Miscellaneous fighters

[John Dewey]

Alfredo Hernandez Torres 0 WW Mexico 1988-97
Greg Torres 1 LW Puerto Rico 1993-2003
Hector Torres 2 LHW USA 1989-2000
Juan Luis Torres 0 FW Mexico 1994-2006
Ramiro Torres 0 LW USA 2004--

[CONN CHRIS]

Originally Posted by John Dewey

But a crummy fighter is still going to end up being a crummy fighter no matter who rates him.

Yes and no. It's hard if not impossible to rate lower end fighters with accuracy. Two things to consider:

1) The top (a 15 rated fighter) should be the best ever to lace them up. the bottom, a zeroed out rating should represent the absolute bottom. The guy that fought as a pro just once or twice and was blasted into oblivion each time. That guy (the very bottom) should litterally never beat the absolute best fighter representation. In real life, things happen but not this. The outcome of pitting these two should always have the 15 rating come out on top. The problem is that this isn't the case, run a 1,000 fights and that bottom rating will beat the top a few times. Not many, but the number should be zero (save a sniper in the crowd). If the top represents the top of the sport and the bottom demostrably doesn't represent the true bottom then the scale is off on a systematic level.

2) If you create 'average' ratings at each rating level, from 2 up to 15, each average level will beat the next lower average level a certain percentage of the time - it is quite consistant and makes 2 through 15 each act like true levels. There is a bit more of a spread between the bottom and top of what constitutes the level '1'. Not enough to squeeze a second 'true' level in but close. The zero rating has between 12 and 17 levels as measured by the winning percentage that represents a true level from 2 to 15. I've tried this out and tested it over hundreds and hundreds of thousands of test fights with template zero ratings. I find that at 12 levels within the zero rating, each has a little more than one true level separation and with 17 it's a shade under one true level separation. The difficulty is that the deliniated template ratings within the zero rating level are not as consistant in testing as the 2-15 ratings are. So, it's really hard to rate fighters that fall into this category with any sort of accuracy.

All that is to say that there are not 16 rating levels. There really are 27 to 32 of them. That means that the average fighter (the guy who sits at the mid point of all possible fighters in his class with half better and half worse) is likely a rating in the high zero rating range. That means that the vast majority of historical fighters out there that have yet to be rated probably deserve a rating just below the zero - one rating level divide and southward; that's a range where accuracy is nearly impossible unfortunately.

It took a long time for me to realize this about the way this game's rating's work unfortunately (Will did a lot of the testing leading to this understanding and I just probed the zero rating in the tests I did) - it does however explain some of the frustration I found when I used to try making ratngs myself.

The bottom rating isn't the real bottom when referenced against the top and half the fighters out there to rate fall into a range (high zero and down) that acts somewhat inconsistantly in the game engine and doesn't lend itself to accurate rating.

[John Dewey]

But real life isn't like that. In the game everything is reduced to numbers. In real life anything can happen. A crummy fighter can still beat a really good fighter if the crummy fighter has a good punch. Also a cut could open up that would cause the defeat of the better fighter. I believe we've had this discussion before. While I approve of your idea in theory actually implementing it into the game after thousands of low level fighters have already been rated is, I think, an unrealistic expectation. It's sort of like my own opinion that all the old time fighters (pre 1920s) are overrated in the game and should be dummied down. That too is thousands of fighters. I can't expect the other raters to rerate all these fighters on my say so.

[John Dewey]

Steve Traitz 3 MW USA 1954-60
Steve Traitz Jr. 5 SMW USA 1981-84
Ruben Trujillo 0 LHW USA 1991
Andriy Trunov 4 JMW Ukraine 1993-2003
Jonathan Tubbs 1 WW USA 2004-08

[CONN CHRIS]

I certainly agree that anything can happen in real life. I don't however take that to mean that the worst pro heavyweight to ever step into a ring could ever, under any circumstances short of foul play beat Ali. Everything has a limit and no numerical representation can be perfect. So, I can live with a world where that guy beats Ali 3 or 4 in 1,000 fights. It is what is it but it does cause me to wonder about the whole scale.

In terms of the zero rating though, has anyone else played with that enough to recognize that there really aren't just 16 rating levels in this system? I have forgotten who created those elongated white boxer cards for TBCB in the early/mid nineties (I don't recall but I do not think it was the Trunzos) - anyway, they sort of recognized this and had zero and -1 rating values (I seem to recall -2 and -3 as well but I'd have to go dig a box out of the basement to check). The average fighter doesn't fall on the TBCB scale where many (myself included) had thought.

