Guideline for Sandbaggers

[dizzlmcwizzl]

Originally Posted by beernutz

*Computer-rated and Benchmarked players do not get strikes, only self-rated players get strikes as I understand the system.

**Again, I believe that is because the only players who can be DQ'ed are self-rated players. I believe even if a computer-rated player was found to have dishonestly estimated his self-rating, once he or she has received a year-end computer-rating they can no long accumulate strikes and get DQed.

***I don't see where someone has responded to this but my understanding was that strikes were generated by winning individual sets with non-competitive scores (e.g. 6-0 or possibly 6-1) over computer-rated players. If this isn't the case, I wish someone who knows would enlighten me.

Point 2 ... Anyone without a B or C rating can get DQ'd ... this includes self rated, appealed and mixed exclusive ratings.



Point 3 .... Assuming an individual match does generate strikes a set score in an of itself does not indicate a strike. If you beat a very low on level player 0 and 1 you are probably not going to get a strike. However if you beat a top of level player 3 and 3, that probably is strike worthy.


Now, if the system works how I suspect it does in that they use you rolling dynamic rating ... then any score could earn you a strike if you get your rolling average high enough.

[schmke]

Originally Posted by dizzlmcwizzl

Now, if the system works how I suspect it does in that they use you rolling dynamic rating ... then any score could earn you a strike if you get your rolling average high enough.

Given your understanding that it is the rolling dynamic rating exceeding the threshold, you can't generate a strike until your first rolling dynamic rating is calculated after 3 matches? Note I don't think this is the case as I believe there are cases of players being DQ'd in 3 or 4 matches, which is another reason I believe it is the match rating, not the rolling rating, that is used for DQs. Or perhaps it is the match rating that is used for the first few matches as a rolling dynamic is established?

[dizzlmcwizzl]

Originally Posted by schmke

Given your understanding that it is the rolling dynamic rating exceeding the threshold, you can't generate a strike until your first rolling dynamic rating is calculated after 3 matches? Note I don't think this is the case as I believe there are cases of players being DQ'd in 3 or 4 matches, which is another reason I believe it is the match rating, not the rolling rating, that is used for DQs. Or perhaps it is the match rating that is used for the first few matches as a rolling dynamic is established?

I suspect they use individual matches until a dolling dynamic is created ... but again who knows.

IF I were the USTA ... I would choose to use a combination of the two. In my world strikes could be generated for individual match results or for getting the rolling dynamic ratings staying above the threshold for multiple matches.

I don't think it is based on individual match results because so few players ever end up being DQ'd.

[chatt_town]

Jmnk,

Sure, my simple explanation is this. If you know that you are a 3.0 player, then don't go getting on a a-2 team. The rules are transparent as some are saying they want. You know right now if you make the playoffs at a-4, you are going to be a minimum of A-3 next season. If you jump teams you will carry that A-3 ranking to another team. That team knows it can be moved up if you play a level lower than A-3.

It's better than this current USTA system...you could be bumped if "you play on the first tuesday of the month and you play a player that had Ihop pancakes for breakfast..that is unless he had steak 2 nights earlier and there was a full moon that night." The point is no one knows what the hell is going on with USTA. What the lady told me back then may have been complete horse *****, but there was nothing we could do about it. They had already gotten our money...and don't let me get started on that.

You pay one 25 dollar fee or something a year with Alta....it's something like 40 bucks for Usta then you have all the bs league fees that come with it. Do I need to keep going?

Originally Posted by jmnk

if you really think that 'moving up/down' a player based solely on how good/bad the team he is on is doing is in any way, shape or form better than USTA ranking than obviously your idea of what constitutes a 'fair ranking' escapes me. could you kindly explain how is that better? As in -
a) how does it more accurately describes a level of an individual player, and
b) how does it better evaluates players so matches between same-level players are at least somewhat competitive?

[chatt_town]

Hold on now spot...I don't think there is a rule keeping you from playing stronger players lower than weaker players. What they have is some anti sandbagging rule that keeps you from moving players up and down the lineup but teams can easily set up a lineup where it is just the opposite of what you think it should be or basically start your strength in the middle. I've seen teams win city like this. They don't play their strongest team at 1. I've seen some that play their strongest team at 3. That could insure you get to 4 and 5.

However, there is no rule stating you can't play stronger players behind weaker players. How would you police that?

