2012 Year End Ratings

[schmke]

Originally Posted by beernutz

Based on my own experience I believe this to be the case, but in my situation I think I *didn't* get the bump because of my poor performance at state. I had a pretty good year in league and beat three players who got bumped up and lost in singles to players who were both bumped up (I lost one time to a player who was DQed so I technically won that one). I also had some dominant wins over poor to moderate players at my level (1/1, 0/2, 0/2) late in the season.

However, I think the reason I didn't get the bump is that I had a pretty poor state tournament going 0-2 in singles and 1-2 in doubles with every match decided one way or the other by a tiebreak. One of my singles opponents at state also got the bump but overall I think my record there was a large part of why I am still at my current level next year.

On the other hand, as the saying goes, if you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything. Where's my cattle prod?

You piqued my interest so I took a look at your matches.

I don't believe Combo is counted in the Southern section, so your regular season record (on the court) would have been 8-5. I believe the cut-off for matches is 10/31 so the 3 late-season wins you mentioned aren't counted (after 11/1). While the DQ loss on the court counts as a win in the team standings, I believe the 6-1,6-1 score is used as-is for rating purposes.

So, an 8-5 record is good, but by itself is not indicative a bump is appropriate. Couple that with you playing a few self rated players and it is possible that some of what you thought were your better matches didn't actually generate match ratings. But ultimately, it really depends on the specific scores and opponents.

To get bumped, the majority of your results would need to be very good to great. If you play several opponents playing up, like I think you did, it is very hard to generate good match results for those matches. And even if you lose to good players that get bumped at the end of the year, you need the matches to be close to help you and you lost 3 and 1, 1 and 1, and 0 and 3 in 3 of the losses. These aren't close enough to help and probably still hurt your rating unless the opponents are way into the next level above you.

So, you may not have been as close to being bumped as you thought. Nevertheless, if you did poorly in playoffs, that certainly doesn't help either. But you say the matches were tight and these were likely against stronger competition so they might not have hurt as much as you think.

[beernutz]

Originally Posted by schmke

You piqued my interest so I took a look at your matches.

I don' believe Combo is counted in the Southern section, so your regular season record (on the court) would have been 8-5. I believe the cut-off for matches is 10/31 so the 3 late-season wins you mentioned aren't counted (after 11/1). While the DQ loss on the court counts as a win in the team standings, I believe the 6-1,6-1 score is used as-is for rating purposes.

So, an 8-5 record is good, but by itself is not indicative a bump is appropriate. Couple that with you playing a few self rated players and it is possible that some of what you thought were your better matches didn't actually generate match ratings. But ultimately, it really depends on the specific scores and opponents.

To get bumped, the majority of your results would need to be very good to great. If you play several opponents playing up, like I think you did, it is very hard to generate good match results for those matches. And even if you lose to good players that get bumped at the end of the year, you need the matches to be close to help you and you lost 3 and 1, 1 and 1, and 0 and 3 and 3 of the losses. These aren't close enough to help and probably still hurt your rating unless the opponents are way into the next level above you.

So, you may not have been as close to being bumped as you thought. Nevertheless, if you did poorly in playoffs, that certainly doesn't help either. But you say the matches were tight and these were likely against stronger competition so they might not have hurt as much as you think.

Thanks for the analysis.

[g4driver]

Originally Posted by schmke

Entirely possible. Without more info and the specific players involved in all matches, I can't really say, but yes, a loss to a weaker team could be the match rating that pulls the overall rating down. But even the other wins may not have been matches that were rated high enough if the opponents were weak and/or the partner was strong.

Email sent to you.

[Mongolmike]

Originally Posted by schmke

You piqued my interest so I took a look at your matches.

I don' believe Combo is counted in the Southern section, so your regular season record (on the court) would have been 8-5. I believe the cut-off for matches is 10/31 so the 3 late-season wins you mentioned aren't counted (after 11/1). While the DQ loss on the court counts as a win in the team standings, I believe the 6-1,6-1 score is used as-is for rating purposes.

So, an 8-5 record is good, but by itself is not indicative a bump is appropriate. Couple that with you playing a few self rated players and it is possible that some of what you thought were your better matches didn't actually generate match ratings. But ultimately, it really depends on the specific scores and opponents.

To get bumped, the majority of your results would need to be very good to great. If you play several opponents playing up, like I think you did, it is very hard to generate good match results for those matches. And even if you lose to good players that get bumped at the end of the year, you need the matches to be close to help you and you lost 3 and 1, 1 and 1, and 0 and 3 and 3 of the losses. These aren't close enough to help and probably still hurt your rating unless the opponents are way into the next level above you.

So, you may not have been as close to being bumped as you thought. Nevertheless, if you did poorly in playoffs, that certainly doesn't help either. But you say the matches were tight and these were likely against stronger competition so they might not have hurt as much as you think.

Schmke, I don't have a horse in this race, but still want to give you props for your many helpful posts like this one. Thank you for your contributions.
-Mike

[storypeddler]

Originally Posted by dizzlmcwizzl

The other component of getting a ratings bump that has not been mentioned is the weighting of the playoffs for your year end rating. My understanding is that the USTA somehow uses a weighted average of your playoff performance and your dynamic rating to get your year end rating. No playoffs ... and they just use your dynamic rating at year end.

What this means is that players who are bumped usually fall into two distinct categories.

1) Good players that play up .... discussed at length here

and

2) Good players on good playoff teams.... Because they play in the playoffs these players likely get better opponents and doing well against these good players has a more dramatic effect on their ratings. Essentially because these matches against good players occurred in the playoffs they count double which can help you more.

I think I fall into the second category ... I was good relative to my 4.0 peers within my district but I do not think I would have been bumped had I not performed well in sectionals the last two years.

Nothing against you personally, man, but wouldn't you agree that, overall, a player like you just described yourself---one who went to and did well at sectionals---would almost certainly be moving into the very top echelon of your respective level? I would think that those players who perform very strongly at the sectional level are probably playing at a level above 95% or more of all players at their level nationally. At least for that time period. If that is true, it seems sort of reasonable to me that they would be bumped up---or al least not at all unreasonable that they were.

[dizzlmcwizzl]

Originally Posted by storypeddler

Nothing against you personally, man, but wouldn't you agree that, overall, a player like you just described yourself---one who went to and did well at sectionals---would almost certainly be moving into the very top echelon of your respective level? I would think that those players who perform very strongly at the sectional level are probably playing at a level above 95% or more of all players at their level nationally. At least for that time period. If that is true, it seems sort of reasonable to me that they would be bumped up---or al least not at all unreasonable that they were.

I am not sure why I should take this personally ... I agree.

I was surprised when I was not bumped last year, but I understand the time it takes to raise a rating. I was getting frustrated that the only competitive league matches I would get would not happen until the postseason.

[J_R_B]

Originally Posted by dizzlmcwizzl

I am not sure why I should take this personally ... I agree.

I was surprised when I was not bumped last year, but I understand the time it takes to raise a rating. I was getting frustrated that the only competitive league matches I would get would not happen until the postseason.

Yeah. You should have been bumped last year. If so, we would have made districts, LOL.

[dizzlmcwizzl]

Originally Posted by J_R_B

Yeah. You should have been bumped last year. If so, we would have made districts, LOL.

I will share a story about that one day with you. I almost shoved my racket up our friend's rear at sectionals. I will not play for him again.

[OrangePower]

Originally Posted by dizzlmcwizzl

I almost shoved my racket up our friend's rear at sectionals.

Please take your kinky sex talk elsewhere.