Rating list

The Belgium Backgammon Federation offers its players a rating list. The list serves at the same time as an archive of match results.

Rating commission

The board of BGFed.be designates a group of three people to maintain the list. Currently, these are Johan Segers (president), Michel Lamote and Luc Palmans.

Procedure

Please see Rules rating list BGFed.be (30-Dec-2019) (pdf; in Dutch).

Rating responsibles of clubs affiliated to the federation report the results of matches of their members or of matches played during their events. These are the current club responsibles:

• Brugge: Line Vandamme
• Brussels: Guy Van Middelem
• Gent: Bert Van Kerckhove
• Leuven: Johan Segers

Results of matches played at a national competition are registered by the tournament director:

• BMS: Johan Huyck
• BIC: Kristoffer De Weert and Guy Van Middelem
• 4 Cubes: Luc Palmans and Guy Van Middelem

System

The system we use is a flavour of the famous Elo system used in chess. The details of the calculations are explained in the article Ratings on Backgammon Galore. Contrary to that description, the BGFed.be rating does not use a ramp-up. The initial rating of a new player is equal to 1500.

The experience of a player is equal to the sum of the lengths of the matches registered for that player. Players with less than 100 experience are ranked alphabetically in a provisional ranking. Players with 100 or more experience are ranked according to their rating in the main body of the list.

Updates

The ratings are updated each weekend. Each update takes into account the results of matches played up to and including the Sunday of the previous weekend. In practice, this means that there could be up to a two-week lag between the ratings and the current calendar date.

Origin of the rating list

In 2005, Gerhard Koops started a rating list for his club in Leuven. In 2009, Gerhard’s list grew into a nationally used web application Bigelo thanks to the programming skills of Toon Van Herreweghen. See also the Bigelo rating reports [ 2013 | 2014 ].

In Spring 2015, after the creation of BGFed.be vzw, the current rating list was set up as a service of the federation to its members.