Tournament ranking formulas

[eastbay]

Party Poker and I'm sure other sites have "tournament ranking" listings that have a formula that adds up points for tournament wins.

Isn't it fairly obvious that these ranking systems should also included losses in the formula? If a bad player plays in every single tournament he can open in a window, even a blind squirrel will find a nut once in awhile, but he's going to lose his shirt in the process.

Now, this is obviously part of Party Poker's business aim: they want people to play as much as possible to collect more fees, and if people will play more to push their rank up that's almost certainly why they put the rankings up in the first place.

But it just seems like a terrible system to rank people only on wins. You ought to score points for a ratio of wins to losses, otherwise it says very little about how good you are, and a lot more about how much you play. I have a lot more respect for a guy who plays 5 tourneys and places well in 2 of them, than for a guy who plays 100 and places well in 5, although the second guy will have the higher "rank," all else being equal. It just doesn't make any sense.

I dunno, I hope someday a real player will start a site, and can do some of these things in a way that makes sense, rather than in a way to maximize profits. Dream on, I guess.