CPL players get counted

Last month CSports.net announced that they would be providing the CPL's official ranking system, and today the first part of that has gone live with the unveiling of their Quake 3 rankings, which are based on the results of every CPL Quake 3 duel tournament held since the start of 2000. Ironically the CPL (particularly in America) has been moving more towards teamplay-oriented events in recent months, with the remaining Quake 3 duel events mostly restricted to Europe and Latin America. Official Counter-Strike rankings are on the way though.

Unsurprisingly the CPL's top Quake 3 player is America's mild-mannered Fatality, but some of the other placings may raise an eyebrow. For example, Australia's Python is ranked fourth, despite the fact that the only time he has ever finished in the top eight at a CPL event was at the CPL Pacific tournament in Melbourne, where he came third amongst a field mostly made up of little known local gamers. While he is certainly a very good player, we honestly doubt that even he would have expected to be so far up the rankings.

The problem appears to be that the rankings are inspired by the tennis seeding system, but there simply aren't enough CPL events at this stage to even out any wrinkles, and not enough top players travel to more out of the way tournaments in Asia, Australia and Latin America, meaning that less well known local players tend to dominate the results at these events. Still, it's an interesting read and includes results for most CPL tournaments, making a good resource if you want to see how the world's pro-gamers have been performing, and hopefully when more results come in the rankings will become somewhat more accurate.