Pickleball Ratings and why they matter

If you play pickleball then you're likely to have encountered people talking about being rated a "3.5" or some such number.

There is a lot of confusion around these ratings or gradings, mainly because there are several different systems in place that aim to rate players, but they don't all use the same principles.

Why have a rating system at all ?

There is different motivations for a rating system - in an ideal world, where every player has an accurate rating, it would make it a lot easier to organize enjoyable competitive games, because the rating would allow you to group people of similar ability together, whether that's for a competition or just for a session at your club. And there's no doubt that games are more enjoyable when the players are reasonably balanced - we want to challenge ourselves, but we don't want to be smashed 11:0. So aiming for games where there is some real competition is always preferable, and having a reliable rating in place makes this a lot easier.

Self Rating

There is a range of so called self-rating systems out there - Pickleball Victoria has one, so does Pickleball USA - you can do a quick Quiz provided by Pickleheads to get one too.

Ultimately they all do the same thing - they look at a set of skills required in pickleball and allow you to assess yourself as to how good you are at them.

For example, one skill is being able to maintain a dink rallye.  Another is how reliable your serve is. While these systems are helpful, they are also very subjective. Pickleball Victoria says you're rating is 3.0 - 3.5 if you're starting to use the 3rd shot drop. The 3.5 rating according the Pickleball USA says that you're developing the 3rd shot drop to get to the net.

If I am a player looking at self rating, and I've just done a couple of 3rd shot drops in a training session - does that make me a 3.0 ? A 3.5? A 3.25 ?

The self rating system is fluffy, as no matter which one you use, the description of the skills required for a certain level is subject to interpretation.

Another issue is that many players don't bother to look into the detailed description of the levels, and being offered labels like 'Beginner', 'Intermediate' or 'Advanced' just pick a label they are comfortable with. So having played 3 games, I'm no longer a beginner. And once I win a couple of 'Intermediate' games I am advanced.

Lastly, even if you'd rigorously follow the self rating guides to the letter, the rating still only captures a static skill set observed in a controlled environment. I may be able to easily get 9 out of 10 serves in when the opposition court is empty, but when I play in a tournament environment and need to get my serves in deep for a chance to survive the return it may be a bit different.

Game Ratings

Game ratings are completely different to self ratings - which is confusing because they generally use the same (or a very similar) range of numbers as self rating systems, but it's really important to understand that they have nothing at all to do with each other.

A game rating system looks at the results of games you play, and assigns you a rating based on those results. The more games you play, the more accurate your rating - within the context of where and with who you're playing those games.

DUPR

DUPR, short for Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating, is the most popular universal (accessible to everybody) rating system out there at the moment - in essence it's simply an app/website that allows you to enter game results and then calculate a rating based on those results.

An example: I was recently given a DUPR rating of 3.77 in Singles - that rating was based on exactly two (!) matches I played last year that had only recently been added to DUPR. I beat a guy who was rated 3.3 twice, so based on those two results DUPR thinks I am better than him, so my score is higher than his.

However, in reality that score means nothing. Because it really only reflects the result of the two games (against the same person!) it's based on. If my opponent had self-rated himself a 4.5 my rating would have been 4.7; if they self rated a 2.5 it would have been 2.7. So it's really important to keep that in mind.

DUPR has not re-invented the wheel; rating systems in sport have been around for a long time. Most of them (including DUPR) are based on a mathematical model called ELO, named after it's creator, Arpad Elo, a chess master.

ELO was originally developed for Chess, but is now used for a wide range of athletic sports such as Tennis rankings (UTR), Football, Hockey, Rugby, baseball and more.

What does the DUPR rating mean ?

So if I have a DUPR rating of 3.5, and I am playing Margaret, who has a DUPR rating of 4.0 - what does that mean ?

It depends - if both players have recorded a significant number of games against a variety of players, say over 1,000, then the rating will provide a reasonably good prediction of the outcome of the game. In the example Margaret would be expected to win. Because a DUPR score is not about skill, age, gender or any other such factors - it's only looking at the games you recorded, so in an ideal world it's an accurate reflection of your ability to win the next game.

And that's how it works - if your DUPR score is higher than your opponents, then you're expected to win (and in a doubles/mixed scenario, DUPR simply uses your combined rating, i.e. adds it up, and compares it with the added up rating of your opponents).

