March 3rd, 2009

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Unofficial World Billiards Ratings System. For many years the Elo Rating System has been used in the chess world (and many other sports) so that players can be grouped by overall ability rather than their performance in a particular tournament or series of tournaments. This is a fundamental distinction between a rating system and a ranking system such as those used by organisations such as the EABA and EBOS.

Because of the wide acceptance of the Elo system we have simply applied the this method to all the results contained in our database in order to produce the starting point for our own ratings. This amounts to almost 9,000 matches played in a wide range of events, both professional and amateur, each player starting with a notional rating of 1500. The Initial Ratings Table is the result of this process.

[The criterion for a player's inclusion in this list is that they should have played a minimum of 10 recorded matches, at least one of which must be have been in the previous 2 years.]