Women Division at Windmill Windup 2012

Introduction to Power Rankings

Here are the charts representing the computed strengths of the teams in the women's division of Windmill Windup 2012. You should probably read this post for an in-depth explanation of the data presented here.

In all charts, you can click on a series in the legend on the right to toggle its visibility. Clicking on points in the graph shows detailed information about that particular team and how it performed at this point. Hovering over a round displays a tooltip with all teams that are currently visible, their scores and respective ranking. Dragging inside the chart lets you zoom in to focus on fewer rounds.

Most crucial for the Swissdraw format at Windmill Windup 2012 is the ranking of the teams after round 5, after which the top 8 teams advance to a full playoff bracket whereas the rest of the teams continue with three more rounds of Swissdraw format. The reasoning behind this choice of format is that brackets provide the fairest way to establish a winner, whereas the rest of the teams play more "for fun" as they cannot win the tournament anymore. Therefore, continuing the Swissdraw ensures that they do not replay a previous opponent, while still generating attractive match-ups. For computing the power rankings and strengths of the teams in Round 6 and up, the games in the playoff bracket are also taken into account. This is a somewhat delicate choice, because the teams in the brackets were playing "for a win only", so they might have "saved their energy" once they realized that a game was lost/won. So these scores might not directly reflect the strengths of the involved teams. They were nevertheless included to get a more complete picture.

Interactive Charts

Winner Prediction

Out of 56 games played in this division, the final strength predicts the winner of 49 (87.5%) games correctly. Out of 49 games after round 1, the strengths computed from data before the game predicted the winner of 29 (59.2%) games correctly.

All Games Sorted by Upsets

Here is a list with all games played, sorted by their "surprise" value. The first line can be read as follows: The biggest surprise in this division was the round-8 game where YAKA lost to ABriCos with a margin of -12, whereas their final strengths would have predicted a loss with margin of -2.07 only.

Hovering over the team names displays their strength right after that game was played, their final strength and their final (Swiss) rank. The 10 biggest upsets are highlighted in orange.

