Up to date the ranking of players has been a crude affair. First based on a colour system: white (beginners), Yellow (Intermediates), Orange (Junior), Blue (Senior), Red (Master), Black (Grandmaster). Players were crudely apportioned these rankings based on their performances in competitions over the years. Novice players were categorised as beginners. Those that graduated to apply some strategies became intermediate players. The majority of European players who took part in competitions over the years are Junior players. Cape Verdean & Ivorian based players in Europe as well as professional players from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan who usually dominated the open championships in Europe are in the main Senior players. Seasoned players from among those in Antigua, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria are master and Grandmaster players. So far from the results from competitions only players from Antigua & Barbuda, Cape Verde and Ghana can be verified as Grandmaster players.
Over the summer months of 2020 Jean Retschitzki of Switzerland published an Elo ranking of players based on results of competitions from 2005 - 20011 conducted at the Swiss Museum of Games, La-Tour-Peliz, with Trevor Simon of Antigua & Barbuda (MSO Grandmaster) coming out on top, September Christian of Antigua & Barbuda (now deceased) in second place and Bendjin Kpelgo of Benin in Third place. There is still a lot of work to do to produce a comprehensive ranking list of all the available information. This work is ongoing and efforts are being made to retrieve records of the results of parings in past championships and tournaments.
Online platforms namely ludoteka.com and now more recently playok have given rise to monitoring the rankings of players on those platforms. ludoteka produces an automatic ranking of players based on a current and monthly ranking. The playok platform does not produce a ranking list. However we produced 15 editions of ranking lists of the top 50 players based on those players who came to our attention. We ceased to produce this list as it was too time consuming to produce. We are considering continuing under a different format. The disadvantage of both platforms is that only aliases of most players are available, therefore their actual names and which country they are playing from cannot often be ascertained in many cases.
In the next few weeks we are going to be working on the ranking page for this website, utilising the ranking list on the old website. These rankings were complied by consulting country representatives, master and grandmaster players. These lists are by no mean comprehensive and in most cases reflects the best players in one district or region. We have some way to go to be in a position to compile a truly comprehensive national, continental and world ranking. For those who we consulted to compile these ranking lists if you feel these lists need to be updated let us know. If anyone knows of any players who they feel should be added to any of these ranking lists feel free to let us know and we will take your recommendation under consideration.