Dragon Boat West

Hey all.

I know last year the rankings took a while to get going but it sounded like it involved a lot of work, and only 1 person did it all. Is that the same this year? Will there be a 2009 Ranking system based on all sorts of races the teams have competed in? I surely hope so because it makes for an interesting read, in my humble opinion of course!  :lol:

Yup, the 2009 ladder rankings are currently being worked on. It should be up sometime this week with results up to the Dragonzone regatta.

TWO msn(u) msn(u) for ur efforts Blue!  :D

Alright, the first set of rankings have been posted for 2009! Check them out here (http://www.dragonboatwest.net/index.php?page=14).

Some things to take note of:
- Currently covers the Dash for charity, Lotus regatta, Gorge Super Sprints, FCRCC regatta, & DZ regatta. (I planned on including the fcrcc women's regatta but don't have heat-by-heat results for it yet)
- Uses results from all heats : mixed, womens & junior
- Uses last year's final ladder ranking as a starting point for this year's ladder but then removed teams that have not raced so far this year.
- The Burnaby Fire Dept team has been removed from the ladder because they are an exhibition team paddling with four women and so, not really a mixed team. (Otherwise, they'd be in the 17th spot between Laoyam Eagles and VO2Max.)

Currently all teams are ranked together in one big ladder. The plan later will be to seperate the womens and junior teams out into their own ladder based on the results of heats that are for their respective divisions only. Womens and junior teams that race in mixed heats will still be included on the main ladder.

FYI, some might wonder why Eric Hamber and Laoyam Eagles are way up on the ladder compared to the other junior teams. The reason is that the eagles had a high "pre-seed" from last year's ladder (see here (http://www.dragonboatwest.net/index.php?page=13)) and Eric Hamber has managed to beat the Laoyam Eagles a couple times this year.

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As always, there may have been a few data entry errors. If something seems off, let me know about it and I'll double check the ranking database.

Thanks for all the work....

A couple of ranking look a bit weird.

One example - Banana Fusion finished ahead of VO2Max & Team Vortex at the Dragon Zone Regatta but are seeded after both of them

Good work and thanks for the effort...one minor correction "Saggin Dragons" at #36 is a women's team.

While Banana Fusion should in theory rank ahead of VO2 Max and Vortex based on the final DZ regatta results, BF doesn't rank above these two teams on the ladder because they were in a different heat (and didn't beat them in an earlier heat). This is just how a ladder works; you have to beat a team above you (or beat a team that beat a team above you, etc, etc...) directly in order to take their spot on the ladder ranking.

Big Blue: Thanks for the rankings. But why are the Nothin Dragons ahead of the Eh Team? They have finished behind the Eh team every regatta this year. Vast Gibst?

Its probably because of heat #7 at the Sat AM DZ regatta. They took 1st place in that heat beating the likes of Ready, Jet, Go & How wet can you get; teams that were ranked higher on the ladder.

... and what does Vast Gibst mean? I thought my googling skills were pretty decent but I couldn't figure it out! ;)

Vast Gibst = Care to elaborate? that'd be my guess lol

Any plans to include the "Prev" column like last year in the next update to the rankings?

Thanks Blue!

I had a German friend that said that to me all the time. I think it means "what gives?"
My german is as good as my English.

Nothin Dragon had the Lane 2 Red Gemini in Heat #7, so they had that 10 to 12 second advantage of the clean boat.

Nothin' Dragon had nothin' draggin'. Hahahahaha.

Okay, I'm sorry.

The ranking ladder have been updated with RTADBF results. All heat results were used for the ladder with the excpetion of the open division and guts & glory races.

As usual, there will be some instances where team A is ranked higher than team B on the ladder, despite team B technically finishing in a higher overall place at Alcan. Please understand that this is how a ladder works and it won't mirror festival placings all the time. You are welcome to inquire on a certain team's placing (just in case of a data entry error) but 95% of the time, I find that data is correct and the ladder is working as it is designed.

The next rankings update will be made after the Harrison festival.

navy is comin  ?   :D

Ok.. I think we've waited long enough for the Vernon results to come out. The rankings have been updated with results up to Harrison with the exception of Vernon. It
will just have to be included in the next update instead.

Next update will be done after Victoria.

Thanks for the update, looks good!  :D

  Hi great job with the rankings , though I have noticed a glitch .
Nanaimo festival heat 5 -Portland Firedragons did  beat Puppy Love 2.
When I open the ladder the  order is reversed this does alter the rankings .
  Thanks

Thanks for pointing that out.

Rankings and ladder browser have been updated. Another correction I've made is that Burnaby Fire Breathing Dragons was paddling as a full mixed team for Harrison, so they're now on rankings.

Rankings (and ladder browser) have been updated with results from the Gorge Fest and Victoria Festival.  (Still no Vernon results... oh well).

If you spot any mistakes, please let me know. I'll be out of town until Sept 5th, so I probably won't be able to respond and/or make corrections until after I'm back.

Next and final update is scheduled for after Kelowna.

May be you mean "was giebt's" that means as much as "what's up"  8))

Sorry, I'm new here but can somebody explain to me how a team gets onto this ranking scale?
How do you choose the races?
We started a new junior team this year - the Water Gremlins rock and I would like to show them how good they really are. They will start in Penticton...

Frithjof

Thanks Blue, noticed Race 50 and 65 in Victoria are missing from the Ladder.  Also, I think you need to put in some frames into the ladder.


If Blue does factor in the Penticton Festival into these rankings, your team will automatically be entered onto the rankings.