Originally Posted by spot

ALTA does a lousy job of rating individuals. THis is my single biggest issue with ALTA- a person who wins at line 1 is treated the same as someone from the same team who loses badly at line 5. (And in ALTA there is a rule that you do not play weaker lines over stronger lines)

That said- I STRONGLY prefer ALTA's way of forming a team. You can create at team from any 12 (or more) people you want and they place a team based on the 10 highest rated players. This makes team formation greatly easier. You can have players who once played in college playing on the same team with guys who started playing a few months ago. The team getting moved up in ALTA is natural and it comes out of team success so it is very tough to manipulate.

Compare that to the problem of getting bumped up in USTA. Either you have to move the entire team up to a level many do not belong at or else you need to leave the team and find a new group of players.

My ideal would be that they use ALTA's method of team formation but have more levels of team so that getting bumped an extra level wouldn't matter. But still have an individual rating and if a self rated player got DQ'd they would be ineligible for playoffs. But since 1 person's rating would only count as 10% of the team's rating there would be VERY little reason to underrate.

[Buford T Justice]

Originally Posted by jmnk

USTA is pretty transparent as well. 98% of complains here is about 'people on other teams are gaming the system (i.e rated too low)' and 'a player on my team was rightly self-rated but got disqualified'.

Which is truly amazing. How is that so hard to arrange a match with a computer rated player, ask him to play as best as he can, buy him a six-packs for his time/effort and the second one if he wins, and at the and of two our exercise you will have a pretty accurate idea of your level. There's really no more/less to it. Folks spent much more time trying to fit one's skills into USTA guidelines while playing a single match would solve your self-rating issue.

That is an excellent method IMO. This is actually the preferred method for getting a UT rating.....they desire you to play a qualifying match against a known player. The results of that match, or matches, can be used to determine the level of a player new to the league.

This can still be "gamed" of course......but at least it's an attempt at objectivity.

[asimple]

Originally Posted by chatt_town

Jmnk,

Sure, my simple explanation is this. If you know that you are a 3.0 player, then don't go getting on a a-2 team. The rules are transparent as some are saying they want. You know right now if you make the playoffs at a-4, you are going to be a minimum of A-3 next season. If you jump teams you will carry that A-3 ranking to another team. That team knows it can be moved up if you play a level lower than A-3.

It's better than this current USTA system...you could be bumped if "you play on the first tuesday of the month and you play a player that had Ihop pancakes for breakfast..that is unless he had steak 2 nights earlier and there was a full moon that night." The point is no one knows what the hell is going on with USTA. What the lady told me back then may have been complete horse *****, but there was nothing we could do about it. They had already gotten our money...and don't let me get started on that.

You pay one 25 dollar fee or something a year with Alta....it's something like 40 bucks for Usta then you have all the bs league fees that come with it. Do I need to keep going?

I don't think its as bad as you say it is. There is one self rated year where you can get dqed in the season and then everything is fine. This might suck if you should be in that division, but from the cases I have seen in my short league time this is actually rare. There are far more cases where a captain gets a player to self rate down 2 levels for a winning team. There seems to be a lot of gaming, but this is one thing which I don't think is that unfair.

[OrangePower]

Originally Posted by Buford T Justice

All of this "secret rating" stuff is what turns alot of people off to USTA, IMO.

Why not make the "rules" transparent?

There are always going to be guys who try and cheat the system. You might as well define the rules clearly and obviously.

Or, as a player, you might as well just play as well as you can every time you step onto the court, not worry about rating stuff at all, and let the computer do its thing.

The guys who are going to try cheat the system will find a way to do that no matter what the system is.

For the rest of us, just play. If you come across a sandbagger, just view it as an opportunity to test yourself against a stronger player.

[jmnk]

Originally Posted by chatt_town

Outside the fact that there is no singles. I like the way Alta does it. It's real simple. You move with your team and be done with it. None of this calculating you beat this person on this day and didn't beat this one on that day nonesense.

Originally Posted by jmnk

if you really think that 'moving up/down' a player based solely on how good/bad the team he is on is doing is in any way, shape or form better than USTA ranking than obviously your idea of what constitutes a 'fair ranking' escapes me. could you kindly explain how is that better? As in -
a) how does it more accurately describes a level of an individual player, and
b) how does it better evaluates players so matches between same-level players are at least somewhat competitive?

