The World's #1 Starting Pitcher (and Football Team)
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Since the 1960's, the idea of the "Elo Rating System" has dominated tournament chess. It has percolated from there into soccer, into college football, into video games, and so on.
It's a rating system that is both (1) mathematically as strong as a python, and (2) intuitively simple. The average player has a rating around 1400 "class C", within a range that is about 800-2400. If he sits down on Friday night across from a player with a rating of 1601 ("class B"), he's got about a 25% chance, 3 to 1.
