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Ladders - %PTS Won (Algorithm doesn't work)

Ken Little 1 day ago in Events / Programming / Organized Play updated by SLPCC Web Admin - Mike 1 day ago 1

We are currently using the Ladder League programme with the rankings being controlled by the %PTS Won and a maximum movement of 5 on the Ladder.


System Issues & How Court Reserve needs to Fix Them

  • Issue: Sandbagging & Skewed Totals
    • The Problem: Racking up points against weaker players on a lower court yields an artificially inflated cumulative score.
    • The Fix: Switch from raw points to Points Percentage (e.g., Total Points Scored ÷ Total Points Available). This normalizes scoring so that dominance on any court is evaluated equally. 
  • Issue: "Runaway" Scores
    • The Problem: Early-season leaders build an insurmountable cumulative points lead, destroying motivation for newer players or late bloomers.
    • The Fix: Average your players' weekly scores, or only count their last 3 to 4 weeks of play. Alternatively, use rolling averages so early poor games or missed weeks don't permanently tank a player's rank.
  • Issue: Unequal Games Played
    • The Problem: In open-play formats, players who attend every session will accumulate vastly more total points than those who attend occasionally.
    • The Fix: Rank players strictly by their average match/game win percentage or point percentage, rather than total cumulative points

The current algorithm does not take into account any of the above fixes.  this presents major problems on the ladder where high level players find hemselves playing loweer level players with no fun for either.

Come on Court Reserve.  You can do better.

We too prefer the %Pts Won version over 1 up/1 down and have seen similar issues.

We try to manually seed the initial session by tracking the previous 3-4 months history but would like some way to not have every player with 100% Pts Won move the first session be worth 5 spots if they had one good session compared against 3-4 months of 75% play.

We've had questions come back where someone wins 3 or 4 of 4 games and beat everyone on their court and lost 2 spots as well.

Perhaps we're not using the Ladder League correctly by only playing 4 weeks at a time and then resetting?

What do others do?