Originally Posted by chatt_town

Jmnk,

Sure, my simple explanation is this. If you know that you are a 3.0 player, then don't go getting on a a-2 team. The rules are transparent as some are saying they want. You know right now if you make the playoffs at a-4, you are going to be a minimum of A-3 next season. If you jump teams you will carry that A-3 ranking to another team. That team knows it can be moved up if you play a level lower than A-3.

Rather than arguing here I'm going to refer you to this blog;
http://atlanta-tennis.blogspot.com/2...ng-system.html
Perhaps you've seen it. There's no way you can convince anybody that individual ranking that is based on team's performance and not on one's own play is more accurate. This would be as if all player's on a given Davis Cup team were ranked the same, according to how far the team advanced.

Originally Posted by chatt_town

It's better than this current USTA system...you could be bumped if "you play on the first tuesday of the month and you play a player that had Ihop pancakes for breakfast..that is unless he had steak 2 nights earlier and there was a full moon that night." The point is no one knows what the hell is going on with USTA. What the lady told me back then may have been complete horse *****, but there was nothing we could do about it. They had already gotten our money...and don't let me get started on that.

What you conveniently fail to mention is:
- you run risk of DQ only if you are self-rated.
- you are going to be DQ if you are self-rated --and-- you beat someone with match proven ranking (that happens to be similar to the one you assigned to yourself) by a score that strongly indicates it was not a competitive match. And to take into account bad luck/illness/and other one-time occurrences it needs to happen three times in a single season. I fail to see how that is unfair.

Originally Posted by chatt_town

You pay one 25 dollar fee or something a year with Alta....it's something like 40 bucks for Usta then you have all the bs league fees that come with it. Do I need to keep going?

I agree with that one. Other than maybe hoping that my money goes toward general betterment of tennis I also do not know why I need to pay USTA (or ALTA for that matter) so I can play a tennis match.

[g4driver]

Originally Posted by OrangePower

Or, as a player, you might as well just play as well as you can every time you step onto the court, not worry about rating stuff at all, and let the computer do its thing.

The guys who are going to try cheat the system will find a way to do that no matter what the system is.

For the rest of us, just play. If you come across a sandbagger, just view it as an opportunity to test yourself against a stronger player.

OrangePower seems wise beyond his years.

Many of us including me get irritated at the Self-Rated sandbaggers or cheaters, but OrangePower is right.
They will never stop appearing, especially in the playoffs.

Could the USTA do better ? Seems so. I read a lot of great ideas from people on this forum, such as weighted lines,

I feel like Don Quixote when trying to fight these windmills. There is nothing to lose against these players except your composure and respect of your teammates. Not worth this. Play the match, shake hands and move on.


Thanks OrangePower.

[chatt_town]

I do agree with you about being dq'ed. My point is about it being fair is this. If I go out and I join a AA-3 team, I should have enough common sense to know what I'm getting myself into. I have yet to see a 3.0 playing in this league. I know that not only will my raiting be AA-3, I will move up if the team wins. So they are basically allowing you to rate yourself at the beginning. I think it works well. I have scores of friends that the whole team plays like a-9 and B-1. You never see those players playing with my other friends that play a-1 and AA.

I think that is better than me going out and say losing x amount of matches to guys by a break and having a below .500 record and getting bumped(which I've seen that happen) versus a guy that went 10-0 and didn't get bumped(I've seen this). Everyone body wants to throw around loose terms like dynamic rating and what not, but nobody can explain how the above happened. So it tends to tick people off.

I don't have a problem with fees. I have a problem with what I think are excessive fees. If I can play basically 4 leagues for 20 or 25 bucks, I don't see why I should have to pay more money for the registration fee and then still have to pay per league. They aren't maintaining any courts. The various subdivisions take care of their own courts and furthermore, most of the tennis that is played in usta is played on the same courts as Alta. So that's why I'm very careful of what teams I play with. It has to be friends because playing with a bunch of Aholes would make it much worse.

Originally Posted by jmnk

Rather than arguing here I'm going to refer you to this blog;
http://atlanta-tennis.blogspot.com/2...ng-system.html
Perhaps you've seen it. There's no way you can convince anybody that individual ranking that is based on team's performance and not on one's own play is more accurate. This would be as if all player's on a given Davis Cup team were ranked the same, according to how far the team advanced.