[John Dewey]

The secret for distinguishing between the various 0 level fighters lies in the control vs. slugger/ boxer ratings and the punch/counterpunch ratings. A 0 level fighter with a control rating of 2 is likely to be vastly inferior to a 0 level fighter with a control rating of 5.

[CONN CHRIS]

Originally Posted by John Dewey

The secret for distinguishing between the various 0 level fighters lies in the control vs. slugger/ boxer ratings and the punch/counterpunch ratings. A 0 level fighter with a control rating of 2 is likely to be vastly inferior to a 0 level fighter with a control rating of 5.

I don't know that I'd use the word 'vastly' though. The PC sim works basically like the old card game.

CF number of 1 to 20 is the look up value.

Fighter A has CF of 5

Fighter B has CF of 2

Let's say fighter A starts:

CF check is done, he has a 25% chance of being 'in control' and a 75% chance of being 'out of control'. If he is out of control, fighter B has the action card (next rn check) applied to his ratings.

If fighter B is starting, he has a 10% chance of being in control (and having the action check applied to him and a 90% chance of being out of control.

Fighter B in this case oddly has a better chance of landing a punch when the control check is being done on fighter A then when it is being done on himself.

Chances of having action check applied to their own card (and thus being able to land a punch):

Fighter A:

CF check on A (.25) x CF check on B (.9) = .23

Fighter B:

CF check on B (.1) x CF check on A (.75) = .08

That's a big difference but maybe not vast. That's what happens when both CF numbers are relatively low. If a CF 10 faces a CF 5 then the difference is .38 to .13 - a good piece larger. I think CF does less than we all have thought in terms of who gets an action check. Remember, even a CF 10 just means that there is a 50/50 shot that the action check will be on that 10 CF fighter's card when his CF is being checked.

Counter punching is likely a much bigger factor (as is PL) but I have no idea how the counter punching works in the sim as it wasn't part of the board game, it was an add-on when this was converted to a PC game. I'd imagine it is just a similar check to PL so a big CP v. a low PL will cause the most difference between two ratings.

[John Dewey]

Your right. "Vastly" was an exaggeration in this case.

[John Dewey]

Carmine Tufano 3 SMW USA 1997-2003
Najai Turpin 3 JMW USA 2001-04
Eric Tzand 0 JMW Suriname 1997-2001
Martin Ulloa 2 BW USA 1992-96
Victor Urbina 2 LW Mexico 1992-2008

[bear]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

I don't know that I'd use the word 'vastly' though. The PC sim works basically like the old card game.

CF number of 1 to 20 is the look up value.

Fighter A has CF of 5

Fighter B has CF of 2

Let's say fighter A starts:

CF check is done, he has a 25% chance of being 'in control' and a 75% chance of being 'out of control'. If he is out of control, fighter B has the action card (next rn check) applied to his ratings.

If fighter B is starting, he has a 10% chance of being in control (and having the action check applied to him and a 90% chance of being out of control.

Fighter B in this case oddly has a better chance of landing a punch when the control check is being done on fighter A then when it is being done on himself.

Chances of having action check applied to their own card (and thus being able to land a punch):

Fighter A:

CF check on A (.25) x CF check on B (.9) = .23

Fighter B:

CF check on B (.1) x CF check on A (.75) = .08

That's a big difference but maybe not vast. That's what happens when both CF numbers are relatively low. If a CF 10 faces a CF 5 then the difference is .38 to .13 - a good piece larger. I think CF does less than we all have thought in terms of who gets an action check. Remember, even a CF 10 just means that there is a 50/50 shot that the action check will be on that 10 CF fighter's card when his CF is being checked.

Counter punching is likely a much bigger factor (as is PL) but I have no idea how the counter punching works in the sim as it wasn't part of the board game, it was an add-on when this was converted to a PC game. I'd imagine it is just a similar check to PL so a big CP v. a low PL will cause the most difference between two ratings.

Math makes my head hurt.

[John Dewey]

Mine too!

[CONN CHRIS]

Originally Posted by bear

Math makes my head hurt.

It makes me cry at times.

