Elo Ratings

The EMZ Elo Ratings are based on the system developed by Dr. Arpad Elo. This system is used by FIDE, the international chess federation, to rate chess players. It is ideally suited for rating the results of 1v1 games, such as Doom 3 Tourney mode.

Ratings tend to converge on a player's true strength relative to their opponents after about 30 matches. The match results sets used are from the following servers:

EMZ14,407 matches10 Feb 2007 - 9 Apr 2008
eXg2,539 matches29 Jan 2008 - 26 Mar 2008

Calulating the Rating

Each player is given an initial rating of 1500. As each match is played the rating for the players are updated based on the following formulas:

Rn = Ro + K × (W - We)

Rn is the new rating, Ro is the old (pre-match) rating.

K is the weight constant for the player:

  • 25 for players with fewer than 30 games;
  • 15 for players with a rating less than 1800;
  • 10 for all other players;

W is the result of the game (1 for a win and 0 for a loss).

We is the expected result (win expectancy) from the following formula:

We = 1 / (10(-dr/400) + 1)

dr equals the difference in ratings between the two players.