What you conveniently fail to mention is:
- you run risk of DQ only if you are self-rated.
- you are going to be DQ if you are self-rated --and-- you beat someone with match proven ranking (that happens to be similar to the one you assigned to yourself) by a score that strongly indicates it was not a competitive match. And to take into account bad luck/illness/and other one-time occurrences it needs to happen three times in a single season. I fail to see how that is unfair.


I agree with that one. Other than maybe hoping that my money goes toward general betterment of tennis I also do not know why I need to pay USTA (or ALTA for that matter) so I can play a tennis match.

[chatt_town]

I really don't get wound up playing sandbaggers...infact, I like it. I have nothing to lose. Over the years, the guys that I thought were sandbaggers, I eventually beat most of them. So things have a way of turning around if you just give it time and stop complaining. I played a guy last year in 4.0 state in ga that was hitting second serves down the T and hitting the fence on the fly if you didn't catch it. He was about 22 and was getting his rocks off. I was cool with it. I just made sure the next time I got a hold of a guy that didn't belong, I ripped his @ss into so many pieces that if we had thrown them into the river, the fish wouldn't have found them. lol So things have a way of going around and around. That guy will get to the sectionals and get his(assuming they won state).

Originally Posted by g4driver

OrangePower seems wise beyond his years.

Many of us including me get irritated at the Self-Rated sandbaggers or cheaters, but OrangePower is right.
They will never stop appearing, especially in the playoffs.

Could the USTA do better ? Seems so. I read a lot of great ideas from people on this forum, such as weighted lines,

I feel like Don Quixote when trying to fight these windmills. There is nothing to lose against these players except your composure and respect of your teammates. Not worth this. Play the match, shake hands and move on.


Thanks OrangePower.

[spot]

However, there is no rule stating you can't play stronger players behind weaker players.

The rule LITERALLY is that you may not play stronger pairs below weaker pairs. Maybe you should take a look at the rules before you say what the rules are.

"Sandbagging", scheduling stronger pairs below weaker pairs is prohibited.

How would you police that?

That is the real issue. There isn't much of a way to police it except for using the movement rules. Again this is why I wish that ALTA would start to give people an individual rating. In playoffs there are stricter rules about who can play what line but its based only on what line you played in the regular season. (losing badly at line 1 always gives you a higher ranking than winning easily at line 2) I think it would be more effective if you had an individual rating that spanned several seasons.

[spot]

ALTA basically works like a promotion/relegation league. Teams are easier to form so they move up if they do well and move down if they struggle. Teams stay together for years- our team started at B6 and over the last 6 years we have added people and moved up. We added enough people that we have split twice and now all 3 teams practice and basically operate together. So from that B6 team we now have a AA1, a AA4, and an A5 team. But when we started the team we had guys who had been playing for just a few months on the same team as guys who played in college which never could have happened in USTA. Neighborhoods can have any group of people form a team if they like playing together even if they have wildly different skillsets.

The women's team has moved up from C2 all the way to A1 and it is the same thing. (splitting just once... that was not as graceful as the men's team splitting) But once again its a team that never could have been formed in USTA because the levels were too different in the beginning. Alta makes it dramatically easier to form teams and keep them together which should be the point of playing recreational tennis. So many of our best friends are through tennis and I just roll my eyes at how USTA does it. I do hate it that ALTA treats a guy who played D1 as a beginner if he has never played ALTA before.

It actually is rather easy to manipulate the roster rules of ALTA, but because there are no nationals then there really isn't as much incentive to game the system. Why have no fun for 7 weeks of the regular season just so you can do well in 3 weeks of playoffs?

[OrangePower]

Originally Posted by spot

It actually is rather easy to manipulate the roster rules of ALTA, but because there are no nationals then there really isn't as much incentive to game the system. Why have no fun for 7 weeks of the regular season just so you can do well in 3 weeks of playoffs?

Bingo.

I've never played ALTA (I'm in Norcal), but I've played in the past a similar team promotion/relegation based league. It had no playoff at all, just a regular season. Top teams in each level at the end of the regular season get promoted (as a team), bottom teams get relegated. Since there was no postseason, the whole point was to get competitive team matches in the regular season, and to end up (as a team) at the right level for the team where that's going to be the case.

