The New World Ranking System Explained - January 2018!

strangeloop · Nov 9, 2017

Agree with Tony's comments above. More injuries (just look at top tennis players) are bound to follow. No point in aping some other system just because it is more lucrative/glamorous!

Also, ITTF needs to remove the limited # of entries per country rule to truly determine who's ranked where.

Sali · Nov 9, 2017

Tony's Table Tennis said:
The problem is ITTF is trying in the wrong spot.

National feds want world champ and olympic medals
One would require descent world rankings points to rank high enough for seeds/qualifications etc

Now if we start messing around would rankings, then if it is incorrectly calculated then you will end up having high seeds all in group qualifications

imagine if Ma Long and Timo boll is in the same group (unseeded due to inactivity)
then before of the 4 players, 2 will go through, but now the 2 will go through is ML and TB, no more group qualifiers to make it.

the few other that made it due to "inflated" world ranking, would simply just be knocked out by lower rated players but higher skilled.

Imo ITTF probably signed a deal with some betting company, as all this only makes sense for betting companies and not for the players

ITTF can't make more money for players, just like how FIBA and FIFA makes close to zero money for players
The sooner we realise that our savior in TT is not ITTF, the better for all.

Well it is hard to argue I think we will have to wait and see how it will work.

TT Guru · Nov 10, 2017

There is a lot of great discussion here, although many of those giving negative feedback don't seem to be interested in actually waiting to see how it pans out.
Do you really think Ding Ning will still be 19th in a year's time, in 6 months time even? She will have to pick up the slack and attend the World Tour to continue to prove herself to fans and opponents, and the same goes for all players who compete locally but only occasionally on the international stage. A player can't expect to stay at the top by showing up three times in a year.
The system also prevents the opposite issue, where players who compete more than 8 times in 12 months have only their top 8 results go towards the total points. Otherwise some of the Japanese players would be much higher, they compete 12+ times, one was as high as 18 events (senior only) within a 12 month period!
Once the system is in place it will smooth out, players will fight for their rank and it's a win for the sport. Tennis players get injured too, and they play in a similar system. Injuries are inevitable, but we shouldn't be letting injured players keep a ranking as high as active players who aren't injured. When someone isn't playing they should drop down the WR.
Thanks all for your feedback, I'm sure there is plenty more to look at, and it's an exciting time for Table Tennis!

Tony's Table Tennis · Nov 10, 2017

TT Guru said:
There is a lot of great discussion here, although many of those giving negative feedback don't seem to be interested in actually waiting to see how it pans out.
Do you really think Ding Ning will still be 19th in a year's time, in 6 months time even? She will have to pick up the slack and attend the World Tour to continue to prove herself to fans and opponents, and the same goes for all players who compete locally but only occasionally on the international stage. A player can't expect to stay at the top by showing up three times in a year.
The system also prevents the opposite issue, where players who compete more than 8 times in 12 months have only their top 8 results go towards the total points. Otherwise some of the Japanese players would be much higher, they compete 12+ times, one was as high as 18 events (senior only) within a 12 month period!
Once the system is in place it will smooth out, players will fight for their rank and it's a win for the sport. Tennis players get injured too, and they play in a similar system. Injuries are inevitable, but we shouldn't be letting injured players keep a ranking as high as active players who aren't injured. When someone isn't playing they should drop down the WR.
Thanks all for your feedback, I'm sure there is plenty more to look at, and it's an exciting time for Table Tennis!

I think if TT stayed TT and it can be like Tennis

IE:
Tennis didn't change from a 21 point game to 11 point to make the weaker player have a more chance to win a set/game
it didn't slow down the sport by removing speed glue, increasing the ball size twice
It didn't change service rule, as there was too many aces for your better players.

Anyways, lets wait and see
imo the world tour would be nothing, lets see how the seeding will work at the world champs

Andy44 · Nov 10, 2017

Players and organizations follow money. If the ITTF controls enough of the available table tennis money, any reasonable incentives scheme will work to encourage more participation. If they don't control a big enough share of the money, nothing will work. Breaking the rankings system is either unnecessary or useless. My guess is it's useless, and the CNT et. al. will simply start ignoring the rankings. I know I will. As a fan, if the rankings don't reflect reality, then to me they're not real rankings. Reminds me of boxing, with multiple "official" sanctioning organizations, each with their own rankings and champions which nobody cares about anymore.

rainneverever · Nov 10, 2017

I brought it up before, in tennis, runnerup gets 0.6 times of ranking points of winner but in TT runnerup gets 0.9 times of ranking points of winner. First round loser gets 0 point in tennis while 0.5 times of ranking points of winner in TT. That's a huge difference.

