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Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 8:26 pm
by Gavin Chipper
We have this thread on the best ever Countdown contestants, but doing well on Countdown is a arguably less reliable measure of skill than doing well on Apterous. You effectively get one shot on Countdown, and greatness battles between two players can be decided on one match between them. Apterous, on the other hand, has a wealth of information on players, who often play each other hundreds of times.

Who would you regard to be the greatest Apterous players of all time? I think this thread on Pro Ranks by Jack Hurst is quite useful, but obviously Pro Ranks aren't everything, as some people might play more against bots.

But looking at that list and also by the fact that Jack Worsley has dominated Pro Ranks since that list was made, I'd certainly put at least the top three from that list in an all-time top ten list without hesitation (there's quite a big gap from third to fourth). So that would mean Innis Carson and Kirk Bevins, along with Jack Worsley. Also, the ridiculous standard reached by Conor Travers, despite the fact that he is "only" 7th on that list, would mean that he too would automatically be included in any top ten. That's only four, and unless there are other players who are "under-appreciated" by Pro Ranks, I could just include more of the number 1 Pro Rankers. But I'll leave it at that for now. I would probably regard them as the greatest four Apterites.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 8:49 pm
by Mark Deeks
In terms of Apterous history, they are definitely the four "yardsticks", I'd say.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 8:58 pm
by Thomas Carey
Hard to argue with that. Dylan is the one that springs to mind other than those four. Co event performance could be another metric - obviously some people go to less events than others, so it's not that good (although much better than countdown performance), but when someone (Jack) consistently dominates a field of many good players, that's got to be worth something.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 9:42 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Thomas Carey wrote:Hard to argue with that. Dylan is the one that springs to mind other than those four. Co event performance could be another metric - obviously some people go to less events than others, so it's not that good (although much better than countdown performance), but when someone (Jack) consistently dominates a field of many good players, that's got to be worth something.
I was considering a separate thread for greatest ever CO-eventers!

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 10:40 pm
by Ben Wilson
Gavin Chipper wrote:
Thomas Carey wrote:Hard to argue with that. Dylan is the one that springs to mind other than those four. Co event performance could be another metric - obviously some people go to less events than others, so it's not that good (although much better than countdown performance), but when someone (Jack) consistently dominates a field of many good players, that's got to be worth something.
I was considering a separate thread for greatest ever CO-eventers!
I was going to mention that all four people you mentioned have won COLIN (and the Apterous Masters too) but I'll save that for your next thread. :P

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 11:24 pm
by Zarte Siempre
What Apterous tournaments are majors apart from The Masters? Cause some people might kill at them but not play that much otherwise. I seem to recall BDC being lethal but rarely playing enough to trouble proranks consistently.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 11:34 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Is there a complete list of Apterous Masters winners? I found this but it only goes up to 2012. I presume it's still going. Anyway, we have:

2008: Paul Howe
2009: Paul Howe
2010: Kirk Bevins
2011: Innis Carson
2012: Bob De Caux

So as well as the aforementioned Bob, we also have Paul Howe who was a top player in the early days. I think he would feature more highly on Jack's list if he's included the earlier Pro Ranks.

Edit - Paul Howe had a run of 12 weeks at number 1 Pro Rank and then 4 weeks (16 weeks out of 17 consecutive) from September 2008 to January 2009. In the same way that we call the early players of Countdown great even if their objective standard isn't as high as current players, I think Paul Howe could easily be considered a great of Apterous.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 11:40 pm
by Thomas Cappleman
I'd put Adam Gillard in the top 10, based on his complete dominance of the top all rounders list (http://www.apterous.org/statland.php?se ... l_rounders), and his large number of high scores (http://www.apterous.org/statland.php?section=highscores). May not be the very best in English countdown but could dominate in a lot of other countries.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 7:28 am
by Ben Wilson
Gavin Chipper wrote:Is there a complete list of Apterous Masters winners? I found this but it only goes up to 2012. I presume it's still going. Anyway, we have:

2008: Paul Howe
2009: Paul Howe
2010: Kirk Bevins
2011: Innis Carson
2012: Bob De Caux
2013: Innis Carson
2014: Conor Travers
2015: Jack Worsley
2016: Jack Worsley

YW :)

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 9:26 am
by Matt Morrison
who was dale in the end

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:33 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Matt Morrison wrote:who was dale in the end
Same as he was in the beginning. He never changed. Always on the Levell.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2016 5:28 pm
by Gavin Chipper
I decided earlier that my greatest 10 list would include Paul Howe, Kirk Bevins, Conor Travers, Innis Carson and Jack Worsley. In addition to the aforementioned Aggregated Pro Ranks thread, I was looking at players who have achieved over 100 max games in old 15 and new 15 combined. I haven't included those 5 because they're already in my list:

Dan McColm - 233
David Barnard - 232
Dylan Taylor - 173
Jack Hurst - 136
Chris Davies - 120
Mark Deeks - 115
Zarte Siempre - 105
James Nguyen - 101

Also, most maxes in an old or new Mocktorun:

Dylan Taylor - 117
David Barnard - 115
Mark Deeks - 115

Obviously these aren't necessarily great measures because not everyone necessarily plays Mocktoruns, and achieving a lot of max games might mean you just play a lot. But if I look at everything together, the other four number 1 Pro Rankers all stand up fairly well, so I'd probably include Chris Davies, Dylan Taylor, Dan McColm and David Barnard in my 10. And that leaves room for one more, which I'll give further thought to!

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 8:36 am
by Heather Styles
For me, best apterite has to look beyond performance in English standard variant only. Most of the players mentioned so far are pretty much one-trick ponies in terms of what apterous has to offer. I'm sure they would agree. So I'd be looking more at the likes of Adam Gillard, Innis, Marcus and Matt Hamer.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2016 1:35 pm
by Zarte Siempre
Heather Styles wrote:For me, best apterite has to look beyond performance in English standard variant only. Most of the players mentioned so far are pretty much one-trick ponies in terms of what apterous has to offer. I'm sure they would agree. So I'd be looking more at the likes of Adam Gillard, Innis, Marcus and Matt Hamer.
Whilst I think someone like Jack who has been so dominant at #1 for so long on the "main" element of Apterous would absolutely deserve to be included in such a list, I definitely agree with Heather that "Apterous" is more than just who has done well in 15 rounders. I'd also say that there are very underrated elements, such as someone like Catriona who is joint top of the multilingual leaderboard. So many people struggle to play this game of ours in one language - to be able to do it across multiple languages is extraordinary.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2016 1:48 pm
by Ian Volante
Number of unique days played is hard to discount as a measure in this context.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2016 3:19 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Zarte Siempre wrote:
Heather Styles wrote:For me, best apterite has to look beyond performance in English standard variant only. Most of the players mentioned so far are pretty much one-trick ponies in terms of what apterous has to offer. I'm sure they would agree. So I'd be looking more at the likes of Adam Gillard, Innis, Marcus and Matt Hamer.
Whilst I think someone like Jack who has been so dominant at #1 for so long on the "main" element of Apterous would absolutely deserve to be included in such a list, I definitely agree with Heather that "Apterous" is more than just who has done well in 15 rounders. I'd also say that there are very underrated elements, such as someone like Catriona who is joint top of the multilingual leaderboard. So many people struggle to play this game of ours in one language - to be able to do it across multiple languages is extraordinary.
What you both say is valid, and there are lots of different measures of greatness. But my main point of this thread was that because Countdown the TV show is sometimes a bit unreliable at measuring how good players are, looking at Apterous might be an interesting alternative, but still to measure people in terms of "normal" Countdown.

But there's no reason why several different metrics can't be incorporated into this thread.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2016 8:36 pm
by Jennifer Steadman
Ian Volante wrote:Number of unique days played is hard to discount as a measure in this context.
And number of games (someone who's played 1,000 games and got 100 max games is obviously significantly better than someone who's played 10,000 games and got the same number).

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 7:42 am
by Adam Gillard
Matt Le Tassier's not had a mention yet that I can see. Craig Chittenden was an early trailblazer in numbers stuff too. Glad Paul Howe and Jesus have both got a mention so far.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 10:45 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Jennifer Steadman wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:Number of unique days played is hard to discount as a measure in this context.
And number of games (someone who's played 1,000 games and got 100 max games is obviously significantly better than someone who's played 10,000 games and got the same number).
I don't think Ian's comment was serious though.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2016 1:30 pm
by Ian Volante
Gavin Chipper wrote:
Jennifer Steadman wrote:
Ian Volante wrote:Number of unique days played is hard to discount as a measure in this context.
And number of games (someone who's played 1,000 games and got 100 max games is obviously significantly better than someone who's played 10,000 games and got the same number).
I don't think Ian's comment was serious though.
Entirely serious. It's the only thing I'll ever be best at.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:25 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Rob Foster should be included in any list now I think.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:02 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Elliott Mellor has a total of about 35 weeks at the top of pro ranks now which would put him fourth on this list, so he's already worthy of consideration in a greats list.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 4:32 am
by Zarte Siempre
Agreed.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:50 pm
by Elliott Mellor
That Zarte ain't too bad either.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:19 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Elliott Mellor wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:50 pm That Zarte ain't too bad either.
Yep. Decent player.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:41 pm
by Christy Cooper
Jonathan Wynn is a good player too, I'd definitely place him near the top.

Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:43 am
by Elliott Mellor
Christy Cooper wrote: Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:41 pm Jonathan Wynn is a good player too, I'd definitely place him near the top.
With all due respect to him I'm not sure I'd agree with him being amongst the very top. I don't think he would either in fairness. Top guy though.