The ladder lives inside Play, beside Boxes and Tournaments. It does not belong to a season: it carries on from one to the next, and archiving a season leaves it as it is. A club can make it start again every year, but we recommend leaving it alone.
A club can run more than one. Every paid plan runs 8, so a club can have a club-wide one, a doubles one and whatever else it needs. They sit behind a row of buttons at the top of the ladder screen.
The top of the ladder is about you. It shows your place, your rating and your last 30 days, with Record a match and Ask for a match. Tap your place to jump to your row. Above it, the ? holds this ladder’s rules, and whoever runs it has Run the ladder beside it.
Ratings, and who you can play
- Everyone starts on 1200, unless you start the ladder from your boxes, when Box 1 starts highest. Win and your rating goes up, lose and it comes down. Your place is everybody’s ratings in order.
- Placing. Your first 3 matches are your placing matches. They move your rating further, so the ladder finds your level quickly, and you can play anyone while they last.
- Shaded. After that the ladder rates matches within 5 places of you, up or down. Those are the ones you can arrange and record. A score against somebody further away is refused.
- Greyed. After 90 days without a match a rating eases down by 15 points a month, and never below 1200. Play one match and it stops.
The owner can change the range, and 0 means the ladder rates every match. The owner can record any pairing, change both resting numbers or switch resting off. A resting player’s own rating line shows the drift as a dotted stretch.
Beating somebody above you is worth more than beating somebody below you. Losing to somebody below you costs more.
Moves half of what a played match would.
A real match. It moves all of it.
Who won decides which way your rating moves. The score decides how far.
6-0 6-0 moves you further than 7-6 7-6. A deciding tiebreak counts as one game, so a match won on it moves you less than a win in straight sets. A win never takes points off you.
A single tiebreak or one short set moves you less than two full sets, because it tells the ladder less about who is better.
How a match gets on it
- Record itArrange it between yourselves, then one of you puts the score in.
- It counts straight awayBoth ratings move. The row is shaded purple, with the settled rating beside it.
- ConfirmedThe other player agrees, or it confirms itself after three days.
So the ladder is never three days behind the tennis. The league owner can record a match for any two players, confirmed on arrival, and can clear any score. Clearing one works every rating out again from scratch, so a wrong score leaves no mark.
Who is on it
Joins automatically, and waits under Yet to play until their first match. Take somebody off and it sticks, even when the next season is built.
A new singles ladder starts with the whole club ticked under Who is on it. Tap a name, or press Everyone or None. Women, Men, Juniors and Adults only tick names, where your register records it.
Type a name into the ladder, at the start or later under Ladder settings. They join the club too, so a club can run a ladder and no boxes. A name a member already has puts that member on.
Somebody not in a box taps Join the ladder, or on a doubles ladder names a partner and waits for a yes. Nothing lands on your desk. It is on for a new ladder: turn it off in Ladder settings.
A ladder can be any sport the app scores. The sport, and whether it is singles or doubles, are fixed once the ladder exists: a rating earned as a pair is not a rating as a singles player.
How a match was scored
The ladder has a usual way of scoring. A match can still be played another way, such as one set because the court ran out. Say so at the top of the score screen. It has to be the same sport.
Tick Everyone scores matches the same way in Ladder settings. The question leaves the score screen and every match goes in the usual way.
You can change the usual scoring later, even with matches on it. Nothing is rewritten and no rating moves: every match keeps the scoring it was played under, and is rated by it.