Scoring System

By default, the Points Based Scoring algorithm is shown throughout the Board Game of the Year website. However, you can instead view the rankings using the Average Ranking algorithm by selecting it from the Labs menu.

Points Based Scoring

For a yearly list, our scoring system is broken down into two parts: Ranked lists and unranked lists.

For ranked lists, where the reviewer ranked them by a number, we applied the following scoring:

  • 1st place: 10 points
  • 2nd place: 8 points
  • 3rd place: 7 points
  • 4th place: 6 points
  • 5th place: 5 points
  • 6th place: 4 points
  • 7th place: 3 points
  • 8th place; 2 points
  • 9th place or lower: 1 point

For unranked lists, where the reviewer just provided an unnumbered list of games, each game listed received 3 points.

All-Time List Scoring:

If we were scoring for an all-time list instead, the points-based scoring would use higher point values to account for the larger number of games typically included in all-time rankings:

  • 1st place: 200 points
  • 2nd place: 180 points
  • 3rd place: 170 points
  • 4th place: 160 points
  • 5th place: 150 points
  • 6th place: 140 points
  • 7th place: 130 points
  • 8th place; 120 points
  • 9th place: 110 points
  • 10th place: 100 points
  • 11th-20th place: 90 points
  • 21st-30th place: 80 points
  • 31st-40th place: 70 points
  • 41st-50th place: 60 points
  • 51st-60th place: 50 points
  • 61st-70th place: 40 points
  • 71st-80th place: 30 points
  • 81st-90th place: 20 points
  • 91st-100th place: 10 points

Average Rank Scoring

This method is a bit more mathy, to use a technical term. And we all know, math makes everything better.

At the most basic level, this algorithm attempts to identify the average ranking of a game across all lists. The lower the average ranking, the better the game is considered. However, not every list ranks the same number of games, so we need to adjust for that. We do this by calculating the average ranking for each game, then dividing by the total number of games ranked on that list. Normalizing the average ranking to a 0-100 scale, we can then calculate the score for each game.

But we can't stop there. We need to account for games that a reviewer didn't rank. We do this by setting those games as the highest possible rank in their list. For instance, if a reviewer ranked 10 games, then every other game they didn't rank is considered to be ranked 11th. If another reviewer ranked 20 games, then every other game they didn't rank is considered to be ranked 21st.

This method is a bit more complex, but it provides a more accurate representation of how a game is ranked across all lists.

Here's an example:

  • Reviewer A ranks 10 games, ranking Earth as their #3 game.
  • Reviewer B ranks 20 games, ranking Earth as their #12 game.
  • Reviewer C ranks 10 games, but doesn't include Earth in their list.

In this scenario, we would first set the unranked games for Reviewer C as 11th place. We would then calculate the average rank for Earth as follows:

  • Reviewer A: 3 (rank) / 10 (number of games ranked) = 0.3
  • Reviewer B: 12 (rank) / 20 (number of games ranked) = 0.6
  • Reviewer C: 11 (rank) / 10 (number of games ranked) = 1.1

We then average the normalized results: (0.3 + 0.6 + 1.1) / 3 = 0.66667. This would be the score for Earth.

This number, on its own, may not make much sense, but its power comes from comparing it to the scores of every other game. The lower the score, the better the game is ranked.

Learn more about this site or check out the Eligibility Criteria for scoring.