 8th! Oops :s

first ranking: number 813... I wanna get in the top 20 but it gonna take a bit of time
could people help me by giving their SCs away to me in my current/future games?
thank.

grrrrrrr Stratagos, how dare you push me back on the 16th place ?

15 was such a nice number.

just you wait until the GFDT games are over, I am going to be in the top 10 next month

so someone has to examine games and player rankings before actually joining. it seems i have been winning the wrong people and also losing to the wrong ones

if you want to climb up the rankings fast, play WTA games.

a solo in a WTA gives you a much more massive bost than a solo in a PPSC

Just win your games hellalt, and stop worrying about who it is

"Sorry, but I've usurped the largely meaningless top Canadian position. I also assume "canaduh" is Canadian as well."

That's like being the best pig-farmer in Saudi Arabia. :P

Ghostie - question. I was eliminated from a game on June 3rd, and the game ended July 2nd. Was my elimination counted because I was out, or will it wait for the August ratings because the game was still active?

TGM: if you ever want me to code up something so it's just a button press to create these instead of using excel and such, let me know. I am a java architect by trade, and with a cron job, it's easy to set it up to run on the 1st every month, including upgrading the overall info. Let me know.

Only 8593 more positions to go...

Second QUestion - FOr a drawn PPSC game, do you rate based on the number of SCs, or do you treat it as an equal draw?

jbalcorn:

It wouldn't be there yet.

hellalt:

This rating system adjusts for how good your opponents are, so your rating will normalise at the same level no matter whom you play, unless you are better against strong opposition, for instance.

dropped 130 games, i guess i will have to wait til the next one to jump into the top 100 :P

@Fortknox: php with a database backing seems to make a tiny bit more sense than using java... or am i imagining something.

at least if you look at how the site is currently coded.

fortknox: I have a couple of improvements planned to the current method, but soon hope to move to a whole new way of performing the calculation. It would be immensely helpful if you could write a program to do the slightly improved version of the current method, so that I can work on the very different new one straight away. I shall have to get a couple of things added to the data I get from Kestas, but then it'll be good to go.

@orathaic, java could talk to the MySQL db as well, and nothing about computing ratings woul duse any of the adjudication code anyhow. If you had argued Perl, OK, but php is a scripting language designed with the web in mind. Fortknox could write an actual Java application (not an applet) setup as a chron job that would do it faster and be cross platform compatible.

@Fortknox, if you need any help, I'm JDK 1.4 certified as well. I'd be happy to play coder to your architect.

TGM: Sure, email me (should be in my profile) and I'll be happy to help.

Orathaic: Java is my primary language, and since this is most likely just a query against a db, calculations, and report, it really doesn't need to match the game language at all.

Honestly, I've thought about writing a webservice adjudicator, then write a front-end in adobe flex that uses the webservice adjudicator for valid moves and for turn changes. But I'm too afraid that it would be popular and could cause issues with copyright and such.

php would have the bonus of being able to easily output html to upload. Of course, I'd expect Java to be able to do that easily too.

Many thanks for all the offers of help guys, I'll make sure I can use it :)

@Draugnar: What's funny, is we live close enough that it wouldn't be tough to do. I do prefer to use java5, though. I'm a sucker for generics and enums :)

Out of interest do either of you write php? I'm planning on doing alot of work on Ghost-rating in php this summer and next.

I can debug/enhance it, but never did any from scratch.

I know Pascal, C, C++, Java, perl, amongst other languages. I'm traditionally an OO architect, but have a background in standard procedural languages and scripting languages. I don't know php, but I'm willing to bet I could probably pick it up in a week or two, no problem.

@Fortknox, I'm sure getting into JDK 5.0 wouldn't be any more difficult than moving from .NET 2.0 to .NET 3.5 as I did recently.

TGM: I'm profient in both PHP and Perl and would love to help. I've just been going over your article and calculating my rating to see if I understand it. Let me know if I can help.

Ok. Time for me to get reading to catch up a bit, I think.