World Ranking — Methodology & Regulations

1. The three numbers

SEGA deliberately separates how well you performed from what you earned by competing. A ranking must measure performance, not merely attendance.

1. Performance Score — your best AI-judged score (0–100) across counted events. Pure quality, independent of how many events you entered.
2. Tournament Ranking Points — points earned by finishing position at each sanctioned event, scaled by that event's grade. Rewards competing and placing well against real fields.
3. World Ranking Score — the final ordering key: a published blend of the two above plus consistency and recency.

2. World Ranking Score formula

Consistency rewards a stable body of results (little spread between an athlete's scores); a single-event athlete receives a neutral value until a second result exists. Recency favours results earned more recently within the ranking period. Ranking Points are normalised against the strongest athlete in the field so the two 40% components are on the same 0–100 scale.

3. Tournament grades & strength-of-competition

Not every event is equal. Each sanctioned event is assigned a grade; its points are multiplied by the grade factor:

4. Placement points (per event, before the grade multiplier)

Event points = base points × grade multiplier. Finishing position is the athlete's rank on AI-verified score within their division at that event.

5. Ranking period & counted events

• Rolling 52 weeks. Only results from the last 52 weeks count. Older results expire automatically, so the ranking always reflects current form.
• Best 6 events. Only an athlete's six highest-scoring events within the period are summed for Ranking Points, so no one can inflate their standing purely by entering many events.
• Additional results remain visible on the athlete's profile but do not add ranking points beyond the best six.

6. Medal vs. Ranking — a deliberate distinction

These are two different things, and SEGA keeps them separate on purpose:

• Medal — awarded on an absolute performance threshold. You earn a medal by clearing a standard, not by beating a particular field. No default winners.
• Ranking — based on performance + sanctioned competition points over the rolling period.

7. Winning Gap

For every athlete the ranking shows the exact gap between their best Performance Score and the next medal threshold — and points to the Execution / Stability / Difficulty breakdown in their AI scorecard, so a near-miss becomes a concrete training target rather than just "4th place."

8. Ranking movement

Each ranking period is snapshotted, so an athlete's page shows their previous rank, current rank, and the change (▲ / ▼). Athletes with no prior snapshot show NEW rather than an invented history.

9. Tie-breakers

1. Higher Performance Score (best single AI-judged result).
2. Higher-grade best event.
3. More recent qualifying result.
4. Fewer events used to reach the score (efficiency).

10. Eligibility, corrections & appeals

• Only AI-verified results from SEGA-sanctioned events are eligible.
• Data corrections follow the same audit trail as tournament results; every change is logged.
• Appeals use the standard SEGA AI Judge appeals process (video re-run + deterministic AI re-score + Master-Judge review).
• The ranking is computed transparently in the viewer's browser from published data and this published formula.

11. Governance

This regulation and every numeric parameter (weights, grade multipliers, placement points, period length, counted-event cap) are owned by the SEGA Technical Committee. Changes are versioned and dated. Until the Committee formally adopts this document, the live ranking is labelled a draft model.