[bear]

Originally Posted by John Dewey

Pedro Martinez 1 JWW USA 2010--
Alejandro Rodriguez 2 LW Mexico 2009--
Ivan Najera 4 JWW USA 2011--

Just watched the fight. Enjoyed Lujan's bout.

[bear]

Originally Posted by John Dewey

But real life isn't like that. In the game everything is reduced to numbers. In real life anything can happen. A crummy fighter can still beat a really good fighter if the crummy fighter has a good punch. Also a cut could open up that would cause the defeat of the better fighter. I believe we've had this discussion before. While I approve of your idea in theory actually implementing it into the game after thousands of low level fighters have already been rated is, I think, an unrealistic expectation. It's sort of like my own opinion that all the old time fighters (pre 1920s) are overrated in the game and should be dummied down. That too is thousands of fighters. I can't expect the other raters to rerate all these fighters on my say so.

John
You've mentioned the one area we disagree about when rating fighters. The pre 20s guys.

[sepia warrior]

To add more complexity to the subject of Control Factors, I remember that in "The Fistic Scene," a newsletter published by the Trunzos when Lance Haffner was marketing the game, there was an article on rating fighters in four installments. In discussing the DEF rating, it was stated there was a correlation between the DEF and CF ratings. The article said as a rule of thumb when creating fighters: every two defensive "factors" equals one CF. In the example they gave if fighter A has a DEF of 2 and fighter B has a DEF of -2, A's CF will perform one number worse while B's CF will perform one number better. Thus if both fighters had CF ratings of 8/8, A would perform in the fight like a 7 CF while B would fight like a CF 9.

I would think that the PL rating would have a similar effect. Treating a PL of 36 as the norm, each increment of two "factors" would affect a fighter similarly. If fighter A had a PL of 34, the CF number would perform as if it was one number worse. Correspondingly if the number was 38, the CF would perform one number better.

To add to all this, another significant rating is the Punches Missed (PM) rating. The range is something like 57 to 67 although I've seen 57 to 64 mentioned as the general range for this category. In the Trunzo article, it was postulated that every PM number could give an opponent as many as 9 extra counterpunch opportunities over a 10 round fight. Thus two fighters who have identical CF and PL numbers are not equal if there is a disparity in the PM number. If fighter A had a PM of 61 and fighter B had a PM of 65, fighter A would have potentially as many as 36 counterpunch chances. The percentage of punches actually landed depends on the Counterpunching rating (CP). Using the Trunzo numbers, if fighter A lands counterpunches 40% of the time, the fighter will score a significant number of extra points. The formula given by them is CP opportunities x CP land percentage x average point per punch landed (depends on the ratio of 2 and 3 point punches in the fighter's rating.)

While I assume that the way the ratings interact with one another has been refined somewhat with each new version of the game, I find them to be useful guideposts in rating a fighter. I also think these rules of thumb can be used, instead of CF factors, to tweak a fighter that you've rated who has either overperformed or underperformed.

I tried to stay away from the math stuff as much as possible but my head still hurts.

[Jackyle]

Originally Posted by bear

Just watched the fight. Enjoyed Lujan's bout.

Yes, an excellent bout. Much better than the awful display David Haye put on.

[John Dewey]

Edward Utorov 0 BW Russia 1995-2009
Jorge Luis Vado 1 JMW Nicaragua 1993-2005
Bobby Joe Valdez 0 JMW USA 2000-2009
Emiliano Valdez 3 MW Dom Rep 1997-2000 (ring death)
Frad Valera 2 LW Dom Rep 1990-2000

[John Dewey]

Danie Van Staden 1 JWW South Africa 2004--
Jesse Varela 1 WW USA 1997-2001
John Vargas 4 LHW USA 1999-2006
Rogelio Vargas 2 SMW USA 2000-09
Derrick Varnado 0 JLW USA 1991-97

[John Dewey]

Johnny Vasquez 4 JFW USA 1989-95
Heriberto Velazquez 0 JLW USA 1999-2005
Joaquin Velasquez 1 MW Dom Rep 1984-98
Gilbert Venegas 2 WW USA 1999-2009
James Ventry 1 JWW USA 2002--

[John Dewey]

Francisco Sierra (update)
Yuandale Evans (update)
Jesus Ernie Gonzales 4 SMW USA 2003--
Janks Trotter 4 JMW Canada 2010--
Arturo Jose Crespin 1 JMW USA 2008--