The Cure
to the
Ratings
Headache?
“…And I’m listening to one of our local
pickleball club members, a retired math
professor, talk about his idea for an improved
ratings system, and I realize, ‘I think I know
somebody who can create this.’”
That is how Kevin Richards, one of three
founders of PickleballRatings.com, describes
the moment last summer that his vision for
a new ratings system platform was born.
He called his friend Brian Hendrickson that
night and explained the concept. They pulled
in Anne Braghero, another trusted friend
with website design experience, and over the
course of the next few months the trio created
PickleballRatings.com, which contains a very
robust player ratings platform. They launched
the site in conjunction with their trip to
Nationals in Casa Grande, AZ, in November.
This is where we caught up with them.
How is the ratings system you created
different than the one the USAPA
currently uses?
Because the system currently being used
by USAPA is based on human evaluation, it
is subjective. Our ratings system is entirely
objective, derived from a mathematical
algorithm and a player’s past results. Ratings
systems like it are commonly used in other
professional and amateur sports as a predictor
of the outcome of a match, or game. The
larger the discrepancy in the rating between
two opponents, the more the lower rated
opponent’s rating will increase should he/
she defeat the higher rated opponent. If the
difference in their ratings is negligible, neither
opponent’s rating will go up or down much at
all from a victory or defeat.
streamline the world of pickleball tournament
management. Additionally, we are working
on a solution for pickleball clubs to use since
we’ve heard how challenging it can be for
clubs to rate their members and seed their
own round-robin tournaments.
If your ratings system is not being used
by the USAPA, what is the usefulness of it?
What is your vision for how
pickleballratings.com will fit into the
growing world of pickleball?
We have been very proactive in
communicating with the USAPA regarding
our work. In fact, we gave a demo to Chris
Thomas, USAPA Ratings Chair, recently
at Nationals. We answered a lot of great
questions from Chris about how our system
works and he opened our eyes to a few things
as well. They are doing their due diligence in
creating a new system but have a process that
they need to follow. It is our hope that our
solution will dovetail perfectly with the needs
of the USAPA and its members. We’ll see
what happens.
Regarding the usefulness of our system,
tournament organizers can easily and quickly
put together balanced and logical brackets
using the ratings of the players/teams
that have registered for their event. We’ll
be able to share more info soon about the
collaboration underway with the hardworking
Melissa McCurley and Greg Thompson at
PickleballTournaments.com, but suffice it to
say that this partnership is going to really
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.PICKLEBALLRATINGS.COM
Well, our mission is to render accurate,
objective, and timely ratings for as many
pickleballers globally as possible. The beauty
of this system is that the more crosspollination there is between players from
different regions and countries, the more
universally accurate the system itself becomes.
Because this system solves such a real and
widespread problem, we believe it will be quite
popular and well-used. We have a lot of other
ideas about features to add to our site, but our
bread-and-butter will always be the pursuit
of rendering objective ratings for as many
pickleballers as possible. •
The founders of
pickleballratings.com,
all from Portland,
Oregon, are Kevin
Richards (Community
Relations), Brian
Hendrickson (Ratings
Scientist), and Anne Braghero (Site Design/User
Experience). On cold rainy days, Kevin dreams
of premier indoor pickleball courts. Brian is a 4.5
tennis player and teaches table tennis at Rose City
Hall, his Portland venue. While maintaining her
lifelong passion for soccer, Anne has embraced
pickleball as her go-to activity.
JANUARY 2016 |
MAGAZINE
47