Next: Calculating Felo ratings, Up: Using Felo
Most of the time you will enter bouts. There are a couple of further things you should know about it. In principle, the format of a bout is very straightforward:
2006-12-24 Jesus -- Gabriel 15:3
The three columns are separated by tab stops <Tab>.
If you have a sequence of bouts of the same day, only the first one needs to have a date. This makes the bout list somewhat clearer:
2006-05-01 Anakin -- Elmer 5:3
Anakin -- Wile Coyote 5:1
Elmer -- Wile Coyote 5:3
Elmer -- Anakin 1:5
Wile Coyote -- Anakin 2:5
Elmer -- Wile Coyote 5:10
Anakin -- Wile Coyote 9:10
If you know the chronological order of the bouts of one day, you can be very fussy and add a so-called day index to the date, counting from 1:
2006-12-07.1 Peter -- Mike 15:12
2 Peter -- Julia 13:15
3 Julia -- Mike 8:15
4 Mike -- Max 10:15
(Bouts without an index get the index `0' internally.)
Every single bout within a team relay match is a quite ordinary single bout – so why not use it for the Felo rating. Unfortunately, it happens that a strong player beats a weak player with an extremely high result, say, 18:1. Mathematically, this doesn't effect the fairness and reliability of Felo ratings, however, beginners could become reluctant to take part in a team match at all. Therefore, you can mark team bouts with a ‘*’:
2006-10-12.1 Anakin -- Elmer 5:0 *
2 Wile Coyote -- Anakin 3:10*
3 Wile Coyote -- Elmer 5:5 *
4 Anakin -- Elmer 8:0 *
5 Wile Coyote -- Anakin 3:10*
6 Wile Coyote -- Elmer 3:5 *
Such bouts are weighted like a 5 point bout, no matter of the result. Weighting them not too highly probably is a good idea anyway since team matches seem to follow their own rules.
Foreign fencers are fencers who belong to another club or college (for example) but they visit the local group. They may also be fencers you meet on a tournament. Be that as it may, they have a current Felo rating, yet they are not listed in the Felo file. It wouldn't make sense to add them since they fence in another group normally, so you cannot keep track of their Felo rating.
Despite this, bouts with them should be used in the calculation:
2006-10-14 Anakin -- Riker <1764> 0:5
Thus, you give their Felo rating (hopefully they don't fib about it) in angle brackets ‘<...>’. You can add their name, too; the Felo program doesn't care.
This works in both directions of course. If a fencer of your group reports to have won in another group or on a tournament against a 1452 fencer 15:11, you can add it accordingly.
By the way, it may be appropriate to mark bouts with foreign fencers with a ‘*’ as well because their Felo rating is not as credible and/or compatible as a local Felo rating.