World Ranking History
From Minesweeper Wiki
There has never been an official world ranking for minesweeper, but there have been many attempts at creating such. Currently there are four sites that maintain a ranking of some kind.
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[edit] The First Ranking (1996-1998)
The first minesweeper ranking was created in May 1996 by Wacharin Wichiramala (Thailand) with progamming help from Peder Skou (Norway). Expert scores less than 100 seconds were listed on his Expert World Records site. Screenshots were optional and games lost on the last click were accepted. Wacharin maintained the list while studying mathematics at the University of Illinois, but he suspected that many scores were fake. His final update in Jan 1998 ranked 146 players from 20 countries and remained the most important ranking for another two years.
[edit] Other Early Rankings (1998-1999)
Chris Paradise (USA) started the Intermediate Minesweeper World Records site on the same day that Wacharin made his last update. Chris had been the highest ranked Expert player and was studying chemistry at Harvard University. He accepted scores less than 30 seconds and managed to rank 23 players before abandoning his site in Feb 1999.
Jean-François Desclaux (France) started a minesweeper ranking in Apr 1999 at Chez Démineur. His site accepted only players from France, but he was the first person to collect scores for each level and to request score dates and player locations.
Ryan Gazder (India) started an Expert ranking in 1999 called the Minesweeper Top 50. He selected the best Expert scores from Wacharin's ranking and accepted new submissions.
Clint Olson (Canada) also started an Expert ranking at Minesweeper Central but only collected a dozen players before abandoning his site.
[edit] Authoritative Minesweeper and Others (2000-2003)
All ranking sites appeared to be dead, so Damien Moore (Canada) created the Authoritative Minesweeper in April 2000 and started collecting scores for each level. During the summer he created the first world ranking that combined the scores and sorted by sum. He also invented the requirement of a sub100 sum to qualify for a world rank.
Ryan Gazder joined the new ranking and immediately deleted his own.
Ruan Yi (China) also joined the new ranking. This prompted him to create a Chinese ranking, which he seems to have maintained until 2003. Very little is known about his site.
Matt McGinley (USA) created the Intermediate Hall of Fame in Apr 2001. This resulted from Matt’s frustration at the slow rate of updates at Authoritative Minesweeper, caused by Damien being banned from the internet by his parents. His site featured a constantly updated list of all sub20 players and also featured a world ranking of the best 20 players. This ranking used scores for all three levels; however, instead of ranking players with the lowest sums, it ranked players with the lowest Intermediate scores. Matt stopped updating the site in Nov 2002.
Grégoire Duffez (France) started a French ranking in Sept 2001 at Planète Démineur. This created conflicts about player information with the Chez Démineur rankings, prompting Desclaux to abandon his rankings the following year.
A group of players started the Active Ranking in Jan 2002, ranking players based on their best scores made during every two weeks.
Roman Gammel (Russia) started a Russian ranking in Dec 2003.
[edit] Two World Rankings (2004-2006)
Damien Moore continued updating the world rankings but became months behind answering email. Georgi Kermekchiev (Bulgaria) offered to maintain the website but Damien was unable to give him access. As a result, Georgi copied each update and collected new scores from the Guestbook and the Minesweeper Addicts group between 18 Jul 2003 and 15 Jun 2004. He emailed the results to the top players twice each month. Georgi gave the ranking to Planète Démineur after his last update, where it became known as the Best Ever ranking. The Active Ranking was also transferred to Planète Démineur during the summer. In the meantime, Damien cleared his backlog of email and resumed regular updates to the orginal ranking in Oct 2004.
This resulted in two different world rankings. Planète had a smaller world ranking featuring more clone scores, multiple clone rankings and a French ranking. Authoritative had a larger ranking, a female ranking, custom rankings and scorelists for each level. Planète accepted scores from the Forum, Authoritative did so from the Guestbook. Planète starting hosting the Active Ranking while Authoritative created country rankings. Both sites had the same core of players but often with different scores. Additionally, each site had players unique to its own ranking. Planète started to emerge as the site with the most accurate ranking, and several players began calling the Best Ever ranking official in 2006.
This changed when Grégoire started a medical internship and updates at Planète became rare, prompting him to delegate Andrew McCauley to maintain the Best Ever list in Nov 2006. The Active Ranking and Clone rankings died. Andrew updated during the next several months but ran into problems. This shifted the momentum back to Authoritative Minesweeper, where Damien launched an intense upgrade of the world rankings.
[edit] The Current Situation (2007-2009)
Zhang Shen Jia created a Chinese ranking at saolei.net in January 2007 and has made rapid progress. In its first year the site saw over 500,000 visitors and the rankings grew to over 300 registered players. As of 1 Sept 2009 it lists 1398 players of whom 327 qualify for a World Ranking. Unfortunately, less than 20% have joined due to the language barrier.
Roman Gammel continues to update the Russian ranking, which includes more than 100 players. Scores are shared with Authoritative Minesweeper.
Christoph Marx restarted the Active Ranking at minesweeper.cc in April 2007. His attempts to create a new world ranking run by the IMC were unsuccessful.
The last update at Planète Démineur occured in Spring of 2007 and the site went offline in May 2009. Grégoire gave the rankings to Damien.
The world ranking at Authoritative Minesweeper continues to be updated each week. Scores are submitted via the Guestbook or directly to Damien.
[edit] Criticism
The major ranking sites have been criticised for not sharing enough information. For example, on 1 Sept 2007 there were 810 known players who qualified for a World Ranking but Authoritative Minesweeper only listed 550, Planet Minesweeper listed 428, the Chinese ranking listed 90 and the Russian ranking listed 83.
How has the World Ranking situation changed as of 1 Sep 2009? The Authoritative Minesweeper lists 912 players and effectively runs the World Ranking since receiving all scores from the now defunct Planet Minesweeper. It loosely collaborates with the Russian ranking. The Chinese ranking has seen strong growth and has 327 players of World Ranking quality, yet only 56 have joined the Authoritative Minesweeper. This gap continues to grow and needs to see collaboration between the respective webmasters.
[edit] Archived Ranking Sites
You can still visit many of the sites in this article as they have been archived:
- Expert World Records by Wacharin Wichiramala
- Intermediate Minesweeper World Records by Chris Paradise
- Minesweeper Top 50 by Ryan Gazder
- Minesweeper Central by Clint Olsen
- Intermediate Hall of Fame by Matt McGinley
- Planete Demineur by Grégoire Duffez, including Active Ranking 2005-2006
- Active Ranking from 2002-2004
