Online Tourney Ranking (OTR)

What is the Online Tournament Ranking and why do we have Tournament Rankings anyway?

I noticed one day that there were a lot of players who ended up at the final tables of a lot of tournaments, but never seemed to get recognized as a “good” player because they either didn’t make the top 10 or don’t have time to play as many games during the month as other players did. I thought there should be a way to get these players noticed so with the help of Merlin and with the permission and approval of Wizard the Online Tournament Rankings was born.

Here is how the rankings are calculated:

If you show up and are out of the first round, we award you with a participation award which is 1 point.
For every round you advance you get an additional 5 points
So if you are out in the second round, you get 1 point for showing up and 5 points for advancing one round so your total is 6
The final table has one change to it. If there are 24 players or less the 1-6 looks like this
If you come 1st you get 5 additional points
If you come 2nd you get 4 additional points
If you come 3rd you get 3 additional points
If you come 4th you get 2 additional points
If you come 5th you get 1 additional point
If you are 6th well you get no additional points.

If however there are 25 or more players, then everyone seated 1-6 gets an extra point
1=6 2=5, 3=4, 4=3, 5=2 and 6=1

So, the total number of points that can be earned by the top player in a 24 or less numbered tourney is 16 ( 1 + 5 + 5 + 5)and the total number earned by the top player in a 25+ tourney is 17.(1+5+5+6) (1 for showing up 5+5 for advancing 2 rounds and 6 for being 1st)
The reason we decided on this formula was to allow players who can’t play in every tournament to still have a chance to catch up. By keeping the numbers low everyone can still be in the running well into the year. Also this way coming in first doesn’t give you a HUGE advantage. Your ranking can be based on consistent play. You can be in the top 5 and have never won an online tournament.