If you played in one of these teams, I am very curious to hear whether this list corresponds well with the feeling of surprise you had while actually playing the game. Please drop me a line.
RoundTeam1Team2Scoremarginpred margin curUpset
18094:8 YAKA ABriCos 3 - 15 -12 -2.0654 98.6963
18094:4 GB Women Masters Lay D's 8 - 13 -5 2.6786 58.9609
18094:5 Lotus YAKA 14 - 12 2 9.3554 54.1019
18094:7 Lay D's GB Women Masters 5 - 15 -10 -2.6786 53.6029
18094:5 Hot Beaches Team 1935 5 - 14 -9 -1.8152 51.6214
18094:8 GB Women Masters Dyki Krali 15 - 2 13 6.2159 46.0240
18094:8 Hot Beaches Box 8 - 14 -6 0.5189 42.4961
18094:1 Hot Beaches Lay D's 12 - 2 10 3.6736 40.0233
18094:2 ABriCos Lotus 13 - 14 -1 -7.2900 39.5641
18094:2 Hot Beaches GB Women Masters 15 - 8 7 0.9950 36.0600
18094:7 Viima Lotus 7 - 15 -8 -2.3027 32.4592
18094:7 Box Seagulls 15 - 9 6 11.3803 28.9476
18094:4 Viima Italy Women National Team 15 - 9 6 0.8231 26.8003
18094:4 Hot Beaches Primavera Olandese 13 - 11 2 -3.1292 26.3087
18094:8 Germany Women National Team Lotus 12 - 15 -3 1.9471 24.4738
18094:4 ABriCos Box 10 - 11 -1 3.5819 20.9938
18094:6 Lay D's Dyki Krali 15 - 7 8 3.5373 19.9157
18094:7 Hot Beaches Dyki Krali 12 - 9 3 7.2109 17.7317
18094:6 Italy Women National Team Team 1935 15 - 6 9 5.4120 12.8737
18094:3 Dyki Krali Seagulls 15 - 7 8 4.6883 10.9674
18094:1 ABriCos Dyki Krali 11 - 4 7 10.2739 10.7184
18094:5 Italy Women National Team Box 15 - 4 11 7.7461 10.5879
18094:7 YAKA Team 1935 10 - 14 -4 -0.8176 10.1277
18094:3 Primavera Olandese YAKA 11 - 12 -1 2.1316 9.8069
18094:6 Viima Primavera Olandese 15 - 7 8 4.9211 9.4796
18094:5 ABriCos Seagulls 15 - 3 12 14.9622 8.7746
18094:7 Germany Women National Team Italy Women National Team 15 - 7 8 5.0729 8.5679
18094:8 Italy Women National Team Viima 15 - 13 2 -0.8231 7.9699
18094:4 YAKA Dyki Krali 15 - 4 11 8.2085 7.7925
18094:8 Lay D's Seagulls 15 - 4 11 8.2256 7.6973
18094:1 Lotus Viima 15 - 10 5 2.3027 7.2754
18094:8 Team 1935 Primavera Olandese 11 - 15 -4 -1.3140 7.2146
18094:2 Box Primavera Olandese 9 - 15 -6 -3.6481 5.5314
18094:5 GB Women Masters Dyki Krali 13 - 9 4 6.2159 4.9102
18094:5 Lay D's Primavera Olandese 6 - 15 -9 -6.8028 4.8277
18094:1 Germany Women National Team Primavera Olandese 15 - 8 7 9.1709 4.7128
18094:2 YAKA Viima 6 - 15 -9 -7.0527 3.7920
18094:7 Primavera Olandese ABriCos 12 - 10 2 0.0662 3.7396
18094:2 Germany Women National Team Italy Women National Team 15 - 8 7 5.0729 3.7137
18094:3 Viima Team 1935 15 - 7 8 6.2351 3.1149
18094:3 Germany Women National Team ABriCos 15 - 4 11 9.2371 3.1078
18094:6 ABriCos Lotus 6 - 15 -9 -7.2900 2.9241
18094:1 Italy Women National Team Team 1935 15 - 8 7 5.4120 2.5217
18094:6 Germany Women National Team YAKA 15 - 5 10 11.3025 1.6965
18094:3 GB Women Masters Italy Women National Team 8 - 15 -7 -8.2222 1.4938
18094:1 GB Women Masters Seagulls 15 - 3 12 10.9042 1.2008
18094:4 Germany Women National Team Lotus 14 - 11 3 1.9471 1.1086
18094:2 Team 1935 Dyki Krali 13 - 5 8 9.0261 1.0529
18094:2 Lay D's Seagulls 15 - 6 9 8.2256 0.5997
18094:5 Germany Women National Team Viima 15 - 10 5 4.2498 0.5628
18094:6 GB Women Masters Box 8 - 9 -1 -0.4761 0.2745
18094:1 YAKA Box 12 - 10 2 1.5165 0.2338
18094:3 Hot Beaches Lotus 5 - 15 -10 -10.3530 0.1246
18094:4 Team 1935 Seagulls 15 - 1 14 13.7144 0.0816
18094:3 Lay D's Box 10 - 13 -3 -3.1547 0.0239
18094:6 Hot Beaches Seagulls 15 - 3 12 11.8992 0.0102

Some Observations

  1. After round 5, one can clearly distinguish between the top 4 teams (strength 4.87 and up), then the next 5 teams (1.94 to -0.13), then the following four teams (-2.41 to -7.73) and the last team (-14.5).
  2. The race for the last playoff rank 8 (after round 5) in terms of strength would have been extremely close between ABriCos (-0.1306) and Hot Beaches (-0.1253). So in terms of power rankings, Hot Beaches would have made the cut to the playoffs instead of ABriCos. Given how both teams performed afterwards, that seemed to be a reasonable option as well. Both teams' last matches were strange, they ended up in the top-10 upset list: ABriCos beats YAKA with a margin of +12 (while strength predicted a +2 win) and Hot Beaches lost to Box with -6 (while strength predicted a very small win by Hot Beaches).
  3. Seagulls were by far the weakest team with a strength of -13 and below, implying that an average team in this division is expected to beat them with a margin of 13 points. If the opponents do not manage to win with high margins, their strength decreases accordingly
  4. Germany came out on top in terms of strength from round 2 on. Taking into account the strengths after round 8, they were predicted to beat Lotus in the final with a margin of +3, it turned out differently, as Lotus won the final with 15-12. Same story in the bronze-medal game where Italy beat Viima with +2, whereas they were predicted to lose by a few points.
  5. three of the top-10 upsets occurred in the last round. It looks like YAKA (3-15 against ABriCos), Dyki Krali (2-15 against GB Masters) and Hot Beaches (8-14 against Box) did no have the expected power anymore to live up to the strength they have showed before.

Further Discussion

If you want to share your own observations or get involved in discussions about ranking teams and devising optimal ranking algorithms, please take a second to join this new Google Group.