Akaland Power Ranking

The Akaland Power Ranking (APR) is the ranking system used for the Akaland SSBU Circuit. It lists what is believed to be the most accurate top 12 in the server with regard to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. From iterations 1-6, the APR ranked all competitive Ultimate players in the Akaland Discord server. Due to concerns with growing player pools and potentially upsetting players who find themselves on the lower end of the list, the APR has been revised to only rank the top 12 in the server for iterations 7-present.

Overview
The APR is measured in three different categories: Judge Rank (JR), TrueSkill™ Rank (TSR), and combined True Rank (TR). The official APR is scored in terms of True Rank, but all three rankings are displayed on announcements.

Judge Rank
The first ranking factored into the APR is the Judge Rank. Members of the community, handpicked by Akamos, compile their list of top 12 players and submit their ranking to be included in the APR. A player's Judge Rank is the average placement given by the judges, ranging from the highest possible 1.0 to the lowest possible number, which changes depending on the number of judges. If a player is included on one judge's ranking but not another's, the judge who did not include that player will be counted as having ranked that player 13th out of 12, so all judges' opinions are still incorporated.

The Judge Rank is the first rank displayed in the APR and the more important of the smaller rankings, making up 60% of the True Rank. The judges change in Quantity and identity on every new iteration of the APR, with only a handful being perennial judges. Judge Rank is rounded to one decimal place.

TrueSkill™ Rank
The second ranking factored into the APR is the TrueSkill™ Rank. This ranking makes use of the TrueSkill™ algortihm developed by braacket.com, including every player's various wins and losses and compiling what it finds to be the most unbiased ranking based off of tournament results alone. Players can, however, challenge each other to "elo matches", in which players agree to have their best of 5 set played outside of a tournament setting be spectated by a tournament organizer and included in the TrueSkill™ Rank.

Due to the inability of an algorithm to watch matches or take into account practice matches outside of a tournament setting, the TrueSkill™ Rank has been relegated to the lesser of the two rankings included in the True Rank, claiming 40% of said ranking.

Calculation
The True Rank is calculated as an average of the previous two rankings, but with different weights attributed to each rank. The Judge Rank takes up 60% of the True Rank, while the TrueSkill™ Rank takes up 40%. The formula for calculating True Rank is (JR x .6) + (TSR x .4).

Use
The True Rank is the final ranking for each player, meaning that one player scoring higher with judges or the algorithm than another does not decide their PR placement, but instead the weighted average of the two. A player can have a worse Judge Rank than another and still place higher due to a better TrueSkill™ Rank. Additionally, True Rank is rounded to two decimal places.

Iterations
V1-V6 ranked all players in the server. For the sake of consistency, these will be reduced to the top 12 plus three honorable mentions.

APR V1
April 13, 2021 HM: Flame, jkae13, Trendonamo

APR V2
May 8, 2021 HM: jkae13, Jackson, Greenlit

APR V3
May 29, 2021 HM: Map, whyguy, Greenlit

APR V4
June 30, 2021 HM: Delta Zulu, Map, Greenlit

APR V5
July 19, 2021 HM: whyguy, Greenlit, Map

APR V6
July 29, 2021 HM: Flame, BlackNebula, Greenlit

APR V7
October 3, 2021 HM: wrecc, WahluigiKing, whyguy

APR V8
November 22, 2021 HM: whyguy, BlackNebula, Map

Trivia

 * APR V1 did not use TrueSkill™ Rank, it was a hand-designed Elo system run by Tenn0n.
 * The only three players to be ranked in the top five of every single APR are Akamos, NicoDee, and Tenn0n.
 * Greenlit is the only player to appear as an Honorable Mention more than once and never make the PR.
 * MacTheAvenger, BlackNebula, Mello, and Delta Zulu were all considered PR players and voted into spots before ever playing in a tournament.
 * Akamos, Tenn0n, whyguy, and Spectro are the only four to appear as judges for every single APR.