And if you're expected to win, and don't win - that's when your DUPR goes down and your opponents goes up. Nothing much happens when it's the other way around, i.e. when the game goes according to the expectation, which makes sense: If you'd play a singles game against Ben Johns, you'd be expected to lose. Ben John's DUPR rating wouldn't be affected by his win, and neither would yours. However if it's the other way around, i.e. if you beat the expectations and win a game that according to your rating you shouldn't have - then your rating goes up, and your opponents rating goes down.

Which explains why players that use their DUPR rating as some kind of vanity plate often flat out refuse to play with lower ranked players - because as far as their rating goes, it can only go down when they play such games and then unexpectedly lose.

And this is one of the drawbacks of game based ratings - while in theory they provide a very accurate assessment of someones ability to win the next game, that really only works if players don't use it selectively.

Pickleball Brackets

If you ever played in a pickleball tournament, especially in Australia or the US, then you'll likely have used a software called PickleballBrackets. It's been endorsed by Pickleball Australia which means that every sanctioned tournament in Australia is expected to use it.

PickleballBrackets has their own rating system - which means if you're playing in tournaments then you will have a rating in PickleballBrackets that you can see on your profile page after logging into your account.

When I started looking into ratings last year there was talk that PickleballBrackets would merge with DUPR or that they would at least share their results - unfortunately that hasn't happened, and doesn't look likely in the near future unless someone manages to inject some common sense into the billionaire club running Pickleball in the US. Which is a real bummer, because PickleballBrackets is a black hole, there is no transparency as to how they calculate your rating, the ratings are updated infrequently (i.e. are not updated every time a game is recorded), and, they hog their data and are unwilling to share their results with DUPR in an automated fashion. Which means that while many players still think that their tournament games will contribute to their DUPR rating, they in fact do not - unless the tournament organisers go to the extra effort of logging the results of their tournaments manually with DUPR.

Pickleball Global

Outside the US, Canada and Australia, in particular in Europe and Asia, Pickleball Global is the other major player used to organise tournaments and thus collect game results.

They have only recently (December 2023) abandoned their own rating system in favor of DUPR, and have started loading past tournament results into DUPR (hence my meaningless DUPR rating!). So if you're playing a Pickleball Global tournament in 2024, the results will automatically flow into your DUPR account (provided you linked them up).

Why should I care ?

Tournaments

When you start out in the pickleball ratings world, you are asked to self rate yourself - and this self rating has implications, not just for your sense of self worth.

In order to prevent what's called sandbagging, you're generally not allowed to enter a tournament at a level below your rating. This is to stop players from going around collecting gold medals by playing in competitions way below their actual playing level.

So before you play your first tournament - make sure you think about that self rating and try to be as accurate as possible.

Once you have played a couple of tournaments your rating will adjust - although, esp. with PickleballBrackets, it's a bit of a mystery how and when that happens.

Within your club / playing group

If you made it this far - well done. This bit is what I really came here to say -

None of the rating systems I mentioned are perfect, and it's important to look behind the curtains. If someone has a DUPR of 4.0 - check how many games they played. And whether it was in a wide context, or just against the same old group of 4 friends. Luckily, DUPR is very transparent with this, and you can lookup the exact games that contributed to someone's DUPR rating.

Despite these issues, ratings can be very useful in pickleball. One thing I am a huge fan of is to use the everyday games you play at your local club or in your local playing group to rate players - you can use DUPR for that, because all you need is for all players to sign up for a free DUPR account, and then agree to enter the game results there. Nothing else is needed really. And if you don't want to use DUPR, you can use other apps that do the same thing, such as the free ELO Ratings App here ; it's a bit clunky, but it works just as well and you can set it up just for your local playing group or club; I'm hoping to be able to add another app in the mix this year that will be optimised just for pickleball.

Once you have captured game results over a period of time - say a couple of months - and provided players in your group mix it up, i.e. play against a wide range of other players in the club, not just a small subset, the ratings then allow you to easily group players together based on ability. The numbers may not mean as much on an absolute level, but within the playing group that participated, you will be able to easily assign players into sessions based on their rating, which will in turn ensure that everyone at such a session will have a competitive game, as all the attending players will be roughly at the same level. This is also a big help if you're asked to send your top 10 players for an inter-club competition or a state selection event, or if you're simply looking at organising an in-club tournament - again, more fun if the games played are competive for everyone.

And that's what we're all here for really - have fun, and challenge ourselves.