About & methodology

Events are chosen by series, not one-off battles. A series is included when it draws an international field and is widely regarded in the scene as a major title.

• Olympic and WDSF: the Olympic Games, Youth Olympic Games and Olympic Qualifier Series, the WDSF World Breaking Championship, the Breaking for Gold World Series, the WDSF continental championships, and multi-sport games such as the World Games, Asian Games and European Games.
• Independent: Red Bull BC One, Battle of the Year, Undisputed Masters, Outbreak, Freestyle Session, The World Battle, the UK B-Boy Championships, Unbreakable, IBE, Silverback Open and others.

Each edition page shows its categories (B-Boys, B-Girls, crews and other formats), final placings and, if available, the full bracket, round-robin groups, preselection rankings and scores, the judges, and registered athletes who didn’t qualify for the main bracket. There’s no weighting between events and every event affects Elo equally.

Browse by event, crew or country, or look for a dancer using the search bar at the top of every page.

All information about events links to at least one source. Results are not published unless there is a reliable source.

Most results come from:

• battle reports on And8, which record each battle, its judges’ votes and sometimes a video;
• official WDSF results (for the Olympic and WDSF circuit);
• organisers’ own results pages and posts, and videos of the battles themselves;
• for some older events with less information available, published lists of winners.

Each event page lists its sources at the bottom, so you can check for yourself.

For many older events, information may be incomplete with only the winner or the top few documented. Each category shows a badge:

• Full bracketevery battle of the elimination bracket is recorded
• Top 16final standings are known down to the top 16
• Top 8final standings are known down to the top 8
• Top 4final standings are known down to the top 4
• Winner onlyonly the winner is documented

Shared places are shown as ranges. For example, both dancers knocked out in the Top 4 are listed as “Top 4” unless a 3rd-place battle took place. An empty slot in a bracket (a BYE) isn’t a battle, so it isn’t recorded as a win.

The rankings use the Elo system from chess. Each dancer has an Elo rating. In a battle, the difference in the two dancers’ Elo predicts how likely each dancer is to win. It also affects how much Elo is gained or lost, depending on the result.

Expected Results

A dancer with Elo R_A facing a dancer with Elo R_B has an expected score of 1 / (1 + 10^{(R_B − R_A) / 400}). In practice:

How much a battle is worth

After a battle, each dancer’s rating changes by 32 × (result − expected score), where a win scores 1, a loss 0 and a draw 0.5. The exact Elo lost by a loser is gained by the winner, i.e. Elo is a zero sum game. For example:

• Two dancers with equal ratings: the winner gains 16, the loser drops 16.
• Beating someone rated 200 higher: +24. A big upset is worth a lot.
• Beating someone rated 200 lower: only +8. The win was expected.
• A draw against someone rated 200 higher: +8 for the lower-rated dancer, and the same drop for the higher-rated one.

Draws happen in round robins, when a battle’s rounds split evenly (say 1–1). Only the result counts. For example, a 5–0 and a 3–2 judges’ win counts the same, and an Olympic final is worth the same as a first round anywhere else.

Which battles count

• Every recorded 1v1 battle (B-Boys, B-Girls and open 1v1) with a known winner or a draw. Battles whose result isn’t documented are skipped.
• Prelim rounds, where dancers are scored on their own rather than battling, don’t count.
• Everyone starts at 1500 Elo. Battles are evaluated in chronological order: by event date, then round (top 16 before the quarterfinals, and so on up to the final). Events with no recorded date are placed in the middle of their year.

Reading the rankings page

• B-Boys and B-Girls are ranked separately. A dancer goes in the division where most of their battles were, so a B-Girl who once entered a B-Boy bracket still ranks among the B-Girls.
• A rating based on fewer than 5 battles is provisional because one result can still change it by a lot. Provisional ratings are hidden by default.
• Dancers whose last recorded battle was more than 5 years ago are hidden by default. However, their rating doesn’t decay, and they can be shown using the switch above the table.
• Two switches above the table show both groups again. The “#” column is always the Elo position within what’s currently shown, and the other columns can be sorted.
• Each dancer’s page has a chart of their rating after every battle, with the opponent, event and round for each point.

Crews

Crews have their own ratings, calculated the same way, from crew battles. A crew’s rating belongs to the crew, no matter who represented it that day. Battles against a pickup team with no crew, or between two squads of the same crew, don’t count. Crew pages have their own rating chart.

What the ratings can’t tell you

As of now, the archive only covers major events, so Elo ratings only compare dancers who have participated in those events, not the whole scene. A dancer who mostly competes in regional events will have fewer rated battles. When a bracket is only partly documented, its missing battles are not counted. Furthermore, since information is more available for newer events, the Elo ratings are skewed towards dancers who have performed well in recent years. Elo ratings are a record of results in the archive, not a judgement of anyone’s level of breaking.

Each dancer has one name on the site plus their known aliases and native-script spellings, so searching for any of them should show the same dancer.

A dancer’s country page lists them by nationality. The flag on an individual result is the country they represented at that event, which can differ from their nationality. Click any flag or country name to go to that country’s page.

Crew pages list members and, if known, when they joined and left. Each crew result shows the line-up that danced it, since crews change between events.

Spotted a mistake or a missing result? Every dancer, crew and event page has a “Report a correction” link, or you can use the correction form directly. You don’t need an account. Please include a link to a source (a video, an official results page or an organiser’s post), as only results that can be sourced are published.

An editor reviews every report, and every change to the archive is logged. If you leave an email address we only use it to ask about your report; it’s never shown publicly.