Fargo Races

What are "Match Charts" and how do I use them?

Before we move on to league scoring, let’s look at one more thing with Fargo Ratings: Match Charts.

Note: you can either use the Fargo app on your mobile device OR on in a browser here. Be aware that Fargo doesn’t really support the website. The login does not function. Fargo would like us all using the app. If anyone from Fargo read this, just take the login information of the page already.

I’ll be using the mobile app for my screenshots because I expect that’s how you’ll be doing it. The numbers will be the same.

Match Charts

To get to Match Charts, click the magnifying glass at the bottom of the screen

Next click the “Find Race” button at the top of the screen and then “Charts” on the upper right. Enter Fargo ratings for two players and pick a race. It should look something like this:

What does all this mean? For starters, the R2-R11 are approximate races. R5 means “Race to 5”, even though not all the races shown are exactly to five.

So based on my previous post, we know that we can calculate the odds of a single match between two players using the difference in the Fargo rating and and this formula:

\(OddsOfWinning = \frac{1}{1+2^{-\frac{FargoDifference}{100}}}\)

Don’t worry if you don’t know what to do with that. My example players have a 33.3% and 66.7% chance of winning. (400 versus 500)

What these charts are trying to do is create a matchup where the average match is approximately what you select in number of games and the better player still has an edge. Mike Page, one of the creators of Fargo rates, describes it here.

In both the Hot and Medium columns, the app is saying the 400 player would need 4 wins and the 500 player would need 6 wins. The 400 player’s odds of winning would go from 33.3% to 35.0%. In the Mild column, a 4-5 race puts the 400 player at 25.9%, which is actually worse for the 400 player.

So… it’s not trying to make a race that’s “fair”?

No. In the medium column, a 3-6 race is the closest at 53.2% odds in favor of the lower rank player. That’s key. Why would we want to tilt the match in favor of the lower rank? Well, Fargo doesn’t want to do that. (And why would they?) So it would appear, the app is picking the closest match-up to the “Race-To” number you want without giving the lower skill player an advantage.

Since in this case, the races in the three columns are all the same, let’s calculate Player 1’s (400) odds:

• 5-5 - 14.5% (Way worse than 1 game odds for 400 player.)

• 4-5 - 25.9% (Slightly worse than 1 game odds for 400 player.) ← Mild

• 4-6 - 35.0% (Very slightly better than 1 game odds for 400 player.) ← Hot and Medium

• 3-6 - 53.2% (400 player is now a slight favorite.)

• 3-7 - 62.3% (400 player is more of a favorite here.)

• 3-8 - 70.1% (400 player has a significant edge here.)

So you can see that Mild matchup isn’t great for the lower ranked player versus 1 game, but in a race to 5 straight up, it’s much better. (14.5% percent versus 25.9%)

(See comments below. Thanks Hans!)

Even if you switch to R11 (race to 11 “on average”), the recommended races are:

• Hot & Medium 8-14 39.9% for 400 player

• Mild 9-13 24.0% for 400 player

With 11 games on average you could get very close to a coin toss (7-14 would be 52.1% for 400 player.), but I think most of us would argue “That’s not really the point.”

Up next, how do BCA matches calculate handicap points?