Eligible events

Any poker event that is played in casino, cardroom, TV set, etc. is eligible for the IAR ranking as long as it meets the minimum criterias.

Also, the event must be open to anyone who is willing to pay the buy-in fee / qualify under specific rules outlined by each casino or is invited in a freeroll or a must buy event.

The following events are NOT eligible:

• Weekly events
• Any event where more than 25% of the total prize money is not awarded in money.
• Satellites events

Freerolls

Freerolls events are eligible for IAR rankings as long as they are open to the general public. Therefore, freerolls like the PPT are eligible for IAR rankings.

The IAR points system use the buy-in as one of the variable in order to calculate the total amount of points that each money finishers are entitled. Since freerolls have no buy-in value, that would considerably reduce the amount of points generated by a good result in those events. To ensure proper fairness to players, a 'virtual' buy-in is calculated for each player that have a money finish in those events. IAR calculate the buy-in that would have been required to play the specified event if it would not have been a freeroll. Therefore, if a freeroll gives away $500,000 USD and 250 players competes for the prize money, then the virtual buy-in that will be used for points calculation is $2000 USD.

Money versus Points

Most of the player ranking systems uses the money earned in order to rank the players from around the World. Despite the fact that it is an easy system, it has a major flaw: it rewards only the players that have achieved a victory in the biggest event. Ironically, a player which is not even ranked can go from perfect unknown to the best player in the World if he wins the biggest event ever. Knowing that on a certain day, any player can achieve a victory, this method of comparing players cannot be accepted as being reliable.

IAR puts forward a point system which rewards 3 important aspects of poker: buy-in, size of field and actual rank. Events with the biggest buy-ins will generally attract the best players making those events very difficult to win. Events with large fields (above 500) are also very difficult to win simply because of the number of players involved in the tournament.

How a poker event qualify for the IAR Rankings

In order to ensure a minimal level of quality players, numbers of players and total prize pool, IAR decided to put a minimal level for each event to qualify for the various rankings. We could have decided to include every event that was played around the world since the early 70's but two problems would arise from this:

1^st : Not every tournaments have been meticously recorded in the past 35 years and consequently, many results have been lost / not recorded / badly recorded and that would have reduced the precision of our rankings.

2^nd : Some players are playing in almost every event regardless of the buy-in or the size of the field and this would give them a definite and unfair advantage over the players who plays only in major tournaments.

Of course, our system is not perfect. In order to be perfect, we would have to take into consideration the number of events that each players entered and compare it with their actual finish, but unfortunately, this information is not and have never been available. Although the system is not perfect, we consider it to be the closest to it because it takes into consideration 3 factors: The buy-in, the size of the field and the total prize.

In order to qualify for the IAR rankings, here is the list of criterias that must be achieved and the list of event that qualifies automatically:

In order to qualify for the IAR rankings, each event must have a minimum of $100,000 USD (or the equivalent in foreign currencies) in prize pool, regardless of the buy-in or the number of participants.

That means that a tournament with a $400 USD buy-in will need at least 250 players to qualify. In the other hand, a $10,000 USD buy-in event would only need 10 players to qualify.

If an event prize money is reduced by a percentage (%) or dollar amount of the total buy-ins for administrative reasons (house fees, staff, etc...) and that reduces the total prize under $100,000 USD, then this event does not qualify for IAR points. The amount that is actually returned to players must be at least $100,000 USD.

Formula used to award points to tournament poker players.

When it comes to award points to participating players in a tournament, many systems can be used. After months of researches, simulations and advices given from professional poker players, we came to the following formula which takes into account the buy-in, the number of players, the total amount of dollars given back to players and the Level of the tournament.

Level: In consideration of the quality of the tournament played, it is of common acceptance that the major events are the $10,000 USD and more buy-in events. From there, we know that anything below this level will have less professional poker players playing and the difficulty to win the tournament is lessened. We identified 5 levels in poker and we gave a coefficient to each one of them which will be used in the point formula:

• Level 1 : tournaments with buy-in under $1,000 USD (coefficient = 0.125).
• Level 2 : tournaments with buy-ins between $1,000 USD and $1,999 USD (coefficient = 0.25).
• Level 3 : tournaments with buy-ins between $2,000 USD and $4,999 USD (coefficient = 0.50).
• Level 4 : tournaments with buy-ins between $5,000 USD and $9,999 USD (coefficient = 0.75).
• Level 5 : tournaments with buy-ins of $10,000 USD and above (coefficient = 1.0).

Once the Level coefficient have been identified, we apply the following formula to find out how many points the player will earn in a tournament:

• A= Money earned by the player in the event (USD)
• B= Number of players
• C= Player rank
• D= Buy-in (USD)
• E= Points earned
• F= Level coefficient (from 0.125 to 1.0)

Formula:

If A = $0 USD , then E = 0

If A>0 , then E = 10 X ((B/2) ^0.5/(C^1.1) ^0.5 ) X (1 + LOG (D^1.5)) X F

As you can see, in order to achieve points in any event that qualifies under the IAR rules, each player must be 'in the money', otherwise, the number of points they score is 0 (zero).

Example of points earned in an IAR qualifying event:

Joe Smith finishes 6 th and earns $5000 USD in a $2000 USD buy-in event where 50 players entered.

