How do league point formulas work?
Every league awards points to its players for each tournament they play, using the scoring system you choose when you create or edit the league:
- Logarithmic
- Square Root
- Linear
- Fixed (you enter the exact points for each place)
- Custom (write your own formula)
Custom formula variables
A custom formula is worked out once for each player at the end of a tournament. Some of its variables describe the tournament, so they hold the same value for everyone in it, and some describe the player being scored. Knowing which is which is most of the skill in writing a formula.
About the tournament, the same for every player:
| p | number of players |
| n | number of entries (including re-entries) |
| b | the buy-in |
| z | prize pool |
| m | number of paid places |
| t | tournament format (1 standard, 2 split, 3 shootout, 4 mystery bounty) |
About the player being scored:
| f | finish position |
| c | what they spent (buy-in plus their own rebuys and add-on) |
| k | knockouts they made |
| r | rebuys they took |
| a | add-ons they took |
| x | bullets they used (their total buy-ins) |
| w | winnings (the amount they won) |
| d | rounds from the final in a shootout (1 is the final round) |
For example, this formula gives each player a point for every opponent they outlasted, a 2-point bonus for each knockout, and subtracts a point for each rebuy:
(p - f + 1) + (2 * k) - r
Advanced: writing your own formula
Beyond arithmetic, two pieces of notation do most of the work in real league formulas: conditions and point tables. You can also use sqrt, log, log10, exp, pow, round, floor, fix, abs, min and max, and ^ for powers.
Conditions with ? :
A condition reads as test ? value if true : value otherwise.
f == 1 ? 50 : 10
That awards 50 points to the winner and 10 to everyone else. Note the double == for "is equal to". You also have <, <=, >, >= and !=, and you can join tests with and and or:
p >= 20 and f <= 3 ? 10 : 0
Conditions chain, which is how clubs write a different rule for each position. Each : hands over to the next test:
f == 1 ? 30 : f == 2 ? 20 : f == 3 ? 15 : 5
Point tables with [ ... ][f]
Instead of chaining conditions, you can list the points in order and pick the one for the player's finish:
[100, 85, 70][f]
The list is read by position: first place gets 100, second 85, third 70. Positions start at 1, so f lines up with the list without any adjustment.
Always guard a point table with a condition. If a player finishes below the end of the list, the formula fails and that player scores nothing at all. A list of three entries needs
f < 4:
f < 4 ? [100, 85, 70][f] : 0Use the
:value to set a floor for everyone else, for instance: 5to give five points for turning up.
Watch the brackets
Multiplication and addition are applied before a comparison, which quietly changes what a formula tests. Written without brackets:
30 * k + f < p / 3 + 1 ? 100 : 1
the test becomes "is 30 * k + f less than p / 3 + 1", not "is f inside the top third". A league can run a whole season on the wrong rule this way. Wrap the condition, or the whole conditional, in brackets:
30 * k + (f < p / 3 + 1 ? 100 : 1)
Formulas clubs actually use
These are real patterns from leagues running on Blind Valet, simplified only where a club's list of places was very long.
| What the club wanted | Formula |
|---|---|
| A point for turning up, nothing else | 1 |
| A leaderboard of wins only | f == 1 ? 1 : 0 |
| Knockouts, plus a point for the win | k + (f == 1 ? 1 : 0) |
| One point per opponent outlasted, with a podium bonus | p - f + 1 + (f < 4 ? [4, 2, 1][f] : 0) |
| A fixed table, but everyone else still scores | f < 10 ? [1500, 1200, 900, 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 200][f] : 100 |
| Higher stakes worth more, every rebuy costs points | log(p + 1) / f * 10 + b - c / 4 |
| Points scaled by the size of the prize pool | sqrt(p + 1) / f * z / 500 |
| Only the top third scores, scaled by field size | 30 * k + (f < p / 3 + 1 ? sqrt(p / 10) * [120, 90, 70, 60, 50, 45, 40, 30, 25, 20][f] : 1) |
| Each place a percentage of a base that grows with the field | f == 1 ? round(600 + p * 10) : f == 2 ? round((600 + p * 10) * 0.82) : round((600 + p * 10) * 0.74) |
The stakes example shows why the two groups matter. It uses b and c, which look similar but sit on opposite sides: adding b lifts every score in a higher buy-in tournament, because the buy-in belongs to the tournament, while subtracting c takes back a share of what each player individually spent. A player who rebuys twice finishes with fewer points than a player who took the same place on one bullet.
Checking your formula
The league settings preview the points for every finishing position as you type, so you can see the shape of the payout before you save. If the preview is blank, the formula isn't valid yet: check for a missing bracket, or a point table that a low finish can run off the end of.