Yes! As we've rolled out SquashLevels in Australia we've had more people look at and check out their rankings and had some feedback that they're not quite as expected! We've investigated this and found two main reasons:
- SportyHQ's rankings are very highly damped. As players ebb and flow in terms of their playing level, SportyHQ remains un-phased with their points value only going up and down by a point or so each time. It's certainly stable but restricted when it comes to matching the levels of players that are really changing. SquashLevels is more dynamic and tries to assess a more current playing level. It's also damped but nowhere near as much so you'll find plenty of cases where a player seems to be in the wrong place in the rankings (compared to SportyHQ) but actually they're playing at a different level and, for now, they are in the right place!
- The COVID lockdowns have meant that some players haven't played in over a year and are only just getting back into it. Some players have stayed keen and fit whereas others... haven't. This has really shown up in the first first matches back since February as some players have seen their level rocket whereas others have gone the other way. With the dynamic approach that SquashLevels has to tracking level, this has resulted in much more player movement than we think is appropriate so we have decided to counter this COVID effect with a lot more damping. This has caused an adjustment to everyone's level in Australia.
We won't be asking clubs or states to reset or re-enter any starting levels. We have developed a mapping between SportyHQ points and SquashLevels level and re-used the rankings as defined by the clubs and states from four years ago for SquashLevels to use as a starting point. SquashLevels has then used its own algorithm from there to get to your current level.
We do have a cunning tool for determining what a player's level should really be irrespective of algorithm, points value or level. We are able to compare any two players based on their results with their opponents, and the results of their opponents against their respective opponents and so on until a linkage is found between the two players. This might sound tenuous but there are often hundreds of such linkages between two players in the same league, pennant or tournament and with a bit of good old-fashioned weighted averaging we can get a really good feel for the difference between two players. If you think someone is still in the wrong place in the rankings we can run a player compare and see where they should really be.
Please see the SportyHQ compare FAQ above to learn more about the mapping between SportyHQ points and SquashLevels level.