Since there was no ratings of individual players, there were some outliers - players much stronger or weaker than the average at that level. But at the team level that would even out; most teams had all the guys more or less the same, but some teams had more spread between the stronger guys and the weaker guys. If you ended up playing someone weaker/stronger, so be it and no complaints.

All in all it worked great; good tennis, emphasis on team wins rather than individual wins, and no rating algorithms to worry about

But then again, most people want playoffs and nationals

[goober]

Originally Posted by OrangePower

But then again, most people want playoffs and nationals

I actually think it is a minority of teams that want sectionals and nationals. In most leagues only 2-3 teams are in contention for playoffs. A lot of times it is a foregone conclusion before the season even starts who is going to win. These are the teams that engage in 90% the sandbagging, throwing matches and everything they can do to regulate their ratings.

[spot]

This is the best way for me to explain why nationals are a bad idea. I think that most of us can agree that having a national championship for 2.5 tennis is sort of ridiculous. An award for being the best terrible tennis players in the nation? There is no doubt that the team that wins 2.5 would do just fine at 3.0 but they were simply the team that managed their levels the best.

But when you think about it every other level is the same. Its not that you are the best at anything other than being able to manage your ratings the best to keep good players from being bumped up. I really don't see the point and I think it causes a TON of problems across USTA tennis. Teams have to decide if they want to stack a team to try and make a run at nationals and they build a team differently than the rest of the teams in the league. Get rid of that incentive and teams would be built more with the regular season in mind which would make things run smoother all the way around.

[asimple]

Originally Posted by goober

I actually think it is a minority of teams that want sectionals and nationals. In most leagues only 2-3 teams are in contention for playoffs. A lot of times it is a foregone conclusion before the season even starts who is going to win. These are the teams that engage in 90% the sandbagging, throwing matches and everything they can do to regulate their ratings.

I think you are exaggerating this a bit. It is probably true that the winning teams are known before the start of the season for the most part, but this doesn't necessarily mean those teams are "cheating". I was currently just on a playoff bound combo team, and will be on 2 40+ playoff bound teams. Out of those teams, one is on the marginal side, but in the case of the other 2 there is none of this activity. It is much more fun to win then lose so in general good players are attracted to winning teams.

[asimple]

Originally Posted by spot

This is the best way for me to explain why nationals are a bad idea. I think that most of us can agree that someone winning nationals at 2.5 is sort of ridiculous. An award for being the best terrible tennis players in the nation? There is no doubt that the team that wins 2.5 would do just fine at 3.0 but they were simply the team that managed their levels the best.

But really every other level is the same. Its not that you are the best at anything other than being able to manage your ratings the best to keep good players from being bumped up. I really don't see the point and I think it causes a TON of problems across USTA tennis.

I completely agree with this, but for some strange reason the concept of having a winning team is fun. I've been personally going through this thought experiment recently as I am an unintentional C rated sandbagger who played much higher levels when I was younger and in shape. It might be fun going far in the playoffs, but at the end of the day making it a long way into the playoffs at a level 2-3 notches down from you old level is kind of depressing in some ways.

[OrangePower]

Originally Posted by asimple

I think you are exaggerating this a bit. It is probably true that the winning teams are known before the start of the season for the most part, but this doesn't necessarily mean those teams are "cheating". I was currently just on a playoff bound combo team, and will be on 2 40+ playoff bound teams. Out of those teams, one is on the marginal side, but in the case of the other 2 there is none of this activity. It is much more fun to win then lose so in general good players are attracted to winning teams.

Originally Posted by asimple

I completely agree with this, but for some strange reason the concept of having a winning team is fun. I've been personally going through this thought experiment recently as I am an unintentional C rated sandbagger who played much higher levels when I was younger and in shape. It might be fun going far in the playoffs, but at the end of the day making it a long way into the playoffs at a level 2-3 notches down from you old level is kind of depressing in some ways.

It's kinda funny that you made these two posts one after the other, because there are some ironic juxtapositions there:

The teams you are on are 'legit', and yet you are a self-admitted sandbagger (albeit unintentional).

It's more fun to win than to lose, but it's depressing making a deep playoff run 2-3 notches down from your old or goal level.

Not accusing you or your teams of cheating, but it's clear that the system attracts some teams and players who are motivated by making playoff runs rather than enjoying a competitive regular season, but then at the end of the day winning at a lower level ends up feeling kinda hollow for many.