Burnie Fox is the current organizer (but thanks to Rusty Shields, Dan Sullivan, Tom Repetti and Brian Youse, Steve Dennis) of the ASL PBeM Ladder.
The current ladder standings are published periodically in the ASL Mailing List. The easiest way to find an opponent is to post to the list and ask for a game. When you start a game, tell the Laddermeister. When you finish, tell the Laddermeister.
by Tom Repetti
(updated by Lars Thuring)
By general preference, the Internet Ladder is pretty free as far as rules go. It's about 4 + X years old by now and our people seem to like its format, which I understand is different than the GEnie format.
When you join the ladder, you get 1000 points. You gain or lose points by winning or losing games against other Ladder people. Ladder rankings are based on these points, so if you beat the top-ranked player, you'll gain plenty of points, but you won't take over the #1 spot unless the points you gained were enough to give you more than everybody else.
The points system awards you for playing the highly-ranked people, but at this point in the Ladder's lifetime, I'd say that beating the #1 guy would only give you about twice as many points as beating the #53 guy. Typically you get about 35 points per win.
There's no official system for challenging players; you just post a message to the ASL discussion list asking for an opponent for a Ladder game. You can play anybody, regardless of how far above or below you they are ranked. You don't have to keep a certain number of games going at any time. Play as many or as few games as you like against anybody you like. All you have to do is inform me about which games you've started and their outcomes. AREA ranking is not necessary for these games. The Ladder is open to all formats of play: pbm, pbem, FTF, or whatever.
Actually, it's not vital that I know beforehand about every Ladder game that starts. That would interfere with playing FTF games on the Ladder since many people don't decide on which scenario to play until they sit down with their opponent. So it's fine to just inform me of the outcome of the game. In fact, if you and your buddy have a Lost Weekend of ASL and played 7 games in a row, you can simply report the winners to me (in chronological order, please!). So just let me know that the winners were Joe, Bob, Bob, Joe, Bob, Joe, and Bob, and I'll take care of the rest.
Everyone starts out at 1000 points as a baseline. You gain points/lose points depending on the differential between you and your opponent based on the following:
These are the points that are gained/lost depending on who wins/loses a scenario. If the lower rated person wins a game, then the lower rated person gains the points in the "Lower Wins" column while the higher rated person loses those points. "Bonus Points" are added/subtracted from the base points to get the total points gained/lost.
Point Differential Lower Wins Higher Wins (at scenario end) 0 - 50 25 25 51 - 100 30 20 101 - 250 35 15 251 - 500 40 10 501 - 45 5
These are variable points added to the winning players base and subtracted from the losing players base. To find the bonus point total:
(1000 - (Pwin-Plose)) * 0.01
Where Pwin = point ranking of winner
Plose = point ranking of loser
Bonus points are FRU.
Incentive for Playing: Each player is awarded 2 points per game completed, regardless of who won, as an incentive for participation in Ladder games.