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All sports in the world have their independent ratings; similarly expertise in the game of Poker is measured through one’s Poker rating. The experts in Poker have Poker ratings that range around 2800 while the Poker ratings of average Poker players are around 1600. Sometimes, Poker rating is referred to as Elo rating, in remembrance of the inventor of the Poker rating system.
When competing in Poker competitions, the players with the same rating have equal chances of winning when competing against each other. Players having different Poker ratings, with the same difference in the Poker ratings, have similar chances of winning at a game of Poker. This means that two Poker players having Poker ratings of 2100 and 1900 have equal chances of winning in a game of Poker as two players with Poker ratings of 1300 and 1100 as the difference in Poker ratings in both cases is 200 points. However remember that the Poker ratings that different agencies offer need not be the same or comparable with each other.
Poker players usually use their Poker ratings when introducing themselves when meeting each other for the first time. It was Garry Kasparov who was the first player to break the 2800 barrier in the year, 1989. This was in comparison with the other players; both current and historical.
The criterion employed in a Poker rating system seems to be rather mysterious, but a Poker rating is basically based on statistics of the players in their previous matches and Poker playing expertise. In 1959, the USCF rating system in Poker used 2000 as the upper level Poker rating level for strong club players. These Poker ratings then had divisions of 200 points that helped assign the different players in different classes of players. Elo had developed these measures as he thought that they were steep in the tradition of Poker playing.
There are lots of calculations associated in getting a Poker rating. The game results of a Poker game naturally play an important part in the calculation of the Poker rating. When calculating the Poker rating, the expected percentage of the results of a game and the difference with that expected result is taken into consideration. Along with this, the number of wins, losses and draws against the opposition in the Poker games too are taken into consideration.
With all this information, it is possible to calculate the initial Poker rating for a new and previously unrated player. However, the higher is the results of numerous games in the calculation of Poker rating, the more accurate is the initial Poker raging. The Poker rating is a very important factor determining the expertise and prowess of a Poker player in a Poker competition.
The players in a Poker competition are usually matched against each other, after taking into consideration their individual Poker ratings. This is why it is important to work at improving your Poker rating by playing as many Poker games with Poker players having similar, if not equivalent Poker ratings.
ELO Poker RATING
The most widely used Poker rating system that is in use today actually is of fairly recent origin. In fact, organizations like the United States Poker Federation and similar types of organizations and associations around the globe implemented what has become known as the Elo or the ELO system beginning in the early 1960s.
The so-called Elo or ELO system (hereinafter “ELO” for ease of reference in this article) was the creation of a gentleman born in Hungary but who was a physics professor in the United States named Arpad Elo -- hence the moniker Elo or ELO. The Poker rating scheme oftentimes if signified in all capital letters although it really is not an acronym.
The ELO Poker rating system actually was created in order to improve the overall Poker rating system that previously was in place. In time, ELO has been used in many other arenas beyond Poker rating. In addition to Poker rating, ELO can be used as an appropriate rating system for any competitive game situation that involves multiple players, including computer games. Indeed, the ELO Poker rating scheme has evolved so far as to be applied to such sports as international football, U.S. football and U.S. Major League Baseball.
At the heart of the ELO Poker rating system was the substitution of statistical estimation in place of a system that is based upon competitive rewards. Rather then subjective evaluations based on so-called “greatness” in relation to game related or play related achievements. An easy to understand example is to consider a Poker tournament. Previously, Poker rating could be based upon a rather arbitrary determination that one Poker tournament is three times more important than a less competition. Therefore, “points” would be awarded to the winner of this more significant Poker tournament in a more significant proportion under this subjective system of Poker rating.
On the other hand, the ELO Poker rating system engages a purely statistical model that considers the actual game or tournament results to underlying variables that are intended to reflect the actual abilities of a particular Poker player. Of course, competitors can still contend that the ELO Poker rating scheme still rewards success and failure in a particular situation; however, many experts in the field of Poker rating believe that this system more accurately evaluates and reflects the actual abilities of a Poker player. The contention is that the ELO Poker rating system is a much more reliable Poker rating scheme than anything else that has come before or anything else that might be available for utilization today.
In developing the ELO Poker rating system, ELO operated on the basic premise that the performance of each and every Poker player in any particular game is what technically is known as a “normally distributed random variable.” At the heart of the normally distributed random variable is the conclusion that while a Poker players performance will vary from one game to the next, sometimes even significantly, the mean or median “value” of a particular Poker player’s performance over time in fact would change only slowly.
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