Blog entry from 2022-10-13
The premiere tournament of the newly designed Royal Pro Home Tour was a complete success for last season's overall winner, Vienna's Andreas Efler. Twelve players competed against each other in round robin mode in 66 matches that were played in 3 points open end format on 4 winning sets. Efler was the only player to remain unbeaten (11:0 wins, set difference +31 | 1st place) and ultimately triumphed unchallenged in front of his two compatriots Zoran Gajs (8:3 wins, set difference +15 | 2nd place, prize money €90) and Georg Schmied (8:3 wins, set difference +13 | 3rd place, prize money €60).
What is new from this sports season is that there is no longer an annual overall ranking and the participants can arrange their game dates freely. The home tour competitions are no longer held as one-day tournaments on the weekends, but are played over a longer period (ca. 1 month). All results flow into a continuous ranking in the form of an ELO rating, similar to chess. On defined key dates, bonuses are awarded to the leaders in the rankings. The first publication and thus the first bonus payment of the new ranking will take place at the beginning of January 2023 and thereafter initially on a quarterly basis.
ELO rating systems, which originally come from chess and have now been adapted for many other sports, try to reflect the playing strengths of the players as objectively as possible. For each match, the playing strengths of the players are put in relation to each other in order to calculate the athletes' probability of victory. Playing strengths are measured in ranking points - the more points a player has, the stronger he/she is and the higher he/she is in the rankings. The probability of victory is (theoretically) between 0% and 100%. These probabilities are used to calculate the ranking points that can be awarded in a match. The winner gains ranking points, the loser loses ranking points.
If two similarly strong players play against each other, then the gain of points for the winner as well as the loss of points for the loser are in the middle point range. The greater the difference between the two players' win probabilities, the more ranking points are in play. If a clearly weaker player according to ranking list points wins against a clearly better one, then the weaker player gains a lot of ranking points and the stronger one has to give up a lot of ranking points. If a player who is clearly stronger according to ranking list points wins against a clearly weaker player, then the stronger player gains very few ranking points and the weaker player has to lose very few ranking points.
To the ELO ranking regulations (with formulas and explanations)
The five pins tournament that started at the same time is still running, the end of the tournament is October 21st. The next tournament cycle starts on October 22nd, the registration deadline for both competitions (three cushion and five pins) is October 19th. All tournament information is available in the sports dashboard, you can register for the competitions in the sports administration.
