Where your number starts — and how it moves.
“Your rating is your reputation —
and every match either backs it up or dents it.”
Every player begins with an initial rating — a starting point on OPR's scale, set once when they join. The working ranges:
| Inexperienced | Improving | Solid club player | Strong / advanced | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men | 1000–1200 | 1200–1400 | 1400–1600 | 1600–1800 |
| Ladies | 900–1050 | 1050–1200 | 1200–1350 | 1350–1500 |
Don't want to grade every member on day one? Use the suggested defaults:
Start everyone there and simply let them play. This is how most clubs begin.
If your club knows its players, you can set each member's initial rating individually using the ranges in the table above — your coach or committee simply places each player in a band. OPR's bulk member upload takes a per-player starting rating, so a graded list from a spreadsheet loads in one go. Bespoke starting ratings mean the very first ladder already looks sensible; the engine then fine-tunes from there.
OPR shows each player and pair a Level — simply the rating divided by 200. It's the friendly headline number used across ladders and tournaments:
| OPR rating | 1000 | 1200 | 1400 | 1500 | 1600 | 1800 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OPR Level | 5.0 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 7.5 | 8.0 | 9.0 |
Beat someone the club expects you to beat, and you barely move — you did what everyone knew you'd do. Beat someone stronger than you, and you jump. That's news.
Squeaking through 7–5 in a decider says “it was tight.” Winning 6–1, 6–2 says “you were clearly better.” The system watches the games, not just who won.
A three-set battle carries more weight than a quick two-setter — there's simply more evidence in it. One set counts least, three sets most.
If you were the underdog and pushed a stronger team all the way, your loss is cushioned — you did better than anyone expected. Lose the way you were supposed to, and it counts in full. A brave loss never costs as much as a thrashing.
Before every match the system already expects a result — it knows the gap between the teams. When the favourite wins by less than expected (the underdog kept the games close), the losing team's drop slides down — the tighter the games, the smaller the penalty. It's measured in games, across however many sets you played.
Here's a stronger pair (expected to take about 75% of games) winning three different ways — and what the losing team drops:
| Result (favourite wins) | Games | How close | Loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6/2 6/3 6/2 | 18–7 | as expected | −16.6 |
| 6/4 6/4 7/5 | 19–13 | closer than expected | −7.1 |
| 7/6 5/7 7/5 | 19–18 | nail-biter | −1.8 |
Same winner, same result on paper — but the closer the games, the gentler the drop. Nothing here rewards losing; a loss only ever hurts less.
Because you didn't play the same story. Your ratings were different going in, so the club expected different things from each of you. If you were the underdog and won, you gained more — you had more to prove, and you proved it. If your partner was already the favourite, they gained less: winning was expected of them.
Because they started from a higher reputation. Losing brings them down, but a reputation built over 40 matches doesn't collapse in three. Keep winning and you will pass them — the system just won't hand it to you overnight. That's the whole point: it's slow to be fooled, in both directions.
No — a loss is always a loss. Keeping it close against a stronger team just means it hurts less. You only ever climb by winning.
The system watches games, not only sets. If you were expected to win comfortably and the games stayed tight, you didn't quite meet expectation, so the swing is smaller. Win more convincingly and you'll get the full gain.
Wins are counted, but they aren't all weighed the same. A pile of wins against weaker pairs moves you less than a handful against strong ones. Open their profile in the app and look at who they actually played — the answer is usually right there in the match list.
“Beat who you're supposed to beat, you tick along.
Beat someone you shouldn't, you jump.
Push a stronger team close, your loss is cushioned.
Get thrashed by someone weaker, you drop.
The rating just keeps an honest record of what actually happened.”
Many players already know their Playtomic level and want to know where they sit on OPR. The two systems measure differently — OPR's scale is wider and doubles-first — but as a practical rule of thumb:
So a Playtomic 4.0 typically sits around OPR Level 9.5–10, and an OPR Level 7.5 player is broadly a Playtomic 1.5–2. It's a guide, not a conversion — no two rating systems map exactly — but it gives your members an immediate feel for their number. OPR works happily alongside Playtomic: book your courts there, and let OPR run your club's own ratings, ladders and tournaments.