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Show HN: Fun Elo-based leaderboard for games (shmelo.io)

3 points by itsikap ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I built a leaderboard app to track rankings for my Catan group. It’s based on the Elo ranking system—the same system used in chess.

Everyone starts with 1100 points, and your score changes based on game results. Beating a stronger player earns you more points.

Turns out, the "elo" system isn’t just for chess. It works for any competitive game. We’re now using it for a variety of board games, and even for padel, and tennis.

Recently, I decided to open it up to the public.

You can give it a try — it’s free.

3 comments

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Festro
You may not be unaware of this but Elo ranking systems are used in a lot of online multiplayer games these days, typically referred to as 'MMR' (multiplayer matchmaking rankings).

And, at least in that context, they're not regularly referred to as 'fun' XD. It's a very good system, but when they're also used to determine who you play in the pool of players it can regarded as a method to forcing players towards a constant 50% win rate or 'forced 50'.

Personally I think Elo is a nice neat system and it's cool to see you making it accessible for other offline use cases.

itsikap
Yeah, I was aware that a variation of the Elo system is used in esports, but didn’t know it had a bit of a bad rap. I can imagine it’s got its challenges when applied to a huge pool of players. I did a quick google search, and it seems like an interesting rabbit-hole :))

My goal isn’t to just use the elo system for the sake of it, but to bring a fun ranking element to competitive games like board games and stuff. currently elo system works for us, but if we find something better, no hard feelings.

Appreciate your feedback o/

maalber
Adding to this, ELO is also heavily used when evaluating, benchmarking and ranking state-of-the-art generative AI models. Particularly LLMs, image generation and video generation models.