Active Ranking
From Minesweeper Wiki
The Active Ranking is a list of minesweeper players who are ranked by the best scores they make every two weeks. It has been maintained on various sites since 19 January 2002.
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[edit] The Idea
The idea of a minesweeper ranking of active players was first suggested by Roelof Smit (Netherlands) on 21 Dec 2001 in the Guestbook. He thought there were too many 'dead' players in the historical world ranking at Authoritative Minesweeper. It would be a monthly ranking and players would get points based on their scores. At the end of the year, players would be ranked, similar to the ATP tennis ranking. Matt McGinley (USA) volunteered to maintain the ranking.
[edit] Points and Periods
The first problem was how to assign points. Roelof suggested using the same time limits as the world ranking (6-35-99), starting with 1 point for each score and increasing as the score got lower. For example, 6-35-99 (1+1+1) would be 3 points and 3-27-75 (4+9+25) would be 38 points. Matt thought the limits should be lower and proposed a method to assign points exponentially. He also wanted to know if points would be given to all scores made each month. Dave McBryan (Ireland) and Ben van Calster (Belgium) said that complex ranking systems would cause trouble, and the new ranking should use the best score for each level so it could be compared to the world ranking.
Matt agreed about the scores, but Roelof suggested using the sum of your 3 or 5 best Intermediate and Expert games. Owen Fox (Ireland) suggested rules for breaking tied sums. David Barry (Australia) proposed an weighting system that rewarded more recent scores and created penalties. His system had two different calculations: the first found the current best player, the second found the best player over the previous year. Dave McBryan suggested publishing the ranking weekly and highlighting scores before they expired.
Matt then proposed ranking only the best 20 players each week, giving points to their ranking position. The best player would receive 20 points and the worst would get 1 point. At the end of the year the player with the most points would be declared the winner. He posted an example in Minesweeper Addicts on the 23rd. This started a discussion on the length of each ranking period, with suggestions varying from 1 week to 3 months. Several players began to mention the idea of a two week ranking.
Over the Christmas holidays, Matt and Roelof agreed on a two week ranking. Matt posted a poll in Addicts on New Year asking how to give penalties if a player didn't send scores. The following day he made a poll whether there should be a limit to the number of players or if there should be a score limit. Matt announced the results on 03 January 2002, that a fixed number of people (30) would be ranked, a 5 point penalty would be added the first time and 10 points the second time a player did not send scores. After two missed updates they would be dropped from the list.
On the 5th, Roelof referred to the ranking as the 'Active Ranking' for the first time, in Addicts. Other significant comments before the first ranking were from Dan Cerveny (USA), who did not want Beginner scores allowed, and from Marc Schouten (Netherlands), who noted that sometimes a penalty would give a player a better sum than their actual scores.
[edit] Hosting and Rankings
The search began just before Christmas 2001 for a place to host the new ranking. Case Cantrell (USA) offered space, but first Matt asked Damien Moore (Canada) if he wanted to host the new ranking alongside the world ranking. Damien offered space but admitted he had no time to maintain another set of rankings. In the end it was decided to use Case's website. Roelof then created an official email account for the ranking (active_ranking at tiscalimail.net on the 6th, then at hotmail.com on the 12th).
Roelof and Matt announced in both Addicts and the Guestbook on 05 January 2002 that the first ranking would take place every second Tuesday, starting on the 15th. Later in the day this was changed to every second Friday starting on the 19th. Roelof would collect and forward scores to Matt, who would update the site. The first ranking was published 20 January 2002.
On 16 May 2002 the ranking moved to www.active-ranking.de.vu, which redirected to a site owned by Stephan Bechtel at www.uni-hohenheim.de/~bechtel/ranking. After a poll on 25 May 2002, in which Matt voted he was bored with the ranking, Roelof offered to maintain the site. Matt explained he would continue, but that he was tired of the same people getting the same results. Dan Cerveny (USA) replaced Matt as webmaster starting with Period 14. Roelof retired on 04 August 2002 and was replaced by Stephan Bechtel (Germany). Around this time, Lance Votroubek (USA) also joined the team. Although Dan and Lance were living in the same city, they never met each other!
Dan originally updated the ranking by hand in HTML but eventually wrote a Pearl program to automatically write the page from a list of names and scores. Under Lance and Dan, Beginner scores were dropped in Period 1 of 2004 and player profiles were added in Period 2 of 2004. Stephan did all the calculations for player stats and retired after finishing the stats for 2004.
