Riot really like control over their product, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a different rating system come out. It would take enough community pressure to convince them to abandon ACS instead of just modifying it.

He really struggled for the Guard. I hope they don't lose confidence because of this performance.

<3

Have you ever looked at a statsheet and wondered which players are the most valuable? Have you ever wondered how VALORANT stats and CS:GO stats compare? Here I apply the most popular CS:GO rating formula to VALORANT to see it’s strengths and weaknesses when applied to a different game.

I just wrote an article on medium approximating HLTV's CS:GO 2.0 rating in VALORANT.

I didn't write it here in the basic forums since pictures aren't an option, so check out that article if you want to read in more detail and see the more readable pictures.

Also I posted this on twitter so please retweet and share to get the article as much exposure as possible.

Thanks!

Here are the final ratings that I produced:

Sacy    1.39
aspas   1.36
MaKo    1.34
f0rsak  1.32
ScreaM  1.31
yay     1.30
Sayap   1.26
SugarZ  1.26
Jamppi  1.22
Jinggg  1.21
Fearoth 1.20
hoody   1.20
Laz     1.19
xand    1.17
stax    1.17
sScary  1.16
Marved  1.16
Victor  1.15
Nivera  1.14
Zest    1.14
BuZz    1.13
Mixwell 1.13
Benkai  1.09
TENNN   1.08
Less    1.08
soulcas 1.06
cauan   1.06
Surf    1.06
crashi  1.06
pancada 1.05
H1ber   1.05
L1NK    1.05
JonahP  1.05
Dep     1.04
Mistic  1.04
Sushi   1.03
nukkye  1.03
keznit  1.02
valyn   1.02
mindfr  1.00
NagZ    0.99
foxz    0.98
bezn1   0.98
Klaus   0.97
d4v41   0.96
neT     0.96
delz1k  0.95
Rb      0.94
crow    0.94
bnj     0.92
FNS     0.91
Jonn    0.90
MAGNUM  0.90
trent   0.88
Mazino  0.86
AvovA   0.85
Crws    0.85
Meddo   0.81
saadhak 0.81
Boaster 0.65

Check out the article if you want to learn about the limitations of applying the formula. The average rating was 1.063 which is slightly higher than 1.

LOUD have also announced that the games were swapped. DRX/OPTC early, G2/LOUD late.

I recent posted on my twitter that I am working on an independent stats based article. I don't really know how I will have the time do it, since IRL stuff is piling up, but I will be waiting until after Reykjavik anyways.

Whoever can guess what I am planning will win... a shoutout on my twitter. Alright that isn't very impressive, but I am also just doing this for fun.

Your hints are:
1) It is based of the Reykjavik stats available on VLR.
2) Locked -unlocked if LOUD beat G2
3) Locked -unlock mechanism unknown until 2) is unlocked.

VLR writers are not allowed to participate since they already know, this is also not being written for VLR at the moment

I think frz could be a huge addition.

Yep, fixed now.

whoops, Gambit and FPX have almost identical codes for the link. good catch

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/f6f9f185

LOUD's coach bzkA is a former pro and could sub in. The lack of a substitute has nothing to do with it. I believe it is policy for all of LOUD to not play on the stage as long as aspas can't because they have had close contact with him. That last part is not official.

As far as I understand the rules, they would only be able to play with bzkA. Not only because of substitute rules, but also because of quarantine rules and because they want to speak Portuguese. aspas is expected to play though.

Common ChickenJoe W

:'D

meddo is definitely more of a sentinel

eh, I consider chamber to be a duelist for the duelist mains that flex to it. yay still plays a lot of jett

I posted this to twitter, but I figured I might as well drop it here.
Here are my power rankings by role for all the players at Reykjavik. I can definitely see a lot of these rankings changing.

I ranked almost everyone from Japan at the bottom, but I haven't watched their games. I have at least watched everyone else even if I haven't watched asia a ton.

