After the opening Riichi tournaments of 2015 the UK has moved a further position up the ranking list into third place behind Russia and Denmark, and narrowly (but pleasingly) ahead of Austria, courtesy of some excellent performances by UK players.
In the Graz Open, the UK duo of Martin Lester and Philip Bielby finished 7th and 9th respectively in a strong field which included several of the top European players. The winner was Henrik Leith (DK), with Alexander Doppelhoffer (A) as runner up and EMA President, Tina Christensen (also DK) in 3rd.
In May, Daina Chiba who finished second in the 2014 UK Open, took 3rd place in the Aachen tournament. Daina has only played in these two tournaments so far, and so, like Shaun Drury (presently ranked No.4 in the UK) his personal ranking is only likely to improve when his next tournament results are known.
A full description of the system of ranking is available on the EMA website, but to simplify it down to its essentials the system works (narratively) as follows. By winning a tournament, a player gains 1000 points which progressively reduces down the field to award 0 points for last place. An individual’s points ranking is a combination of the average points earned in the qualifying period in all the MERS ranked tournaments a player has played, and the three best results each player has achieved in that same period. A weighting is applied to make bigger/longer/more important competitions be reflected more strongly. It is a dynamic system whereby points earned atrophy by 1/3 per year for three years, after which time old results, however good or bad, count for nothing. Country rankings are arrived at by balancing the average rating of all players in that country and the rating of their top three players.
However, it is always assumed that a player has played in at least five tournaments to achieve their points tally. So the good news for Daina and Shaun (and maybe UK too) is that despite having played only two and three qualifying tournaments respectively, their individual ratings are presently artificially low.