In August 2004, Gregoire Duffez (France) took over hosting and maintaining the AR at www.planet-minesweeper.com/active-ranking.php. He programmed the ranking so players could log in and submit scores directly. This continued until a final ranking on 12 January 2007. Gregoire retired and gave Andrew McCauley (Australia) permission to run his website, but due to some problems Andrew was unable to maintain the AR portion of the site. The ranking was dead.
[edit] The Ranking Now
Christoph Marx (Austria) restarted the ranking at www.minesweeper.cc a few months later. The first ranking took place 04 May 2007 and has since been maintained every two weeks. Players log into the site, enter their scores and upload videos if desired. The ranking is automatically updated, but there is no longer a year-end ranking and statistics are no longer kept.
[edit] Addicts Polls
- 2002-02-16: Can players send scores made before the deadline, after the deadline? Result: No(12), Yes(2)
- 2002-03-31: Should the deadline be every second Friday, or the 1st and 15th of each month? Result: Two weeks(6), Don't care(6), 1st and 15th(2).
- 2002-04-12: Should 9x9 Beginner be allowed on the World and Active rankings? Result: No(38), Yes(19), AR only(4).
- 2002-04-15: How many times should someone send scores to be included in Statistics? Result: Two(5), Three(2), Don't care(2), One(1).
- 2002-05-25: What should we do with the AR? Result: Keep it(13), Bored(Matt!), Don't care(1)
- 2002-06-26: Should the AR take a summer break or should players on holiday be penalised? Result: Penalise(6), July and August as a holiday(4), August as a holiday(1), Other(1).
- 2004-01-17: Would you like a "Player of the Period" for the AR? Result: Yes(14), No(1)
- 2004-03-10: Should the Clone be accepted for the AR? Result: Yes(29), No(5).
- 2005-05-09: Should Arbiter be accepted for the AR? Result: No(25), Yes(16). (NOTE: This poll was not created by anyone running the AR, Arbiter scores were accepted).
[edit] Rankings
[edit] case.twobit.net
- 01 - 2002-01-19: 24 players, winner Dan Cerveny
[edit] active-ranking.de.vu
[edit] planet-minesweeper.com
[edit] minesweeper.cc
- 01 - 2007-05-04: 15 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 02 - 2007-05-18: 17 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 03 - 2007-06-01: 18 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 04 - 2007-06-15: 15 players, winner Damien Moore
- 05 - 2007-06-29: 16 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 06 - 2007-07-13: 17 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 07 - 2007-07-27: 18 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 08 - 2007-08-10: 17 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 09 - 2007-08-24: 15 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 10 - 2007-09-07: 13 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 11 - 2007-09-21: 14 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 12 - 2007-10-19: 14 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 13 - 2007-11-02: 14 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 14 - 2007-11-16: 15 players, winner Damien Moore
- 15 - 2007-11-30: 15 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 16 - 2007-12-14: 14 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 17 - 2007-12-28: 10 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 01 - 2008-01-11: 10 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 02 - 2008-01-25: 12 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 03 - 2008-02-08: 13 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 04 - 2008-02-22: 13 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 05 - 2008-03-07: 13 players, winner Damien Moore
- 06 - 2008-03-21: 15 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 07 - 2008-04-04: 16 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 08 - 2008-04-18: 15 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 09 - 2008-05-02: 14 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 10 - 2008-05-16: 16 players, winner Kamil Muranski
- 11 - 2008-05-30: 14 players, winner Kamil Muranski
- 12 - 2008-06-13: 12 players, winner Kamil Muranski
- 13 - 2008-06-27: 12 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 14 - 2008-07-11: 12 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 15 - 2008-07-25: 11 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 16 - 2008-08-08: 7 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 17 - 2008-08-22: 6 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 18 - 2008-09-05: 5 players, winner Bertie Seyffert
- 19 - 2008-09-19: 4 players, winner Bertie Seyffert
- 20 - 2008-10-03: 9 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 21 - 2008-10-17: 10 players, winner Manuel Heider
- 22 - 2008-10-31: 11 players, winner Bertie Seyffert
- 23 - 2008-11-14: 7 players, winner Reid Sinclair
- 24 - 2008-11-28: 6 players, winner Fritz Löhr
