FAQ
The World Othello Federation maintains a ratinglist of all Othello players around the world. Tournaments results are collected from every Othello federation and send to E. Lazard who runs the ratinglist program. The ratinglist is updated once or twice every two months.
The first tournament was collected in 1991 and since then, we try to gather as many results as possible. We started with French tournaments, then got all major European tournaments (and now all of them); American tournaments have been included since 2003; we have had results from the Japanese federation since 2008 but a huge number of older Japanese results are freely available and Tom Schotte is constantly adding them to the ratinglist.
Ratings are calculated by using all results from the beginning (it does not use previous ratings). Recent results weights more than older ones: tournaments played in a seven months period before the calculation are given a weight of 150, those played in the previous seven months period have a weight of 100, a weight of 60 is given to those played during the year before and a weight a 30 for those played again a year before; all older tournaments (ie: played 38 months or more before the calculation) have a weight of 1. To appear in the ratinglist, a player must have played in a rated tournament in this 38-months period preceding the calculation.
It has been decided that in order for a rating to be official, its margin of error (or uncertainty) must be lower than +/-200. Playing more games will lower the margin of error of the rating of a player.
Clicking on a player's name in the main ratinglist or a tournament page will show the player's page with all his/her ratings and tournaments results. His/her name or ID number can also be entered in the player search form on the to-right of the page.
It is impossible to rank someone who lost all his/her games. Obviously he/she should be rated below all the players he/she lost to but there is no way (with our system) to tell if he/she is 100 points or 1000 points below because there is no comparison point. Of course it's the same if you win all your games. So to be in the ratinglist, you have to draw against someone already in the list, or win a game against a rated player and lose against another (or the same) player. That is why some players aren't rated. As soon as a player can be rated, ALL of his/her games are taken into account to calculate the ratinglist.
On the right of the main page, a country selector is displayed. Checking or unchecking a country will display/remove all players from that country from the list. Clicking on a country's name will restrict the display to players from that country (only that country is selected, all others are unchecked). The same can be done with a continent.
By clicking on the name of a tournament (from the 'latest tournaments' frame or from the tournaments list), the tournament page is shown, displaying all players involved in the tournament (names are clickable) and all registered results from the tournament.
The tournaments page shows the list of all rated tournament, sorted by descending date. Sorting can be done by date, by name of tournament or by country, by clicking on a upward or downward black arrow. The filter form will restrict the display to the tournaments having the entered string in their name. Clicking on the name of a country will restrict the display to tournaments from that country.
The latest file containing the list of all players with their ID can be downloaded. It is used to send results (see below) and by Papp, the well-known Othello pairing program.
Sending results
The World Othello Federation has the objective of setting up a world ratinglist for all Othello players.
In the meantime, I am happy to collect all tournaments results from all over the world to compute a ratinglist using the European algorithm. Of course, these same files will be used to generate the
world ratinglist once the algorithm is determined. Please, send all results to Emmanuel.Lazard(-AT-)katouche.fr
To make things easier for me and with the idea of a future automatic calculation, I would like all results files to follow a specific format as described below.
Files
Results for each tournament should be sent in a separate file.- Each file should be a pure ASCII text file without any accented characters,
- The file is composed of a header, comments (including new players) and results,
- The filename should be in the form "YYYYMMDD_NAME.ELO".
- YYYY, MM and DD are respectively year, month and day of the tournament. If the tournament spans several days, the date of the FIRST day should be used. If several tournaments are held the same day, their order is given by adding a character ('a', 'b', 'c'...) after the day in the filename (for example '20080504a_EGP_USHUAIA.ELO'),
- The NAME part of the filename should be related to the name of the tournament. Letters (without accents), numbers and underscore character can be used. Its size is limited to 30 characters (so that the filename does not exceed 44 characters).
Examples of correct filenames: "20071130_WOC.ELO", "20080405_EGP_ALKMAAR.ELO", "20020725a_2nd_Japan_Open.ELO"...
Header
Each file must begin with the following four lines:- The tournament name (TTT in the example above) is its full name (always without accented characters). Any number or punctuation can be used. Examples of correct names: "8th Dutch EGP - Walkman 2008", "Nordic Champ. 2007", "Rose's wedding tournament, Tokyo 2005"...
- The country information specifies the country in which the tournament is played, even for international tournaments (the only exception is "world" for the WOC; other exceptions could be defined in future use for supra-national championships). Current countries include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great-Britain, Hong-Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, USA, World.
- Date information gives the date of the tournament in the exact following format: "DD/MM/YYYY". If the tournament lasts more than one day, its FIRST and LAST dates are exactly listed: "DD/MM/YYYY - dd/MM/YYYY". As for the filename, if several tournaments are held the same day, the date can give their order by adding a 'a', 'b', 'c'...
- Sender should be the name of the person who can be contacted for any inquiries about the file.
Comments
A comment is a line whose first character is a %. This line is discarded when reading the file. It is good practice to use comments in the file to separate results from different rounds:This makes it easier to manually spot errors.
All players will also be included by way of comments (see below).
Results
Each non-commented line should either be blank or contain a game result. Each game result is given by indicating each player's number and score, the result (win, loss, draw) in between, and the colour of the first player.