Duelist (If a duelist main plays Chamber, I still count that as a duelist role wise).
1) yay
2) Derke
3) aspas
4) ScreaM?
5) f0rsaken
6) xand
7) Sayaplayer
8) Mixwell
9) Rb
10) NagZ
11) Surf
12) Dep

Sentinel
1) BuZz
2) neT
3) Less
4) Laz
5) Nivera
6) Meddo
7) bezn1
8) MAGNUM
9) Sushiboys
10) FNS
11) d4v41
12) Klaus

Initiator
1) trent
2) Sacy
3) hoody
4) crashies
5) cauanzin
6) mazino
7) stax
8) foxz
9) soulcas
10) Fearoth
11) benkai
12) crow

Controller
1) Marved
2) pancada
3) valyn
4) MaKo
5) Avova
6) L1NK
7) Mistic
8) sScary
9) delz1k
10) bnj
11) mindfreak
12) SugarZ3ro

flex/everyone else
1) nukkye
2) keznit
3) saadhak
4) Victor
5) Jamppi
6) Jinggg
7) Jonn
8) JonahP
9) Boaster
10) Zest
11) Crws
12) TENNN

<3

<3

https://twitter.com/valesports_emea/status/1511747778652868609

:O

Yep, for some reason I thought they faced V1 in their opener instead of NU. Appreciate the catch.

Yeah, there are going to be a couple people that get 270+

Yeah jinggg could go all over the place. If PRX duelists can yolo around the map effectively, they can really boost the ACS stats. The fact that they will only play good teams made me put them ~10 ACS lower than I normaly would.

Yeah, he was a monster to start Stage 1, but I felt like it was a bit of an overperformance and his ACS did slide over the latter half of the tournament. Fnatic bringing in substitutes makes it super difficult to predict them as well.

I am waiting for those couple of players that love to post an ACS over 50 away from what I predicted.

Here comes my usual series where I predict the ACS of every player at Champions. S1 was their ACS in Stage 1, LLAN was their ACS in their last LAN if they have been to one, and Pred ACS is my prediction for this event. I used H1ber instead of Derke since I don't know who will play, but that prediction stands for either of them.

Who did I rank too high? Who did I rank too low? If you call me out for wrongly predicting someone, make your own prediction in the comments.

                   S1   LLAN    Pred ACS
1   nukkye  G2  258.1   232.8   245
2   aspas   LOU 263.8   ----    244
3   yay     OPT 236.0   242.7   243
4   keznit  KRU 265.6   246.3   241
5   f0rsak  PRX 269.4   227.6   240
6   ScreaM  TL  219.7   251.8   235
7   trent   GRD 230.6   ----    235
8   BuZz    DRX 240.7   237.4   234
9   H1ber   FNC 264.1   ----    231
10  Sacy    LOU 226.5   253.7   230
11  Mazino  KRU 208.5   215.3   229
12  Laz     ZET 241.3   248.6   225
13  Sayapl  GRD 237.5   ----    222
14  saadhak LOU 227.0   229.0   220
15  Jonn    NIP 210.4   ----    219
16  Jinggg  PRX 234.8   ----    218
17  xand    NIP 236.1   231.2   217
18  Viktor  OPT 228.3   162.3   215
19  Mixwell G2  216.5   183.6   214
20  Rb      DRX 253.5   174.5   211
21  hoody   G2  217.3   ----    210
22  Surf    XIA 231.7   ----    209
23  valyn   GRD 204.4   ----    208
24  cauanz  NIP 215.5   ----    207
25  crashi  OPT 192.0   205.3   205
26  Marved  OPT 210.4   200.9   205
27  Nivera  TL  190.4   197.7   202
28  foxz    XIA 215.5   199.9   200
29  neT     GRD 193.0   ----    198
30  Less    LOU 221.2   ----    196
31  MAGNUM  FNC 182.6   188.2   195
32  MaKo    DRX 223.0   186.0   193
33  soulcas TL  196.6   187.1   192
34  pancada LOU 203.1   ----    192
35  Jamppi  TL  189.7   187.3   191
36  Fearoth FNC 226.4   ----    190
37  Sushib  XIA 194.3   222.8   189
38  NagZ    KRU 186.8   191.7   189
39  d4v41   PRX 199.3   190.6   188
40  Dep     ZET 237.3   ----    186
41  stax    DRX 190.1   192.6   184
42  JonahP  GRD 196.7   ----    184
43  TENNN   ZET 225.1   ----    183
44  sScary  XIA 243.1   165.1   183
45  Meddo   G2  189.6   ----    182
46  FNS     OPT 167.0   188.9   180
47  L1NK    TL  172.3   181.1   176
48  Avova   G2  177.7   176.5   175
49  delz1k  KRU 204.6   160.6   174
50  Boaster FNC 179.9   166.9   173
51  bezn1   NIP 190.8   ----    173
52  SugarZ  ZET 209.2   ----    172
53  Mistic  FNC 207.7   145.6   172
54  Klaus   KRU 172.1   174.9   171
55  bnj     NIP 159.6   173.3   169
56  Benkai  PRX 195.6   149.0   168
57  Zest    DRX 197.9   ----    165
58  Crws    XIA 176.5   170.5   165
59  mindfr  PRX 197.5   152.6   165
60  crow    ZET 148.7   165.0   145

