Mixed Only Rating Experience

When you've seen people go from a C rating to an M rating due to only playing mixed doubles for 3 consecutive years, do their ratings tend to go up, down, or stay the same? Or on the flip side, have you known someone who had an M rating, then started playing regular adult league and received a C rating, did it change?

There is a woman in my district with a mixed only rating of 4.0, but I suspect if she played in regular women's league she'd get bumped down to 3.5. She's a nice player and all, but too inconsistent and has some serious toss issues on her serve.

The area I live in only has adult league in the summer, and I've been out of town and unable to participate the past two summers, and likely won't be able to next summer either. However, there's mixed leagues (regular and combo) in the fall and winter that I've been doing regularly. So I'll likely be getting an M rating next year when my 2017 C rating expires.

So now I'm curious about how "good" people think the mixed exclusive ntrp rating system is compared to the regular C rating system. For example, for uneven teams such as 3.5/4.5 in an 8.0 league, do the dynamic ratings get a bit skewed?

There are many levels to this discussion. I would probably frame it a little differently ...

If you are asking by "good" whether the mixed exclusive rating is accurate compared to a C rating ... not certain, on the face of it I would say that it couldn't be as the 1.0 rating spread and the M/F spread is too great to be able to be accurate.

But there is another important piece. Some people I think are better suited to either mixed or single-gendered league.

One lady who is a 3.5C is fairly weak on the ladies' team but is a very strong player at mixed. (7.0 and 7.5) her playing style is devoid of aggression but she is very good at setting up a (generally) taller and more athletic male partner whereas the same style of play does not seem to help her more equal female partners.

I would suspect if she had a M rating that she would be near 4.0 whereas her C rating is likely bottom of 3.5.

Conversely there are some players who play very strong in regular league but weaker at mixed. One friend of mine flips back and forth between 4.0 and 4.5 C ratings. But at 7.0 and 8.0 even with strong partners who win with other men can do nothing but lose. Clearly if he had a M rating only he would be lower than his C rating.

The challenge is that if you get a mixed exclusive rating that is higher than your C rating, in order to play ladies' league again you would need to self rate and your S rate cannot be lower than your M rate ... if you are better at Mixed you could get pushed into a higher level league.

KamehamehaBackhand said:

So now I'm curious about how "good" people think the mixed exclusive ntrp rating system is compared to the regular C rating system. For example, for uneven teams such as 3.5/4.5 in an 8.0 league, do the dynamic ratings get a bit skewed?

Click to expand...

Just to be clear, “the system” by which either a ‘C’ rating is calculated, vs. an ‘M’ rating...is the same - they aren’t separate systems.

AFAIK, whether a player’s rating moves up, down, or stays the same hinges on that player’s opponents, results, and scores. I wouldn’t think that ‘C’ or ‘M’ directly would matter, with respect to movement of that individual player’s rating.

That said, as @OnTheLine pointed out, IME there are some players who are inherently “better” at mixed, and also some players who are “better” when playing with their own gender. Which, could explain some perceived “skewing” to ratings.

There are several factors.

Like has been said, some players are better (or worse) at Mixed than Adult and so their M rating may not be the same as their C rating if both were to be published. I actually do calculate both with my ratings and most players M and C ratings are reasonably close, but a few are significantly different.

That said, as I understand it, an M rating is calculated in the same way a C rating is so like @am1899 says it depends on who you play, who you play with, and the score. Now, in many cases, players play fewer Mixed matches, and there are fewer players that play and fewer matches in general, so the pool of matches to calculate ratings from is smaller in general and for most players. Also some players tend to always play with the same partner in Mixed, more so than in Adult. These factors could potentially lead to less accurate ratings just due to fewer and less diverse data points to include.

Yes, sorry, I phrased it a bit poorly, I do understand that it's the same mechanics used to develop NTRP ratings for both C and M. I was referring more to how combining the gender ratings, which are not equivalent, ends up working out. So would men's ratings tend to get deflated and women's ratings inflated? Do the bigger gaps in rating (say, 3.5F and 4.5M playing on an 8.0 team) skew things, and if so would it be that the lower player's score gets skewed higher and vice versa?

I hadn't thought about some people just being better at mixed than single-gendered doubles. Looking back at the 2019 season, my mixed doubles record (7.0 and 7.5) was 6-3, while my tri-level women's doubles record was 1-4. This isn't too surprising since mixed plays more to my strengths. I'm traditionally more of a singles player who likes to grind out the point and doesn't go for a lot of winners. I also prefer hitting against pace. So for mixed, I can usually keep the point going long enough for my partner to find an opportunity to put it away. In women's doubles I struggle because I don't end the point when I should and also tend to lose focus and make errors.

There are two instances in my area where two guys got mixed ratings. One was rated 4.5C and then went 4.5M after not playing any 4.5 leagues other than 8.0. There is another that was rated 4.5C (didn’t play any other leagues) and played one season of 8.0 and was rated 5.0M when the end of the year ratings came out. I am assuming the only reason why he was bumped is because he went undefeated and he beat a 4.5C lady and a 3.5C male that didn’t lose any other matches.