It sounds like you're basically after a measure of playing skill, so the "best" players are the ones who are most likely to win. The simplest measure of this would be total points divided by games played.

This could cause people to "game" the system by not playing as many sessions as they otherwise would. But it's an informal thing, right? There are no prizes for coming first other than bragging rights? If so, maybe just telling them not to be a dick might work.

But it might not. In which case, you could reduce the number of points for low places, and not divide by the games played. Eg you could have 1st - 100 pts, 2nd - 60 pts, 3rd - 40 pts, 4th - 20 pts, 5th - 10 pts. This would reduce the incentive to skip games, but also not give your host a big advantage (since he'd actually have to place well to gain points).

Yes, each session everyone that finishes higher than 10th gets a number of points. And we keep a running tally of points and the winner at the end of the season is the person that has the highest avg of points/games played. There is a minimum of 8 out of 24 games required to qualify for the player of the year. We use the average of the points accumulated divided by number of games played. This is skewing in favor of the people who play nearest the minimum number of games.

Points are awarded as follows:

Place Finished Points

1st Place 120 pts

2nd Place 100 pts

3rd Place 80 pts

4th Place 60 pts

5th Place 50 pts

6th Place 40 pts

7th Place 30 pts

8th Place 20 pts

9th Place 10 pts

Not sure what you're getting at... are you using some kind of points-based system where people get a number of points for each game they play?

Hong,

Seeing as your a statistician, I was wondering if i could ask your advice on something non-D&D related that has to do with statistics. I belong to a poker league. We play 24 events over the course of a year. People play a varying number of events. Only one person plays every event (because we play at his house). We are trying to figure out a formula to decide player of the year, but we keep running into statistical hurdles. Doing it one way practically guarantees that the host cannot win, and doing it another way virtually guarantees he will win. How do we do something like this that will relatively fair, especially to the host?

If you need more specifics, as I am sure you do I will be glad to provide any data needed.

Much appreciation for any help you are willing to provide.

eleran