Yeah mw is super awkward to say in english. I remember in Paladins, people were always pronouncing frzgod as freeze god or frozen god.

Yeah I have Liquid rated very low for recent performance, and the only reason they are S tier is because I think they have one of the highest peaks if they can put it together. They could very easily not make it out of groups. Every time I look at these rankings again I want to move everyone lol.

FPX: (70,85,85) I am not quite sold on their roster, but it has the potential to be great. I would really have liked more than a single tournament to get to see them play. If they keep up their performance, they could be the best EMEA team.

Whoa whoa whoa. Im silver. Clearly an elite gamer. ;)

Good plan. Make sure that I can't change my mind later after Leviatan places second and everyone laughs at how much I underrated them.

I expect to get memed on when my rankings are inevitably proven to be absurd lol.

Here are my team rankings for Masters 1: Reykjavik. This is assuming that everyone can play such as braveaf for FNC since it is difficult to rank teams if they have a substitute. This is the hardest ranking I have ever done, mostly due to the fact that only three of these rosters have played internationally before (without roster moves). I threw in three numbers for this ranking. The first number represents my grade for the average performance I expect out of teams (1-100), the second gives what I believe to be their peak (1-100), and the third is just a grade for their stage 1 performance (1-100).

S TIER: This tier is too big, but I don't know which teams shouldn't be here.

1) The Guard: (80,90,90) The number one spot is super difficult, and I could easily see TGRD struggling in the playoffs. This is a solid overall team that I predicted to be top 5 NA before Stage 1, but that tournament will be considered an over-performance if they don't do well at LAN.

2) G2: (80,95,75) I thought G2 was severely underrated, but a slow start combined with roster turmoil has really hurt their chances. The individuals in this team are insane, but I am still not sold on the IGL situation.

3) Team Liquid: (75,95,65) Liquid have been super disappointing this year, and if they don't find their previous form, they will not make it very far. Similar to G2, I think this roster is reaching the point where if they cant figure it out, they should reconsider restructuring the team around an IGL.

4) LOUD: (75,90,85) This team has never lost a match, and it got better and better later in the tournament. The high skill level across the board separates this team from any other in Brazil, but what really stands out to me is their strategic prowess. They have flaws, but the eye test will tell you that they are always setting up cool plays.

5) OpTic Gaming: (75,90,80) The revival of Victor's form has kept OpTic afloat, but it has coincided with crashies and yay falling off. This team is still very dangerous and could easily be number one. I also trust them in high pressure situations more than TGRD.

A TIER: Really good teams that might lack the firepower if an S tier team is on their game.

6) Fnatic: (70,80,80) I think their group stage was a bit of an over-performance. Mistic was one of the worst statistical performers at Champions but became one of the best this year. I think the strategic aspects of this roster go farther than the individual skill although Derke is great. I trust this team to reach their peak more than most of the other teams on this list, but I don't think their peak is the highest.

7) DRX: (65,80,70) This new look roster has been solid but unspectacular. Their main competition in OnSlayers began to get known as having extremely poor fundamentals. As a team that has continuously just missed out, I don't think their roster moves really change that much.

B TIER: Quality upset picks.

8) Paper Rex: (60,75,70) I thought Jinggg made them the best APAC team at the end of 2021, and this tournament has not disappointed. As fun as this team is, there are still some weak links, and their style is way too loose. When their duelists run amok they can challenge anyone, but I don't see them winning if one of them has a bad game.

9) NIP: (60,80,70) I think this team has better firepower across the board than PRX, but the sample size is so small that it is hard to tell. If they handily beat Leviatan I would probably put them ahead of PRX. This team isn't on the strategic level of LOUD, but in my mind, they are better than any BR team that made it to an event in 2021 (Vikings may have been better but they were capped by the lack of high end firepower).

