IPSC ELO rating

An Elo based rating system for IPSC

About IPSC ELO rating

Using IPSC match results from level 3 matches and upwards, all shooters will get a Elo performance rating relative to all the other shooters performances.

Elo rating systems in general estimate the skills of players who participate in a common activity. The specific Elo-MMR algorithm that we use, is designed for activities in which moderate to large numbers of players are ranked at competitive events, and results cannot be standardized across different events because each event features novel challenges, such as in obstacle course races, rock climbing, and academic olympiads, or the contestants are evaluated relative to others at the same event, perhaps by a panel of judges with some degree of subjectivity, as in competitive ballroom, figure skating, and gymnastics. Just like in IPSC.

In these settings, it's often useful to quantify how good a player is. Ratings could be used to track a player's progress over a training programme, set motivational objectives, predict likely champions, create invitational beginner-only or expert-only events, or select top ranked players for a regional or national team. Two properties of Elo-MMR make it particularly well-suited to these aims:

The main problem of doing this in the IPSC world, is accumulating and reading the match data. There is no standard in the different scoring system software products, which mostly produce some form of PDF file that are hard to read back into a database. There is also no global and public unuque id for a IPSC shooter, so matching the names in a match result to the database is a very fuzzy thing to do, and therefore error prone. However, we try to match shooter first-names, last-names and region the best we can from match results with our database. If you consistently sign up in matches with exactly the same name, we will find and match your data much better.

Also, we are sadly not perfect, just like the data we recieve. We might shoot a mike here or there in matching shooter names, or getting all the match data. Please be gentle, don't DQ us, because an error in the Elo rating is not a safety violation, even when feelings might get a little hurt sometimes. Just contact us to help us fix errors, or support us with sending in match results. If you want to support this effort otherwise, please also contact us direclty!

Questions and Answers

No, not yet. The software is still under development, and more match results are needed.

Shooter ratings will change when match results are added, even if they are in the past. But this will just make the ratings more accurate and things will smooth out over time. After we stop adding old match results, ratings will only change if a new match has been added, as it should be.

Yes and no.
  • No, because the best IPSC shooters are determined by the IPSC World Shoot, held every 3 years. (Check the results of the last one in Thailand here)
  • Yes, because the IPSC Elo rating also reflects everything that happens in between IPSC Wrold Shoots (which is a lot!).
  • Yes, because the IPSC Elo rating is rating shooters for their performace over time in relation to all the other shooters, recalculted "live" after every newly added match, not by the performance of a shooter in a single match.
  • Yes, because the IPSC Elo rating reflects almost all IPSC shooters, not only IPSC World Shoot participants.
  • No, because we don't have all the worldwide match results available for us to rate.
  • Yes, because we do our best to get the most match results we can. And show us someone who has all the results, and can say that this Argentinian IPSC shooter is about as good as this Czech and this Thai and this Australian one.
So you decide!

Usually after a new match has been entered. You can see if the match has been processed by the Elo algorithm by the checkmark in the match list.

You can subscribe to our RSS feed with your favorite RSS reader. The feed will keep you informed whenever a new IPSC Elo rating has been calculated, and which matches have been addad into the database.

You can also check our Site news page for updates.

Ratings are always dependent on the rank you achieve in a competition relative to the other ranked shooters in that competition. If you place in front of a shooter that is ranked above you, your rating score will improve. If you place behind a shooter that is ranked below you, your rating score will decrease.

To improve your rating you have to compete, and beat the shooter(s) ranked above you.

You can also make a small donation to us, but this will only improve our personal rating of you as a supporter, and not your actual IPSC Elo rating. ;-)
Any support is highly appreciated, though!

We get our data from publicly available match result data, that has been published openly on the internet.

One stage at a time... We may add them in the future!

No, we were just sad seeing it disappear. Since IPSC is such a competitive sport, a rating system is such a much needed and fun thing to have!

We don't have nearly as much data, and also the rating system we use might be a bit different. Over time and with more data the ratings will smooth out.

  • To be included in the rating you must have competed in matches for which we have gotten and processed the match-results.
  • You have to have competed in at least 2 ranked matches to be included in the ratings, to get a good and solid first rating of you as a shooter. This may change in the future when we have more match data available.
  • Also, only match results reaching back a maximum of 5 years are processed in the ratings. If you stop competing, you will be dropped from the rankings 5 years after the last match you competed at.
  • This timespan of 5 years should include 2 IPSC world shoot events, so top shooters should be represented well in the ratings.
  • Level 4 and 5 matches are weighted more heavily in the ratings to reflect their importance.
  • 0% and 0.0000 points match results are not included in the rating, as these are most often shooters which were not present and did not compete in the match.

You probably are a revolver shooter (lone gunman) and alone in the revolver category (or any category) in this match. Although you made 1.st place and 100%, there is nothing and nobody in this competition to compere against, so a rating can't be done.

Shooter profiles are a work in progress, but you can send us a nice profile-image and your homepage link / instagram link / facebook / youtube link via email, and we will gladly add it manaully for now.

Yes, we have added some direct links, allowing you to jump right to the important information.
Watch out for the buttons above the elo division ranking tables, in the match results division tables and in the shooter info dialog. You can directly link and jump to all of those. Pressing the buttons will copy the link to your clipboard.

Use this in your Instagram story, Facebook post, Wahtsapp message to your local IPSC group oder on your Homepage.

There is a performance issue in the library we use to implemnt the filters. It handles this big amount of table data very poorly. No short-term fix in sight yet, but slow filters are better then no filters, and it does work OK when filtering match results.

The best way is to send us links to regional IPSC websites where matches and their results are listed regularly. This is the easiest for us to keep up with.

If you send in match results my mail to matchresults@ipscelo.com, please include following data:
  • Match name
  • Match date
  • Match location
  • Link to result, or PDF of result with all the overall division results included
Thank you for helping!

Of course! Any help, comment or suggestion is very much appreciated. You can send in match results, report incorrect data or help out otherwise. Just contact us!

More information about the Elo rating system

Thanks

We want to thank the whole IPSC family for being such a good and welcoming community!

Special thanks go out to: