Greatest ever Apterites

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Gavin Chipper
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Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Mark Deeks
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post by Mark Deeks »

In terms of Apterous history, they are definitely the four "yardsticks", I'd say.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Gavin Chipper
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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!
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Post 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
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Post 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 :)
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who was dale in the end
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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!
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Post 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.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post by Ian Volante »

Number of unique days played is hard to discount as a measure in this context.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Jennifer Steadman
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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).
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Post 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.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post by Gavin Chipper »

Rob Foster should be included in any list now I think.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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Post by Zarte Siempre »

Agreed.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post by Elliott Mellor »

That Zarte ain't too bad either.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post by Gavin Chipper »

Elliott Mellor wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:50 pm That Zarte ain't too bad either.
Yep. Decent player.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post by Christy Cooper »

Jonathan Wynn is a good player too, I'd definitely place him near the top.
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Re: Greatest ever Apterites

Post 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.
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