10) KRU: (60,80,65) It may be surprising to see them this low, but I think this team got overrated by a nice upset run at Champions. They keep representing LATAM because only one team is even within two tiers of them. I could see them making another top 4-8 run, but I think a tournament win is a bit out of their grasp.

C TIER: Probably not quite at the level of the other teams.

11) Leviatan: (55,75,60) They have done really well lately, but they have never gotten past the best South American teams. A good win against NIP could really help them and KRU into the higher tiers.

12) XERXIA: (55,70,65) Losing Patiphan was a big blow, but this team is still good. They have not been as dominant as before, however, they look fairly stable. This team would be an interesting upset pick against the B tier teams.

13) ZETA Division: (50,65,60) Japan has always been a bit out of place on the international stage. I would prefer that they qualify through Korea instead of getting their own spot. While other regions compiled their talent into better teams, Japan mostly just shuffled around. I think this roster is around the level of the old CR and probably won't do much.

Share your thoughts. Is there a team that is way too low? Way too high?

It really depends on the tournament structure. I think LOUD will be the best minor region team, and they could legitimately challenge the major region teams, but it is really hard to tell with EMEA in flux. As far as strats go, LOUD have a lot of great set plays and executes, but they tended to lose discipline in chaotic midrounds. They appeared to tighten up a bit in the playoffs, so it will be interesting to figure out how they do against more coordinated teams.

This is just the recap of the VCT finals so far. I am not sure what is going to happen for preview stuff yet.

The ease of use really got me into coding.

It is still bewildering to me how much drama that caused lol.

The difference between the double elimination formats for proper seeding is the only result that changes if I modify the % chance of teams beating each other. If I use a linear distribution which means that each team is evenly spaced in skill, the UV values are pretty much the same. I would still recommend the standard version since it prevents early rematches.

If the winner is chosen at random, every team has an equal chance of finishing anywhere and the results don't really mean anything.

I am still interested in tournament formats with more teams and other stats that would provide useful information. I will probably try to do something with 12 team formats before Masters 1 since that appears to be the norm now.

No, I just coded it from scratch with a lot of trial and error. There are probably some other technical ways to collect data, but I just did this blind.

There are still some aesthetic problems with double elimination, but it produces better results where the better teams make it farther on average. Particularly if the seeding isn't perfect.

Maths and Valorant. What a strange combo. I approve.

^

Yep, Ferahgo The Assassin

I might do more than 8 team formats especially with Reykjavik around the corner.

I am a very big nerd indeed.

TLDR Double elimination is the best tournament format for producing results that reflect the strength of the teams. A stochastic MATLAB code was written to provide some stats to support this claim.

Double elimination has long been one of the most popular tournament formats because it provides a cushion for when a team has a bad day or gets a bad seeding. Most people intuitively realize that single elimination leads to higher statistical fluctuations. There are downsides to double elimination including the fact that more games need to be played (this could be good or bad), and the finals problem rears its ugly head. For double elimination finals, the team that wins out to reach the finals must either be eliminated after only one series loss or be given an advantage in the finals which makes for a much less exciting finale.

There are four tournament formats with eight teams that are under consideration in this analysis.

1. DES: Double elimination standard. DES example
2. DENS: Double elimination non-standard. Notice in this DENS example how Gamelanders are not swapped to the other side of the bracket when they drop to lower round 2.
3. SE: Single elimination. SE example
4. GSS: Two groups of four with double elimination that leads to a four team single elimination playoffs. GSS example

METHODOLOGY
Every team is given a rank from 1-8. This analysis is primarily concerned with two systems. When the seeding is perfect (seed 1 vs seed 8, seed 4 vs seed 5, etc) and when the seeding is random. Random seeding imitates when a better team gets a lower seed than a worse team. Obviously most real tournaments happen somewhere between these two outcomes, but by looking at the extremes, the middle ground can be interpolated.

Each tournament is simulated with a MATLAB code at least ten thousand times to ensure the results converge on an answer. The winner of each matchup is determined by a random number. Two approaches were taken in this analysis. The first consists of assuming that every higher seed wins. The second is to assign each team (1-8) a value along a Gaussian distribution (bell curve) and the probability that the higher rank wins is determined by these values. The Gaussian distribution used in this analysis gives a 90% chance that the rank 1 team beats the rank 8 team 1(90)8, a 57.3% chance that the rank 3 team beats the rank 6 team 3(57.3)6, 2(71.1)7, and so on. Most tournaments don’t follow an ideal bell curve, but the exact distribution does not matter as long as the higher ranked teams have a higher chance of beating lower ranked teams. The exact numerical values of the results that are achieved will be different, but the ranking of the different tournament formats will be the same.