- A win is written '>' (the first listed player - not necessarily Black - won against the second one),
- A loss is written '<',
- A draw is written '=',
Scores and colour information are currently not used for ratings purposes but we may need them later when the final algorithm is decided. Therefore, it is asked to send results using a format where the scores are given in between parenthesis and the colour of the first player is indicated ('B' or 'W') by a last character:
Alignment of all columns is not compulsory but here again, makes manual reading easier. All played games, that lead to a result, correctly generated in a pairing should be listed in the file, even if a players abandons. BYE pairings should never be included
No check will be made between the result character and the score. For example some countries count a draw as a win for one of the player [(32)>(32)], or the winner may have fewer discs than his opponent because of an error when transmitting the result [(30)>(34)]. The current algorithm only uses the result character to compute ratings.
Players' numbers
To prevent error, each player has been given (or will be given) a unique number identifier that must be used when sending results for the ratinglist. Before sending any new file, please download the latest list of players from the download section to check if any "new" player has already been assigned an identifier. This file is sorted by country and gives the information in the following format:New players
If a new player starts playing in tournaments, a new identifier should be given to him. For each federation, only one person should be authorized to assign identifiers to new players. He may do so by using the lowest unused identifier in the range reserved for his country (and in no way the range assigned to the nationality of the new player):| Country | Official | Range |
| Argentina (ARG) | Daniel Olivares | 280000-289999 |
| Australia (AUS) | Geoff Hubbard | 260000-269999 |
| Austria (AUT) | Bernhard Tanzer | 310000-319999 |
| Belgium (BEL) | Tom Schotte | 270000-279999 |
| Belarus (BLR) | Uladzimir Khlebnikau | 360000-369999 |
| Brazil (BRA) | Daniel Olivares | 290000-299999 |
| Bulgaria (BGR) | Yanko Krastev | 400000-409999 |
| Canada (CAN) | Jacky Fu | 110000-119999 |
| China (CHN) | Liya Ye | 60000-69999 |
| Croatia (HRV) | Zoran Klicek | 230000-234999 |
| Czech Republic (CZE) | Tomas Douda | 210000-219999 |
| Denmark (DNK) | Henry Aspenryd | 220000-229999 |
| Finland (FIN) | Henry Aspenryd | 80000-89999 |
| France (FRA) | Emmanuel Lazard | 50000-59999 |
| Germany (DEU) | Matthias Berg | 70000-79999 |
| Great-Britain (GBR) | Geoff Hubbard | 100000-109999 |
| Greece (GRC) | Pandelis Theodosiou | 300000-309999 |
| Hong-Kong (HKG) | Kevin Wong | 170000-179999 |
| Iceland (ISL) | Henry Aspenryd | 330000-339999 |
| India (IND) | Ashok Choudhary | 350000-359999 |
| Indonesia (IDN) | Romy Hidayat | 180000-189999 |
| Iran (IRN) | Eghbal Aminkhaki | 390000-399999 |
| Israel (ISR) | Leonid Shifman | 200000-209999 |
| Italy (ITA) | Donato Barnaba | 40000-49999 |
| Ivory Coast (CIV) | Jeannot Ourega | 410000-419999 |
| Japan (JPN) | Hiroyuki Iwata | 10000-19999 |
| Malaysia (MYS) | Stan Ooi | 160000-169999 |
| Mexico (MEX) | Luis Alamos | 340000-349999 |
| Mongolia (MNG) | E. Lazard | 440000-449999 |
| Netherlands (NLD) | Jan C. de Graaf | 120000-129999 |
| Norway (NOR) | Henry Aspenryd | 140000-149999 |
| Pakistan(PAK) | Muhammad Ishfaq | 380000-389999 |
| Poland (POL) | Roman Krackzyk | 130000-139999 |
| Romania (ROU) | E. Lazard | 370000-379999 |
| Russia (RUS) | A. Syachin | 320000-329999 |
| Serbia (SRB) | Veljko Cirovic | 235000-234999 |
| Singapore (SGP) | Alex Koh | 250000-259999 |
| South Korea (KOR) | Kyung Joong Kim | 30000-39999 |
| Spain (ESP) | Oscar Ciuro | 90000-99999 |
| Sweden (SWE) | Henry Aspenryd | 150000-159999 |
| Switzerland (CHE) | Stephane Dousse | 240000-249999 |
| Ukraine (UKR) | Eldar Abibullaev | 430000-439999 |
| Taiwan (TWN) | ??? | 420000-429999 |
| Thailand (THA) | Thammatorn Kraikokit | 190000-199999 |
| USA (USA) | David Parsons | 20000-29999 |
| Ukraine (UKR) | Uladzimir Khlebnikau | 430000-439999 |
| OTHER | Emmanuel Lazard | 9000-9500 |
List of players
All players participating in the tournament must be listed in the file just after the header. Each player will be described by the following line:
New players (ie, new ID) should be preceeded by a '+' sign. Examples:
All players for whom a result is given in the data must be listed. Score, disc-count and rating will not be used to check the data but only for human inspection if anything goes wrong (they may be omitted if not available).
In case of doubt (or if for example, the assigned range is all used up), a simple four character identifier can be used throughout the file to list a new player and his results. This identifier will be replaced by a correct number when I shall process the file:
If a four character identifier is used for the second player, be sure to separate it from the colour information by a space or tab character.