What is a good average placement in TFT, and how many games to know
The numbers come from high elo:
Set 18 Patch 18.5 77,232 high-elo games Games from 6 Oct to 20 Oct
“I average 4.2, is that good?” It depends on two things most players ignore: what the average of everyone is, and how many games that number is based on. This guide gives you both.
The baseline: 4.5, 50 % and 12.5 %
In a game of eight players, the placements 1 to 8 appear once each, so the average of the whole lobby is always 4.5. Half of the players finish in the top 4 (50 %) and one in eight wins (12.5 %). Those three numbers are the line between “better than average” and “worse than average”.
- Average placement below 4.5 means you finish above the middle of the table. Every tenth you lower it is harder than the previous one.
- Top 4 rate above 50 % is what makes you climb in ranked, since the top half gains points and the bottom half loses them.
- First places above 12.5 % show you can close games, but they matter less than consistency for climbing.
How far from average are strong players?
In the 77,232 Platinum-to-Challenger games behind this site, even the top comps average around 3.6 placement, and the comps a tier lower are close to 4.3 (see how to read a tier list). So an average of 4.0 over a long sample is already a strong result, and 3.5 is exceptional. Don’t compare yourself with the best comp; compare yourself with 4.5.
How many games before the number means anything
Placements are very spread out: the standard deviation of a placement from 1 to 8 is about 2.3. That means a short streak of games can mislead you a lot. A rough range for the true average, with 95 % confidence, is:
| Games | Average placement (±) | Top 4 rate (± points) |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 1.4 | 31 |
| 20 | 1.0 | 22 |
| 50 | 0.6 | 14 |
| 100 | 0.4 | 10 |
| 200 | 0.3 | 7 |
After 10 games your average can be off by more than a full placement in either direction. After 50 it is off by about 0.6. That’s why a good week or a bad week almost never tells you whether you improved. To notice a change of half a placement, you need around 50 to 100 games.
What to do with this
- Judge your level over at least 50 games, and compare blocks of games, not single sessions.
- Don’t change your whole strategy after a bad streak of ten games. It is within normal variation.
- Track mistakes, not only results. Mistakes fall quickly when you work on them, and the results follow slowly. The guide to reviewing your games shows how.
- Be careful with sites that show win rates from a few hundred games as facts: the same sample-size rule applies to comps, and this site hides the weakest samples for that reason.
How TFT Coach helps
My matches shows your recent games with placement, comp and level next to high elo averages, so you can see a pattern across many games at once instead of judging each result on its own.