Anyone know when the Rankings will be updated for Veron & Kelowna?

Vernon results are here.

http://www.vernondragonboat.com/pdfs/2009_VernonResults.pdf

They've apparently been around for awhile but have been buried in the website.

You may want to note that there were some issues in the semi finals where the fastest boats all spun out due to some rogue waves from power boats along the course and ended up in the B Division.  So really the B division had all the A division teams.

Just wondering why the San Francisco dragon boat festival results are not included in the ladder rankings?

Probably because the fellow that does that hasn't had a chance to catch up. He doesn't have the Vernon or Kelowna results posted yet either. And of course San Fran is after Kelowna. Patience is a virtue.  :lol:

I'm pretty sure that the SF results will not be included, because if you look at the past 3 years of rankings, It'll give some substance to that statement.

The reason for that is (I'm assuming) because it's somewhat irrelevant and out of the DBW's 'scope'. What I mean by that is there are only a handful number of teams from our 'local' area that attended. Including the other 100+ unknown teams (from SF fest) into the ladder ranking will possibly skew with the ranking data abit, hence you wont see results from Portland, Ontario, Las Vegas, etc.

There are probably only 2-3 teams a year from Canada that attend SF DBF annually in addition to maybe 5 US teams which go to Canadian races.

Yea but some of those San Fran teams are on the rankings since they raced in the RTA Festival in June.

True, but at which point do you draw the line.  There were several Alberta based teams that trekked over the Rockies for a number of festivals, but the regattas in Alberta aren't included in the rankings.   

The ladder system only works properly when the pool of teams that it focuses on are consistent.  To introduce data that is mostly comprised of teams that are not currently in the rankings only compromises the integrity of the system.

Though, one could make the arguement that LARD could be moved up and take Magnum's ranking based on the results in San Fran, but in the name of consistency I would argue against this.

^ well said.

Keep in mind that the ladder rankings are not meant to be taken as the end all be all, take it with a grain of salt.

Its useful to see how strong a certain teams are in relative to the DB world in the 'northern west coast', but its not definitive in terms of whether team A is definitely better than team B, unless of course if you are FCRCC Team Canada lol

Hey folks. Sorry for the delay in getting the last rankings update up. I could give you my usual excuses about being busy, etc, etc - but in the end, its just excuses. ;) I'll get cracking on this stuff. Hopefully, I can get it done within the next week.


Thanks for finding that. However, I've got a little dilemma now... Since Vernon happened before the Gorge and Victoria festival, it will retro-actively change the rankings results of the two races. (And from the comment about the semi-final spin outs that happened in Vernon, it may also incorrectly skew the rankings too. Although with the results browser, it is possible that those in the know can identify the results that need to be excluded from the ranking calculations.)

Is everyone ok with that?

Sure no problem! Who are we to argue for someone doing something that you ain't even getting a dime for doing it!  :shock:

thanks everyone for your hypotheses on why the San Fran festival is not included in the ladder rankings.  It answers my question..sort of but just to correct those who think there are only a 'handful' or '2-3' Canadian teams in attendance, there were actually 14 Canadian teams competing at SFO this year, a significant amount considering there were a total of 33 visiting teams.  Pretty good representation, EH?

I would like to see more festivals and more teams included. As long as there are enough teams currently on the ladder that participate in a festival then it should be relevant, keeping in mind no system is perfect.

It would be interesting to see more Alberta and west coast US teams. It is DB West.   

Maybe there could be a percentage so you know relatively where you are. 50th out of 100 is different than 50th out of 250. Being ahead of 50% of the teams on the ladder though gives you something consistent to track as teams are added.

The rankings have been updated with results from Vernon, Penticton, Portland and Kelowna. (I planned on adding Seattle but couldn't find heat by heat results) Sorry for being so late in getting this posted.

I'm also going to delay updating ladder browser because I'm planning on adding a new feature to it. So the "why is my team in this spot" head scratching will unfortunately continue for a few days while I finish this up.

Thanks for the update! appreciate the hard work.

Thanks for the update!  Woo DH Beat almost went up 20 ranks  8))

The ladder browser has been updated. Scrutinize away! :)

The new feature I've added is team result pages. Select a team from the starting page or click on a team name anywhere in the ladder browser and it will take you to a page showing all of the results recorded for that team. From there click on a result heat to go to that heat in the ladder browser. Hope you find this feature as handy as I did.

That's a handy feature indeed, it can summarize a whole season quite nicely!

Thanks for updating!

One of my teammates found this:

http://www.gwndragonboat.com/pub/docs/Ranking%20System_11_11_09.pdf

I'm not sure how/why/where/when but he's a great researcher when it comes to DB stuff.

It's the ranking list for every crew in Canada.

I'm not a big believer in ranking systems for DB, but I think DBW's is slightly more accurate than trying to find an average time for every team in Canada.  So many outside factors can affect a team's time over 500m, like wind, type of water, depth of the course, the race itself, what officials actually judge to be 500m, etc etc.

Thanks for sharing, the GWN rankings don't seem that accurate - at least as to the teams I am familiar with.

I'm not a big believer in DB rankings either; there are so many things to take into consideration.

Not to push that GWN has the ultimate system, but they do have methodologies for calculating water depth etc.

http://www.gwndragonboat.com/Default.asp?id=129&l=1

But I agree with you, I think DBW's system is more accurate. But it might be fun to see whereabouts your team places across the country?...725 teams, wow.

feels like dejavu! lol

http://www.dragonboatwest.net/index.php?topic=5713.0

There's nothing else to talk about!  ;)