The box Rec alogorithym

[Citizen Koba]

If I’m reading it right it weights anyone within top 15% active fighters the same. So I guess wilders 40x wins vs bums (bums being a bit excessive ... but in comparison) gets a better score than 15x wins vs top end opponents. Fury clearly benefits from this too with a number of his fights.

It’s similarly odd on other weights, I did think it looked pretty sensible last year - so does look like the latest iteration of changes has made the formal somewhat worse/less realistic

Not quite, although that relates another point that I ain't so keen on though I haven't fully wrapped my head around all the implications. It's basically saying you get extra rewards for beating guys in the top 15% who have themselves beaten a top 15% fighter over and above what you'd get anyway... I think this stayed in from the last iteration too, and I didn't understand the rationale behind it then either. I may give it some more thought though see if I can make sense of why they've done it that way, but certainly my first instinct is that it would create an unbalance in favour of more successful fighters, hard to imagine they ain't understood that though, so it probably warrants a little more invstigation... if I could just be arsed.

So the points for beating a top 15%er who's beaten a top 15%er has a base equal to that fighters own points within the range 8 - 40 modified in various ways, then added to the points for a regular win (between 0.01 and 1.11) before being operated on again.

– when defeating an opponent within the top 15 percent of all active boxers, who already defeated an opponent within the top 15 percent of all active boxers (top 15 percent limit 2019: men = 4.89 points, women = 1.87 points)

— 8 points at least

— as much points as the defeated opponent had before the bout

— 40 points at most

— with weight = 1, when the opponent had no loss after his top win, with weight = 1/2 after 1 loss, with weight = 1/4 after 2 losses etc

— with weight = 1 within 18 months after the opponents top bout, with weight = 1/2 thereafter and decreasing by a factor of 1/2 per another 18 months

– all with weight = cd * v; cd = clear decision factor and v = bout value

Boxer a SD 8 boxer b, scores 77:75 77:75 75:77, a has 100 points, b has 50 points, opponent within the top 15 percent of all active boxers and with an own win against such a top 15 percent boxer 23 months ago and 1 following loss

A 8 rounder is rewarded with 8/12, v=0.667
SD is rewarded with cd=0.5 at maximum
mean score difference per judge is (2+2-2)/3 = 0.667, which is rewarded in direct proportion to half the rounds boxed 0.667/4 at maximum
so cd=0.167

earn= 1/3 * 0.667 * (50*0.167 + (50-100)/(1+2*0.167)) = -6.48
r_a_new = 100 – 6.48 = 93.52
r_b_new = 50 + 6.48 = 56.48

Winner additionally gets 0.01 points + 0.1 points for opponent with win + 1 point for opponent with a win against a winner
+ 40 points for opponent with top 15 percent win with weight=1/2 for 1 following loss and weight=0.41 for top win before 23 months
and overall weight = cd*v = 0.5*0.67= 0.333
additional points = (1.11 + 40*0.5*0.41)*0.333 = 3.10 points
r_a_new = 93.52 + 3.10 = 96.62

If you look at the final example in the long ass algorithm quote above the 40pts added is before modifications for such things as following losses and time since the top 15% win and so on (so in this example that 40pts ultimately was factored down again to 8.2, added to the other victory points 1.11 and divided by 3 for a total 3.10), so it ain't a flat 40points but it is still a very significant factor seperating the top 15ish % from everyone else in what seems a rather arbitrary manner.

[deathofaclown]

Boxrec seems to change it's algorithm every few months. Before the Fury-Wilder rematch Joshua was #1 after beating Ruiz. Now the loser of the Fury-Wilder rematch has leapfrogged him? GTFOH.

The numbers don’t lie

Numbers aren’t swayed by the Sky Sports hype machine

AJ isn’t a top 2 HW

[deathofaclown]

How is Schwarz ranked above Wallin.

The each only have one loss. It's to the same person: Tyson Fury. But Fury was just playing around with Schwarz and stopped him easily.Wallin on the other hand cut Fury, then gave him the toughest 12 round fight of his career.

It’s an algorithm

it has no objective thinking. It doesn’t know what happened in the fight. It only knows who won and lost and calculates from there.

So Tom Schwarz must’ve amassed more points from his wins than Wallin.

[elfag]

I looked at their historical p4p ranking and looks like its been tweaked since whenever i last looked at it.

