PointControl: a new fencing rating system

Ok I clicked your link, what's up?

The current letter-based fencing rating system sucks. A few people on teh internets agree with me, so my brother and I made a better system called PointControl.

Alright, that's cool, but why is it better?

A few reasons...

• It's more accurate. In epee, using PointControl prior to a USFA tournament event would have produced a strictly better seeding 61% of the time against the letter-based seeding; in foil, 66% of the time; and in saber, 59% of the time.
• The rating is more granular. After each tournament, you will be able to see your PointControl rating go up or down, even if it's by a small amount. This is especially useful for Unrated beginners like me. And there are a lot of beginners! In fact, 65% of tournament fencers active in the past year are letter-unrated.
  Seeing progress is very motivating, and keeps me going to tournaments.
• It uses math. Unlike the letter-based system that promotes based on archaic rules, PointControl is based on a statistical algorithm, similar to what chess tournment players use.
• I'm out of ideas. That previous point wasn't even convincing... But it's already a huge improvement over the letter system right?

And what are the downsides?

This is not USFA-approved, it's just a personal project. There might be bugs in the software or the data. I might run out of server money and shut down unexpectedly. Or, I might get threatened by an angry helicopter parent over some triviality.

Alright...

Why are you still here? Check out your rating, your friends, and your enemies' ratings at PointControl!

Hmm, I'm interested in the details of how it works and your data analysis.

Ah, we have a thinker here. The technical article is here.

Last updated 2015-09-15.