On Fargo Ratings and the future of pool.

But first, a diversion.

An amazing thing happened over a few days in May of 1886. Thousands of miles of railroad tracks in southern United States got narrowed.

In preparation for the sudden change, they removed many spikes from one of the rails and designed wheels for new locomotives in the shape of a dish, so that on the big day, when the rail was shifted, the wheels could be turned inward to fit the new narrower track gauge. Now, finally, a train could bring people from Atlanta to Richmond and on to Boston, and clothing could get to Chicago.

Accomplishment or Failure?

Rather than seeing this as a post-Civil-War accomplishment, join me in seeing it a pre-Civil-War failure, a failure of the southern states to see railroads as something more than a local effort to get cotton bales a hundred miles to a waterway. Had the 10,000 miles of tracks in the south been uniform during the war, like the 20,000 miles of tracks in the north already were, troops and supplies could have traveled efficiently from Atlanta to Richmond. The outcome of the bloodiest war in US history might have been different. Or better, had the tracks been uniform before the war, the economy of the south likely would have been more joined with that of the north and that war may have been avoided altogether.

And we were slow learners.

Two decades later Baltimore residents watched more that two thousand buildings burn down when reinforcing firefighters from New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC stood helpless with hose couplings that failed to match the fire hydrants.

The development of uniform standards—something we’ve thankfully become better at— now happens behind the scenes and before most of us realize the importance. The fact Walmart stocks products from 70 different countries and the president’s tweets are seen around the world are testament to this. Interchangeability and compatibility, cornerstones for developing and expanding markets worldwide, lead to cheaper and better products and services.

But this is about pool

Pool is just a game; civilization doesn’t depend upon its well being. Still, people reading this likely see something worth nurturing in pool, and it is worth thinking about how best to feed this passion. So what IS the best way to nurture the growth of pool?

Pool will be positioned to flourish when, and only when, it rides around on uniform tracks. Uniform tracks for pool are a system to rate player skill. Pool needs a universal rating system.

The Cocooning effect of provincial approaches to player rating

At first glance, this may seem to exaggerate the role of player ratings, that player ratings might be expected to fall below rules and below equipment on the list of items to standardize to foster growth of pool. But a deeper look tells a different story. Rules are not like train tracks; rules can be changed immediately when the will exists to do so. And there are plenty of examples in pool of successful organized play with events in different locations on similar but not identical equipment.

Ratings play a more insidious role than do rules or equipment. An organizational structure in pool, whether it is local or regional or national, needs to protect the integrity of its competition, and it usually attempts to do this by creating some sort of internal system to rate players.

And here is the problem. Generally the more effort put into a rating system, the more the organization flourishes. But the same efforts that make the organization flourish also make it more insular, firm up the walls of the cocoon it creates. League systems and tournament tours, when done well, become like the efficient 200-mile railroad run bringing cotton bails to the waterway. Look locally and narrowly, and the best are functioning fine. But growth is stunted because the tracks don’t match. The rating system is what separates the outside from the inside. Pool organizations are like countries in Africa that don’t trade with one another because they speak different languages.

Soap bubbles or cocoons?

Pool grows by interaction at the edges, by adjacent regional tours combining to create something better than the sum of their parts, by league systems merging both to enjoy an economy of scale and to increase opportunities for their players, by casual league play being seamlessly connected to more serious league play, by local tournament play being connected to regional, national, and international tournament play, and by league play being connected to tournament play.

Pool organizational structures should be like soap bubbles and not like cocoons. Some expand, some pop. Some bounce off one another. And importantly some merge to form larger bubbles in an effort to grow and reduce surface area.

Adopting a universal rating system doesn’t force the interaction. It doesn’t, in and of itself, do any of these things. But it does dissolve cocoons. By destroying a major deterrent to growth, a universal rating system encourages and facilitates growth by contrast. It allows organic growth. It allows growth to occur where growth wants to occur. And that is what has been missing in pool.

FargoRate: head in the cloud

A bank of several dozen high-speed computers in the cloud churn out, as we write, ratings for nearly 120,000 players worldwide based on a spider web of nearly ten million games played amongst them. Everything about FargoRate is increasing rapidly. Pool now has the most sophisticated rating system of any interactive sport—more so than chess, than tennis, than badminton, than table tennis. The FargoRate ab initio Global Optimization starts from scratch each day and finds the optimum ratings for all players based on all games, the ratings that best predict the actual outcome.

Because of this, a 555 league player in Arizona and a 555 tournament player in Wisconsin play at the same level. Because of this any player may track his or her progress in a meaningful way. Because of this a director of a skill-restricted tournament in one state may safely allow entry of otherwise unknown players from another state. Because of this national or international level competitions may safely segregate players by skill. Because of this promoters of invitational events may choose invitees based on skill, and—if they choose--may seed entries in the competition based on skill. Because of this, world member organizations may choose players to represent their regions in world competitions.

FargoRate now has uniform train tracks in place all around the world. As more and more data from public competitions enters the system, FargoRate gets increasingly more reliable ratings for more and more players. Our goal is to rate all pool players worldwide—that’s ALL players worldwide--on the same scale.

Last train to the future of pool.

All Aboard.