About Warthog's Game Leagues

The Purpose:

     Warthog's Game Leagues is a FREE online automated ranking system.  It is meant for personal use but also works exceptionally well for large groups and/or serious competition.  If you and your friends like to compete at any game and want to keep track of records and rankings, this is the place to sign up.  Warthog's Game Leagues can be used by anyone for any game, whether it be video games, sports, board games, or online competitions.  If you can think of anything that requires a ranking system, you can create it here.  For example, if you play games online, you could have your own clan ladder.  If you are in college and have competitions among different floors in your dorm, you could create a league to fight for bragging rights.  If you play in a baseball league and want an easy way to keep track of records, it can be done here.  The possibilities are limitless.

     This ranking system, although intended for personal use, can be incorporated into serious competition.  The advanced ranking system works well with small or large groups, making it ideal for leagues such as a worldwide ladders for online games.  The game leagues provide several security measures to reduce cheating and increase fair play.  Recent improvements to the site have brought exciting new features to the league, including tournaments, team tournaments, and team leagues.

     If you have ever wanted to create your own league for any game, look no further.  Creating a new league is absolutely free and takes less than 5 minutes to complete.  To see firsthand how the leagues work, you can participate in our Interactive Demo, which will take you through the various functions available for each game league.
 

Background:

     The idea for Warthog's Game Leagues started in the winter of 1999.  My friend had just been introduced to playing Duke Nukem 3D™ over a modem, and wanted to get our whole group of buddies involved.  We all had a lot of fun playing, but something was missing.  We all loved to compete, and wanted to keep track of our wins, etc., and see which one of us was the best player.  My friend attempted to make a web page to accomplish this; We would call him over the phone with our match results, and he would make changes to the page and post them to his site.

     This system caused two major problems.  The first was the question of how to rank everyone.  It was difficult to go by win percentage, because anyone that played a poorly-skilled player could gain rank easily.  Similarly, going by most wins was a problem because not everyone could play regularly.  We figured it would be ideal if we could somehow get a skill rating for each player that factored in how difficult the opponent was and adjust the ratings accordingly.  I found a standard skill rating system that has been used by the US Chess Federation for years, and it seemed to be a very fair way to rank players.

     This did not solve our second problem, however, which was automatically updating the stats on the web page.  My friend still had to manually calculate the ratings, edit the web page accordingly, and re-upload the changes.  This process could take up to 10 minutes for a single match!  Needless to say this was not very efficient, especially since we played up to 20 games per day.  I decided to take it upon myself to make the whole process automated and available from any computer that could get on the internet.  I already had a strong programming background, and all I needed to do was to figure out how to implement the program through web pages.  While I was figuring out that aspect I was coding out a text-only DOS and Linux version of the program.  I then figured out the work necessary for the web page portion of the program, and I proceeded to finish what I had started 2 years earlier.

     I hope you enjoy using my site as much as I have enjoyed creating it.  Competition is a great experience, but remember these are only games, so enjoy yourself and have fun!

Warthog
warthog@whgl.net