Rating

Glicko-2. Alongside your rating it tracks how confident it is in that rating, which is why a new account's number moves further per match than an established one's. You get one rating per sport, and it covers both singles and doubles: the two are combined by how many games you've played in each, so five singles matches and one doubles match give you a number weighted five-to-one, not an even split. We weight it that way rather than the statistically optimal way because the optimal weighting let a single doubles game carry nearly half of somebody's rating, which is impossible to explain to the person it happened to.

The number on your profile, next to a plain word for the level it sits at — Beginner, Casual, Intermediate, Advanced or Expert. Next to it you'll see either est. or earned. "est." means the number still rests largely on the level you picked when you started; "earned" means enough rated matches have gone through it that the results are doing the work. Underneath is your record and, once there are a couple of rated matches behind it, how the number has moved. If you pasted a UTR profile link, that appears as a separate badge labelled self-reported. It's a number you told us, kept distinct from the one you've played for.

Competitive matches only. Friendly matches never touch it, in any sport, and neither does a match that ends voided. A Play Now match moves it when the score finalises — either when your opponent confirms, or automatically 30 minutes later.

It depends on three things: how far apart you and your opponent were, how confident the system already was about each of you, and how one-sided the result was. The consequences are deliberately amplified — the rating moves further than textbook Glicko-2 would move it, because a match that barely registers doesn't feel like it counted. A new account moves a long way per match and settles down as it plays. One case surprises people: losing can occasionally gain you a little. If you're a heavy underdog and take a much stronger player to a tight finish, you can come out slightly ahead of where you started. It can't be farmed — each gain raises your rating, which raises what's expected of you next time, which shrinks the next one — and against an equal or weaker opponent a loss always costs you.

Inside a club. Open the club, go to Members, and switch from A–Z to Leaderboard. There used to be a citywide ladder ranking every player in the city. It's gone, on purpose: your rating is still global — a match anywhere moves it, and it's the same number every club ranks you on — but a position in a list is only shown inside a club, because a club is the only group where finishing fourth means something to the people around you. Old /leaderboard links now go to the clubs list.

Because a ladder position is relative. Your rating went up, but if someone above you also won — especially against a stronger opponent than yours — they may have moved further than you did in the same week. Your number is the thing that reflects how you're playing. The position reflects how everyone else is playing too.