Battle Rating System

The Cigar Wars website employs an ELO rating system to give a “Battle Rating” to every cigar. The higher the battle rating, the higher the cigar will be ranked in the standings.

The ELO rating system on Cigar Wars works like this…

A cigar’s Battle Rating is represented by a number, which increases or decreases based upon the outcome of fights between ranked cigars. Every cigar starts with a base score of 1400. After every match, the winning cigar takes points from the losing one. The difference between the ratings of the winner and loser determines the total number of points gained or lost after a match.

In a series of matches between a high-ranked cigar and a low-ranked cigar, the high-ranked cigar is expected to score more wins. If the high-ranked cigar wins, then only a few rating points will be taken from the low-ranked cigar. However, if the lower-ranked cigar scores an upset win, many rating points will be transferred. This means that the Cigar Wars ranking system is self-correcting. A cigar whose rating is too low should, in the long run, do better than the rating system predicts, and thus gain rating points until the rating reflects their true battle rating.