How To Maintain a "Better" Ladder with Worksheets

Before reading this, read all the other commentaries under Ladder Play and the History Nook regarding ladders; especially the Ladder History and Philosophy. At Happy Trails, this system was implemented on the web so that multiple captains could update player information and have the "system" maintain whether player's were available, off, coming back on, gone for the season, and do all the schedule and rankings work (no more spreadsheets). All the captains need to do is add new players (rank them 1-n), update their status when notified, and enter the actual scores after play. 

This can be done with a spreadsheet with the workings similar to the Percentage Ladder. 

1)You will still have a weekly Roster to build which players record their score on. Instead of a "Tot" column, you'll fill in whether the player finished 1-4 in their foursome.

2) Your weekly standings list might look something like this (Click here) For the actual MS Work spreadsheet Click here. Notice it is much simpler. We do not care about history of the player. The only things that matter are the player's rank before play, how they played this week, 1-4, our adjustment to their rank based on their place, and then their new rank position is computed.

One change: the first column in the percentage list was a formula for ease of maintaining 1-n. We need this to be actual rank numbers typed: 1, 2, 3, 4... And when we sort the players for making our roster, we include this column to keep their rank with the player.

3) After play each week, instead of filling in their total score, enter on the weekly standings sheet, their resulting place and then the adjustment. The adjustment values our web system uses are:

For 4 players: 1st = -5, 2nd=-2, 3rd=-1, 4th=2

For 3 players: 1st=-5, 2nd=-2, 3rd=2

The 3 player values are used when you have a substitute. The substitute does not get any change. If there are 2 or more subs, we let the player's play, but their rankings are not changed, use a rank change value of -1

The numbers may seem a little weird, but they were determined to create movement between the foursomes. The winner (1st) should move up to the next foursome, the loser (4th) should move down a foursome, and the remaining 1 or 2 stay relatively the same with a little movement based on place. This tries to insure that player's will move up and down according to ability and will play different players each week. You will always have a winner to move up and a loser to move down and the same applies to the foursomes above and below. The top and bottom are slightly different since there is no place to move.

For players that do not play, do not put a value in to adjust their rank, so it computes to the same rank value. This effectively moves them down a little since the numbers above move even the 2nd and 3rd place some.

4) Once you have entered the player's change values, you can now sort the entire player's list  by their new rank.. This should include the players that didn't play and retype the numbers in the first column as 1-n.

You will notice that you'll get duplicate values in the "New Rank" column. This is normal. I have seen up to three players get the same value. Based on your sort of the new rank values and if you include second sort column on their old rank, they will sort out to new positions and you will then still assign new number 1-n. With our web system, we don't include the second sort by rank and it adds to a random mixing of the players too if they compute to the same position. Again we want to play similar quality players each week but not the same one's. Move up and down slightly isn't a problem.

Again, this system isn't designed to determine an absolute ranking 1-n of the players. It has an error value of +/- 4 pts. The goal of the system was to provide quality play with different players each week. Ladder systems where you play each week with different partners are measure of how well a player plays with other players, not their necessarily their true ranking, but the players will move to an approximate position based on ability.

For further info or questions contact Bob Lanius.