Hey everyone,

We've recently been soliciting quite a bit of your feedback regarding some possible changes to the P5s Rankings. We have made some small changes over the last few years such as changing the requirements for a tournament to be tracked, but nothing systematic has changed since the inception of these rankings back in 2006. As promised, we're giving 3 months' notice so that nobody is caught off guard by the changes.

The following changes will go into effect on 8/1:

• There will no longer be any sort of multi-site requirement for the PLB. Up to this point, the sliding PLB has counted a player's top 40 cashes with a maximum of 24 from a single poker site. Going forward, it will simply be the top 40 cashes, regardless of which site they were on.
• The Pro Poll will be eliminated from our world wide rankings. We've always enjoyed having highly ranked players participate in ranking their peers, but most top players we've spoken to have indicated to us that they feel the pro poll detracts more than it adds these days.
• As a result of the previous item, our world wide rankings will simply be the top players in the sliding PLB. There will not be any difference between the top 100 in the Sliding PLB and the top 100 ranked players.

Thanks again to everyone who's given us their opinions about this. We didn't make these decisions lightly, as they're major changes to the ranking system that is a major staple of the online poker community. But we do think this will be a better and more fair system for everyone going forward.

-Adam

pro polls are nothing but a popularity contest anyway, i know most ppl dont even bother updating it anymore... good changes

ok, so now we'll get to see who grinds the most mid and high stakes tourneys

 

Originally Posted by Gags30

there's gotta be some way to weigh your plb. maybe like counting your total plb points. if someone's top 40 scores are 4k plb points, but they've played sooooo much volume that they have a total tracked plb over the last year of like 20k points, then they are clearly putting in a TON of volume, where as someone that only has 5k plb points total, and their top 40 scores add up to 4k plb points would be a 'better' player. dividing top 40 scores by total plb points in the last year could give u a %,and you could be "penalized" from your top 40 by a fraction of this %?

this would just even things out so people that put in a TON of volume aren't just automatically top 10

Perhaps average PLB score for a month/year/other period?

Only problem is that one off big scores will then be automatically on top.

How about average PLB over a minimum number of games per month and even if you don't play that many the score will still be divided by the min.

Its not as if anyone would stop plying in a particular month to stay on top, they'd be losing value.

EDIT:

What would be a fair number to set as a minimum number of games for a month to qualify for PLB ranking?

i like the changes, there aren't that many monkeys who play a ton a volume with lil to no profit in the top 100 anyway so i really doubt it would affect it too much

looking at the top ten now, 8 are in the top 10 for sliding plb and the others top 20, plus pro poll only comes into play in top 100 anyway and to get that far you needed to put in a ton of volume at mid-high stakes, so I cant see it changing that much long term

its definately good for the relatively unknown or unpopular grinders beating the game

Perhaps if someone has time they could test run with some numbers over the last month or two?

i think you are heading in the right direction with this Adam, it should be perfected by the time I am vying for the podium

YEAH WHILE WE'RE AT IT, IM SICK OF MY BOY WEAVEL NOT BEING RANKED HIGHER

Seems retarded, whoever grinds the most is #1, congrats.

 

Originally Posted by ApesAreFun

Hmm, so the rankings will basically be like OPR from now on then?
Its the end of an era :( We're gonna see some pretty funny names ranked high from now on. Volume-monkeys ftw.

Can't agree with that, since we combine the rankings across all sites still and OPR never has linked people's screen names. But we are definitely going to be entirely results based now

 

Originally Posted by Gags30

hmm, kind of have to agree with jamie here.

i was in favor of getting rid of the pro poll, or at least lowering the % that it counts towards rankings, but making the rankings solely based on plb doesn't seem good

maybe some sort of formula to take into consideration volume. something like actual plb and an adjusted plb for volume, where you're slightly penalized for playing more tourneys to get the same plb. in other words, if someone has 5k plb points and it took them 5k tourneys to get that amount, where as someone else has 5k plb but they accomplished this in 2500 tourneys, i would think the 2nd person should be ranked higher

really no idea how you would calculate this, but ya would be better than just plb

there's gotta be some way to weigh your plb. maybe like counting your total plb points. if someone's top 40 scores are 4k plb points, but they've played sooooo much volume that they have a total tracked plb over the last year of like 20k points, then they are clearly putting in a TON of volume, where as someone that only has 5k plb points total, and their top 40 scores add up to 4k plb points would be a 'better' player. dividing top 40 scores by total plb points in the last year could give u a %,and you could be "penalized" from your top 40 by a fraction of this %?

this would just even things out so people that put in a TON of volume aren't just automatically top 10

Good feedback gags, thank you. I don't think the changes we're making are actually causing this - I think it's been the case all along. But will keep this all in mind. It's very difficult to penalize volume when the purpose is to showcase accomplishments. We wouldn't want people omitting screen names from certain poker rooms just because their results per volume aren't as good there. So it's kind of difficult in practice to make this work in a multi-site system. But I'm going to think about it and feel free to chip in any more suggestions you may have.

 

Originally Posted by nugman

The old way tracked 40 scores and the new way tracks 40 scores. I really dont understand the commotion and how volume is more valuable in the new rankings. Maybe my reading comp is messed, but I like dem changes

Exactly - I don't think most people are really seeing new problems created by these changes, but rather giving feedback on how they'd like the system to be. Definitely appreciate all you guys weighing in

 

Originally Posted by Adam

Can't agree with that, since we combine the rankings across all sites still and OPR never has linked people's screen names. But we are definitely going to be entirely results based now

When u change the criteria like u did, u will get a few micro-ROI mass-tablers from stars on top. They are far from the best, they are just botting with the help from table-ninja. Its sad, but the dif. between OPR and P5s just got smaller.

I dont see how the volume changes things? Before someone could have made $50/game on stars for 100 games a month but only 24 scores would count, while the $3/game person could play on 7 different sites and get 40 scores tracked. I think the only difference in the new system is that instead of rewarding players for playing on 888 or some fringe site just to get the extra volume, they are basing all scores equally regardless of site. I don't think there will be much of a change in the types of players we see at the top of the new rankings but I could be looking at it wrong

We're not going to do anything with ROI. Sorry to be short about it but I've gone through our reasons for this many many times here on the site. The jist is that P5s never wants to be a site that tracks players buy in information - too intrusive and pushes most people away from the site instead of towards it

I am interested in the points about making money at $3 games vs. $100 games. It is possible to rework the system so that higher buy ins hold more value. Right now it's simply the size of the prizepool - winning a $100 tourney with 100 people counts the same as winning a $1 tourney with 10,000 people. But there could be some manipulation made based on the amount of the buy in if that might lead away from problems. But I'm curious about it because we haven't had problems with that up to this point for the most part. I don't remember a time when the top ranked players were microgrinders at any point. Unless you see that having happened recently?