Its weird, Ezzard Charles is way higher than anyone else, Pacquaio's current score and histotrical score are different numbers so historical is calculated differently. Calaghe is at #7 of all time, apparently being undefeated really helps your score but at the same time Charles' losses dont seem to hurt him.

Chavez is down at 24 so his huge win streak against bums didnt help him much.

Valuev is nowhere to be found despite long win streaks and wins in the top 10 and a 50-2 record, so for Calzaghe to be so high, i guess they count hopkins and roy wins with a lot of weight.


It does seem to not penalize too harshly for fighters with late career losses.

Also with GGG and Hatton in the top 50 seems like there is some point inflation over time.



Just looking at the list its kind of hard to tell what the algorithm is favoring, it seems to be all over the place.

[Robbie Barrett]

The numbers don’t lie

Numbers aren’t swayed by the Sky Sports hype machine

AJ isn’t a top 2 HW

It’s an algorithm

it has no objective thinking. It doesn’t know what happened in the fight. It only knows who won and lost and calculates from there.

So Tom Schwarz must’ve amassed more points from his wins than Wallin.

Of course they can. They can change the numbers to favour any fighter they want.

[Eff Pandas]

Yeah... I don't like it, myself. I see what they're gunning for, trying to make the system as accurate a predictor as possible (ie giving the highest likelihood that the guy they rank highest would win) but I think boxing just don't always work like that. Ain't like Chess say, where you basically got one set of invariable rules that are applied the same whereever you go irrespective of who t.f is promoting the match or A side nonsense.. there's always gonna be a big random element in boxing so it makes little sense to me to try to pin it down with that degree of precision.

Ha and FWIW I remember IDK maybe 5 or so years ago (would have been before the 2016 change which cut the scores drstically) you described your rough and ready ranking sytem and it stuck with me cos it was very close to mine... I went off a kinda power 2 based thing with 100 points as my starting point, so it was like 100+ for Gatekeeper type guys 200+ for Regional level guys and contenders, 400+ for true world level fighters and 800+ for the elite... (and 1600+ for the true Generational level guys though no-one actually hit that over the time I was using the system) anyway point was you knew where you stood with it and it gave you a loose idea of what to expect, but then each time they re-jig it it f#cks up your system.


I also don't like the fractions and I also don't like the precipitous drop off in scores from the top one or two in any division, makes it real difficult to scale when you're just going for an approximation, anyway... just griping, Boxrecs still an invaluable resource but I don't approve the direction they've gone with the scoring.

Yea I remember talking about our own specific takes on the points now that you mention it.

WERE these turns made to get to more accurate takes on picking winners? I guess adding in the actual scorecard difference & scheduled rounds would lean more into the more skilled guys & more experienced guys getting more points & both those things are usually gonna lead to picking some % increase in winners for those reasons I'd assume. I haven't messed with the boxrec forum very often in the last several years so there direction is lost on me these days.

And yea just for their record keeping it's a insanely valuable resource for any serious boxing fan. The ranking system is simply another perk of what they do if you wanna take it into account at all. Respect to boxrec even doe I'm not a fan of the new point system or maybe I just need to stfu & adapt to it.

[_Rexy_]

Boxrec is ******. The fact that Curt Henning used it to prove that Tank Davis has had a better career than Kosei Tanaka is ****ing laughable.

[South Champion]

It’s an algorithm

it has no objective thinking. It doesn’t know what happened in the fight. It only knows who won and lost and calculates from there.

So Tom Schwarz must’ve amassed more points from his wins than Wallin.

That's the problem with BoxRec. A guy like Tim Bradley has only lost to Pacquiao, but he also has a win over Pac. It doesn't take into account the fact that the win was a bad decision, plus all of the close calls he had.

[Eff Pandas]

it has no objective thinking. It doesn’t know what happened in the fight. It only knows who won and lost and calculates from there.

This is what you really need to improve on if you want more accurate computer rankings &/or to predict future fight winners more often.

You need some sorta means to calculate what actually happened in the fight that isn't just scorecard based. Like if somehow you could put a number on ring generalship & competitiveness or other things like that round by round BEYOND the scorecard. Cuz everyone who lost the round 10-9 ain't putting in the same effort.

Then again the problem there is it'd be impossible to track this with 100% accuracy at all levels of the sport without introducing some new scorecard metric at a minimum or preferably a video of every fight that you could have some computer program look at to measure those things that tell the story of the fight better.

[deathofaclown]

Of course they can. They can change the numbers to favour any fighter they want.

Face it, AJ is number 3 in the world