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Old 07-27-2008, 06:02 PM   #42
professordp
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: New Jersey
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Quote:
Originally Posted by djday45 View Post
My advice is dont get caught up in formulas and calculations rating fighters in this game is much more than a science. It's what "feels" right that you feel in your bones thats what the fighter was like.

Now the more you research fighters and boxing in general you will find its a game of opinions, sometimes flatly contradictory ones lol.

My other golden rules is to test, test and test your ratings again and again.
But and here is the other killer it is very very easy to make many fighters very very average so to make it possible to account for very weird results in their careers, that is a mistake.

Take for example the Hart-Johnson result, now as I have rated them their is very little chance of their historical result being repeated as it should be, this does not mean that Hart is badly underated or Johnson the opposite, sometimes especially in boxings distant past results are just unexplainable apart from looking at more dubious answers.
Wiser words were never spoken! I really appreciate and respect what you are doing here, but trying to simulate boxing is really a subjective process---much more so than any other major sport simulation. I know that Data Boxing started to quantify the sport thirty years ago (I played the game back then as I did the board version of TBCB). I remember reading (it might have been Negamco/BLM's All Sports Digest) that Dating Boxing was a better game because it was more "accurate". That might have been the case, and perhaps it still is (I think Data Boxing is still around). But TBCB was and is a heck of a lot more fun. Data Boxing had a special Liston/Patterson rating that ensured that Sonny would always take Floyd out in the first round. Over the nearly thirty-five years I've been playing TBCB, I must have had at least twenty simulations of their fight. Generally, Floyd is gone by five--once or twice I recall the fight going the distance. And once, Patterson kayoed Liston!!!

Now, some would say that points to a deficiency in TBCB. I say no! I've been playing sports simulations since 1962, and personally I think that too often "accuracy" is substituted for realism---there is a difference I think.

For me the fun of sports simulations (like watching sports) is to see the unexpected take place. As long as there is some relationship between ratings and reality, it's okay with me if once in a while Patterson knocks Liston out!

Ratings are approximations. I give you a great deal of credit for recognizing that the "official" TBCB ratings are not sacrosanct and change them as you see fit.

Last edited by professordp; 07-27-2008 at 06:06 PM. Reason: typo
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