What result qualifies as a good result? Upsets are good for specific narratives and overall excitement, but if there are too many upsets, the best teams don’t reach the end, and the tournament winds up with very anticlimactic matches. (For example, most of Astralis’ opponents in the CSGO major finals had previous great upsets but were completely outmatched in the finals.) A tournament format that allows the best teams to more consistently reach the later matches creates better narratives, better viewing experiences, and a better quality of tournament. There are other factors that go into making a tournament great, but this is very important for the format.

For this code, after every single simulation of a tournament, the placement of each team is compared to their rank. For instance, if the rank 1 team actually placed third, they would add +2 to a “variance” tally that is averaged over all the teams in the tournament. If the tournament variance tally is averaged to be 1.5 that means that each team placed an average of 1.5 spots away from where they were expected to place based on their rank. The values of these variance tallies are averaged over the thousands of times the tournament format is simulated. A smaller number is better for the overall health of the tournament. (A very tiny number is bad because that would mean only the best teams would have a chance, but all of these formats have reasonable numbers).

RESULTS

The easiest question to answer is “what format struggles with bad seeding?”. Assume that the higher rank wins every single time and that the seedings are random. (Results from where there is upset potential will be dealt with later). The numbers shown represent the average “variance” tallies described in the previous section.

DES    0.4744
DENS   0.5572
GSS    0.6624
SE     1.1429

If you randomly seed single elimination (SE), a lot of high seeds will face each other in the early rounds. That leads to the teams being on average 1.1429 placements away from their rank. Standard double elimination (DES) does the best with only 0.4744 placements on average per team. If a tournament does not have the capacity to seed properly through qualifiers or rankings they should never use single elimination. If there are simply too many games for double elimination such as large open qualifiers with tons of teams, single elim is fine, but playoffs should use double elimination.

So double elimination is better at dealing with poor seeding, but how does it deal with upsets? As previously stated, upsets are not a bad thing, but the best teams should still be able to reach the later matches more consistently. Using the Gaussian distribution to create a % chance of an upset depending on the difference in rank between the teams, the four tournaments were simulated again. UV stands for “upset variance” and is the variance when the seeding is perfect. SV stands for “seeding variance” and is the variance when the seeding is random. Most real tournaments will fall somewhere in between.

       UV       SV
DES    1.7063     1.8892
DENS   1.6796     1.8913
GSS    1.7516     1.9249
SE     1.7724     2.0727

Interestingly enough, non standard double elimination fares better than the standard version with perfect seeding because it makes upsets less common in the lower bracket round 2. This is the only result which is close enough to make the method used to determine the % chance of an upset matter. The SV is usually worse for the non standard version.

Another stat that might be of interest is the quality of the grand finals which is easily the most important match of the tournament. The finals quality FQ is calculated as the average rank of the two teams that make the grand finals. (For instance, if the rank 1 team and the rank 3 team made the finals, the FQ would be 2). FQR is the same stat but for random seeding instead of perfect seeding.

       FQ       FQR
DES    2.8035     3.0098
DENS   2.7838     3.0118
GSS    3.0284     3.1399
SE     2.9785     3.3630

Pretty much everything that can be said about the UV and SV results can be said about the finals quality. GSS finally dethroned single elimination as the worst format with perfect seeding although it still fares better with random seeding.

CONCLUSIONS
If a tournament organizer is happy with having more games and dealing with the finals problem, double elimination is clearly the best tournament to run. A lot of tournaments run single elimination simply because that format is the simplest for human brains to understand and build hype around. Throwing in some double elimination in order to reach a single elimination playoffs can help alleviate the problems of single elimination particularly when there are more than eight teams.

Whoops, there were some errors when the doc was copied over.

The good old days.

1) LOUD
2) NIP
3) VK
4) FUR
5) SHK
6) TBK
7) ING
8) GLB
9) LIB
10) MIBR

Maybe a bit too high on Sharks, but I think they can challenge the top teams.