Power Ranking

Power Ranking is a feature that was introduced in 2011 to attempt to rank players for how good they were at the Loser Pool over their entire career. The formula has been tweaked a few times to try to come up with a list that "feels right."

At the end of the day, Power Ranking is about one thing only -- bragging rights. A player's Power Ranking does not affect the amount of money they can win. The only other thing that takes Power Ranking into account is the Chief of the Bandwagon Badge, where if there is a tie for Chief, the chief is the tied player whose Power Ranking is the highest.

Power Ranking is calculated by awarding Power Points to every player based on their actions in the Loser Pool. Players are then ordered by the number of Power Points they have and ranked. Power points can be earned (and LOST) in the following ways (subject to change):

Action/Factor Power Points
1st Place Finish 25.00
2nd Place Finish 10.00
Season Played 4.00
Correct Pick 1.00
Every Dollar Won 0.25
Correct %* -150.00 to +150.00*
Per Each Point of your Average Margin of Defeat 6.00
Allow a Pick to be Set by System -0.50
Post a Talk Message 0.40
Like a Talk Message 0.10
Have Your Talk Message Liked by Someone 0.20
Refer Another Player 5.00
* You may note that the Correct Percentage has a range. The Correct Percentage takes your lifetime record into account, but normalizes it so that new players don't have such wild swings. How this works is that every player has an expected Correct Percentage of 50.0%. If the player's percentage is exactly that, then 0 Power Points will be earned. If the player has a better record then that, they will gain Power Points. If their record is worse, they will LOSE Power Points. The number of points gained or lost is calculated like this:
Points = (CorrectPercentage - 50.0%) * (min(50, max(totalPicksMade, totalPicksMade-50)) / 50) * 3.00;

This is basically just a fancy way of saying two things: