You say goodbye, I say "Elo?"

By Herowannabe, in X-Wing

So, more and more lately I've been seeing people on Vassal with "ELO" after their name. I was curious and so I looked it up and found that it refers to a ranking system created by Arpad Elo, used for ranking Chess players, and which has been adapted for other sports/games as well.

My question is: How does this apply to X-wing? Is there a site or something out there where people are tracking their Elo scores? How does one determine their Elo score (not that I have the least bit interest in doing it myself, I'm just curious about what's going on).

Challengeboards.net hosts a ladder for our ELO games. Two players agree to an ELO match, duke it out, and report.

The Wikipedia article has all the information that you need to run an Elo-based rating system. I'm using it for my local gaming group. The only addition that you would need is a calculator or Excel to make the math easier.