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This is the last of my planned posts on ADLG. It's a postscript to my November post in which I announced that I was taking a break from ADLG for at least a year and follows on from my post about the BHGS ADLG rankings.
Rankings! What are they good for?
In brief, the BHGS rankings are odd. Play in fewer than seven competitions in the last twelve months and your ranking reflects your attendance as much as your performance. Play in seven or more competitions and it is based on your top six scores, dropping your worst scores.1 As I said, odd and very "old school".
The ADLG website maintains a different, international set of rankings based on the ELO system which takes into account the difference in rankings for every game:
The difference between the ratings of the winner and loser determines the total number of points gained or lost after a game. If the higher-rated player wins, only a few rating points (or even a fraction of a rating point) will be taken from the lower-rated player; however, if the lower-rated player scores an upset win, many rating points will be transferred. The lower-rated player will also gain a few points from the higher-rated player in the event of a draw. This means that this rating system is self-correcting. Wikipedia
As such they reflect player performance more accurately that the BHGS version: no dropping poor results.
A comparison
I have always tracked my BHGS ADLG ranking despite never managing more than six events in twelve months. As of 20 October 2025 I was ranked 51st of 182 players up from 64th of 183 in 28 September 2025: a rise of 13 places.
My rise was due to my performance in the 2025 King in the North where I out performed my own expectations to finish seventh.
In contrast, my ELO ranking changed far more as this table shows:
| Date | Games | Ranking (Global) | Ranking (GB) |
Pool (GB) |
ELO |
| 07 Sep 2025 | 37 | 875 | 190 | 332 | 962 |
| 28 Sep 2025 | 40 | 860 | 188 | 332 | 966 |
| 15 Dec 2025 | 45 | 561 | 111 | 338 | 1036 |
The magnitude of the change was probably due to my win against a highly ranked player in the last round of the KITN. Even so the 299 (Global) place improvement is far more than I anticipated. The 77 place improvement in the GB & Ireland subset also surprised me.
More importantly, I finished with a ELO ranking above one thousand for the first time. New players start at one thousand and I quickly moved down before I clawed my way back.
The ELO ranking seems to be doing what it's supposed to. I wish I'd started recording my ELO ranking sooner.
Player pool
Now I want to highlight a major difference between the BHGS and the ELO ranking which has nothing to do with how the rankings are calculated.
The ELO rankings contains nearly twice as many GB & Ireland players as the BHGS rankings.
No doubt this is because the BHGS rankings are temporary. They only list the number of active players in the preceding twelve months. In contrast, the ELO rankings are permanent and life long. I will have one even if I never play again.
This difference is useful as it can be used to estimate the potential scope for growth of the GB & Ireland tournament scene.
Since late 2018 the BHGS rankings have contained between 180 and 190 players. The stability of the figure is quite remarkable. Using the ELO GB & Ireland pool of 338 players, I estimate there are around 148 players who have not attended an ADLG tournament in the last twelve months. I think this is quite high.
This simple calculation is significant because it quantifies the number of inactive ADLG players in GB & Ireland.
An opportunity?
So, there's a decent sized pool of ADLG players who, for some reason, no longer play ADLG competitively.2 The key question is: do they represent an opportunity to increase tournament attendance or it is simply a measure of the normal churn with rules?
The answer depends on why players became inactive in the first place. For instance it could be because of:
- Changes in personal circumstances & work commitments,
- Tournament location & travel difficulties,
- Boredom with ADLG,
- Dissatisfaction with ADLG,
- Dissatisfaction with the ADLG tournament circuit,
- Competing wargaming attractions,
- General disenchantment & players moving on.
The above is a mix of personal and wargaming reasons. The former are difficult to influence, but if it's the latter than something could be done.
Sadly, even using the Internet, I don't think we'll ever know why most no longer compete.3 This makes deciding if there's an opportunity, and formulating a coherent response, difficult.
A solution?
One practical solution would be to improve the rules4 and enhance the level of online support with a view to reducing the barriers to (re)adoption for both casual and occasional players.
For the former, I don't mean a complete rewrite, more the application of polish to aid clarity. For the latter, the current online support is shocking and needs to be more actively managed.5
I've no idea if a new version is in the offing (and don't want to start a rumour), but it's always a possibility. More importantly, I'm not sure what else could be done.
Closing remarks
Estimating the size of any player pool is a perennial problem with wargaming rules of all stripes, so it's good that there's at least one way of estimating it for ADLG.
Whether this represents an opportunity to increase tournament participation will likely remain an open question due to lack of meaningful data.
All the same, a new, more polished, version of ADLG might entice some former tournament players back; if handled carefully.
Finally, if you are an former ADLG player and want to share why you stopped, do leave a comment or get in touch directly.
Footnotes
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The vast majority of players (81.2% in August 2025) attended fewer than six events. Very few (18.8%) attended seven or more events. ↩
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Only 78 of 338 players in the ELO database have attended fewer than seven tournaments. ↩
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I listed my own reasons earlier this year. ↩
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Of course this is always a risk. There are lots of rules that died after releasing a new version: DBMM, FOG to name but two. ↩
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Before I wrote this post and looked at the ELO data, I uploaded a personal wish list for ADLG version 5. ↩
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