How ratings work

The fency rating is an Elo rating, as chess uses, worked out from every bout and result kept here: the FIE’s, the EFC’s, British Fencing’s and AskFRED’s. It isn’t any federation’s own.

A bout

Every fencer starts at 1500. Before a bout, the two ratings say how likely each is to win: 400 points apart, the higher wins ten times in eleven. After it, each moves by how far the result beat or fell short of that, times the K-factor: 40 over a fencer’s first 30 bouts, while little is known of them, and 20 after. Beating someone you were expected to beat moves you a little; beating someone 400 above you moves you up by nearly the whole K.

An event without its bouts

Where an event’s bouts aren’t kept, as with British Fencing’s, the EFC’s and AskFRED’s results, its placings count instead. Each fencer is set against everyone else placed, the top 128 at most, as if they’d fenced each once: above them is a win, below a loss, tied a draw. The event moves a fencer by at most what one bout would, and counts as one bout towards their first 30.

Order and weapons

Events count in the order they were fenced, a season at a time from 2005; an event’s pools before its tableau, and the tableau from its biggest table to its final. Each weapon has its own rating. Team events don’t count.

Who is shown

A fencer’s rating is shown once they’ve fenced a cadet or older event: under-14 and youth events count, but don’t alone give a fencer a rating anyone sees. The board on Ratings lists the men or the women in a weapon who have fenced at least 30 bouts and fenced this season or last; a fencer’s place beside their rating is their place on it. The season is the FIE’s, from August.

Comparing ratings

A rating says how a fencer does against the fencers they meet. Men and women rarely meet, so their ratings are two pools and the tops of the two needn’t match: a pool where the best meet each other more often, over more events, spreads further. Compare a rating with others in the same weapon and gender.

How often

Every rating is worked out again from the start each day, so a result corrected or added later changes everything after it. A fencer’s page says the day their rating is as of.