A = $5000 USD and therefore he is entitled to earn points

F = 0.5

E = 10 X ((50/2)^0.5 / (6^1.1)^0.5 ) X (1 + LOG (2000^1.5)) x 0.5

E = 10 X 25^0.5 / 7.1774^0.5 X (1 + LOG 89442.7191) x 0.5

E = 10 X 5 / 2.6791 X (1+ 4.9515) x 0.5

E = 10 X 1.8663 X 5.9515 x 0.5

E = 55.54 points

In order to avoid massive deviation of the statistics, regardless of the results of the formula above, no player can achieve more than 1,500 points in a single event. For example, in 2005, Joseph Hachem should have scored more than 3,700 points but is credited with the maximum possible for a single event of 1,500 points.

How IAR computes the All-time World rankings?

The All-time rankings add every points earned since the very first events that qualifed under the IAR criterias which is the Main event of the 1970 World Series of Poker held on May 15 th, 1970 and won by Johnny Moss.

Those ranking determines who are the best tournament poker players of All-Time from the very beginning.

How IAR computes the Active Players World ranking?

The current rankings uses a sliding formula to determine who is the best player in any given day. Every points earned in the past 30 months is added and then multiplied by the sliding coefficient depending on when the results was done. The sliding coefficient goes like this:

• 0 to 3 months, 100% of the earned points
• 3 months (+1 day) to 6 months, 90% of the earned points
• 6 months (+1 day) to 9 months, 80% of the earned points
• 9 months (+1 day) to 12 months, 70% of the earned points
• 12 months (+1 day) to 15 months, 60% of the earned points
• 15 months (+1 day) to 18 months, 50% of the earned points
• 18 months (+1 day) to 21 months, 40% of the earned points
• 21 months (+1 day) to 24 months, 30% of the earned points
• 24 months (+1 day) to 27 months, 20% of the earned points
• 27 months (+1 day) to 30 months, 10% of the earned points

The choice of using a span of 30 months for the active ranking has been made in order to allow every player enough times and tournament participation to prove their level of playing in at least two and a half years of play which allows them at least to participate twice or thrice in each yearly tournaments. Nowadays, most professional tournament poker players enters an average of 125 tournaments in a 2.5 years span, which is statistically significant in order to compare their results with their peers.

How IAR computes the World Poker Player Of the Year (WPPOY™) rankings?

The World Poker Player Of the Year (WPPOY™) rankings adds every points earned from January 1 st of the designed year until December 31 st of that same year.

Those rankings are to determine which poker player had the best year in any given year. Because of the shorter span of time (12 months), it rewards the player who had terrific streaks of money finishes and/or victories. As you can expect, winning the biggest tournament of the year (WSOP main event until now) award a very enviable position in this World ranking but that only does not assure the WPPOY™ title.  3 titles are awarded on a yearly basis by IAR: The WPPOY™, the Rookie Of the Yeat and the Women Of the Year. In order to be considered a Rookie, the player must earns his first ever IAR points in the calendar year regardless of how long he has been playing poker.

Modes of play.

Modes of play refers to the number of players that are around each table for the entire duration (or most of the duration) of events. There are three modes of play identified by IAR. Full table (FT) where the number of players is set between 8 and 10. Shorthanded (SH) where the number of player around the table is between 3 and 7 and Heads-up (HU) where only 2 players are facing each other in each round.

Styles of play.

Styles of play refers to the opportunities (or lack of) that the players have during the event. There are three styles of play identified by IAR. Freezeout (FO) which means that once the player is out of chips, he is eliminated from the tournament. Shootout (SH) means that only the table winner advance to the next round regardless of the mode of play and Rebuy (RB) is a style where a player can rebuy chips once he is at a certain number of chips or below. Add-on events also falls into this category.

Sometimes many players will share the same rank as a result (mostly in a Heads-up mode or Shootout style). In such instances, the IAR points awarded to players in this situation is the average of the sum of the points they would have had in an event where they would have been ranked individually divided by the number of players sharing the rank. For example if 3 players share the 6 th rank in a Shootout event but they would have been ranked 6 ^th , 7 ^th and 8 ^th respectively in a Freezeout event, if the IAR points in the Freezeout event would have been respectively 123.48, 118.36 and 113.26, then each player in the Shootout event would be awarded 118.37 (average of 123.48, 118.36 and 113.26).

There is a special case when the mode of play is Heads-up. According to the definitions stated above, the style could be either Freezeout or Shootout. In this special case, every Heads-up event will be considered a Freezeout event

IAR facts

We have created the IAR facts that are shown at the right of the homepage in order to give all kind of information to the visitors from statistical facts to players personal information or game hints. Each fact is numbered and only one is randomly shown at all time. Come back often to see them all.

Foreign currencies

Since more than 80% of all poker tournaments and events takes place in the United States, the main currency used throughout the entire IAR systemm is the USD (US dollar). Whenever a tournament is held outside of US or uses a different currency for the buy-in and prizes, a conversion is automatically performed into USD. The value of the foreign currency is translated in USD at the exact day of the ending of the tournament using the OANDA currency converter system ( http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic ). Therefore if a tournament was held in Great Britain and ended on January 17 th , 2002 and had a 1500 buy-in, that would be automatically transformed into a 2155.80 USD buy-in because the rate was exactly 1.4372 USD for each British Pound at this very day.