Michal_Z · Nov 10, 2017

Ehm.. To add my opinion ..
I dont understand, how would this add more injuries into the sport?
I think you are missing one important thing - if I understand correctly, only 8 BEST results per YEAR are considered.
So in fact - all you need is to attend 8 tournaments you want to play per one year.
Is that so difficult?

So I dont think it is that bad.. It will give us more surprising matches, more meeting of players that would not meet or not meet that early.
But that will be only the beginning.
After that players will sort it out and the ranking will be more stable.

In the end this is a good thing.

rainneverever · Nov 10, 2017

More participation of top players or all players internationally is not a bad thing at all. I don't think anyone in the discussion argues against it. The discussions are about whether the new ranking system is rewarding participation over results. Both should be rewarded.

Michal_Z said:
Ehm.. To add my opinion ..
I dont understand, how would this add more injuries into the sport?
I think you are missing one important thing - if I understand correctly, only 8 BEST results per YEAR are considered.
So in fact - all you need is to attend 8 tournaments you want to play per one year.
Is that so difficult?

So I dont think it is that bad.. It will give us more surprising matches, more meeting of players that would not meet or not meet that early.
But that will be only the beginning.
After that players will sort it out and the ranking will be more stable.

In the end this is a good thing.

Michal_Z · Nov 10, 2017

rainneverever said:
More participation of top players or all players internationally is not a bad thing at all. I don't think anyone in the discussion argues against it. The discussions are about whether the new ranking system is rewarding participation over results. Both should be rewarded.

But it is said they take only 8 best results, or do I miss something?
So no matter if you go to 40 tournaments per year or just 8, only 8 will count.
Best 8..
Or not?

Tony's Table Tennis · Nov 10, 2017

Yes, its the best 8

Rain pointed the key
the looser gets way too much points.
I think rain mentioned some where before

If player A wons a tournament, but injured or non participation for next 3 (so he take parts in 1 of 4, but won the 1)
will be ranked lower than
Player B who looses in a lower round 4 times

rainneverever · Nov 10, 2017

The points difference between good results (say finalists) and not-so-good results(say first round loser of main draw) is too small. Round of 32 in 6 Platinum Tours and 2 regular Tours add up 8550. If you check Nov ranking with new system, 8550 is higher than both #32 of men and women.

Michal_Z said:
But it is said they take only 8 best results, or do I miss something?
So no matter if you go to 40 tournaments per year or just 8, only 8 will count.
Best 8..
Or not?

NextLevel · Nov 10, 2017

rainneverever said:
The points difference between good results (say finalists) and not-so-good results(say first round loser of main draw) is too small. Round of 32 in 6 Platinum Tours and 2 regular Tours add up 8550. If you check Nov ranking with new system, 8550 is higher than both #32 of men and women.

But you will have to qualify for round of 32 in most events. That is the part you are missing.

I don't think the formula is right, but I am sure it can be adjusted if necessary.

Tony's Table Tennis · Nov 11, 2017

NextLevel said:
But you will have to qualify for round of 32 in most events. That is the part you are missing.

I don't think the formula is right, but I am sure it can be adjusted if necessary.

It should of been adjusted before going live...

So player A plays 3 Tours, player B plays 6

Player A
1) wins platinum
2) SF platinum
3) SF platinum
Total points 2250 + 1800 + 1800 = 5850

Player B
1) Looser R16, platinum
2) Looser R16, platinum
3) Looser R32, platinum
4) Looser R32, platinum
5) QF normal tour
6) Looser R32, normal tour
points: 1350 + 1350 + 1125 + 1125 + 1260 + 900 = 7110

Player A will be ranked lower than Player B
Player B has never made it into Top 16 on platinum tour
Player A has always been into Top 4
Even if player A wins all 3 platinum tours, that is only 6750 points and still ranked lower than Player B

Simply looser get way too much points

Tony's Table Tennis · Nov 11, 2017

Michal_Z said:
But it is said they take only 8 best results, or do I miss something?
So no matter if you go to 40 tournaments per year or just 8, only 8 will count.
Best 8..
Or not?

That is correct
For your pros, the platinum is only 6 events, then you get normal tours, which is 6.
ITTF is trying to get all top players to go to every one.

Excluding the german open that is on going, there has been 5 + 5 up to date.
with the german being 6 and sweden open 6

up to 5+5
You can check players participation here:
https://d3mjm6zw6cr45s.cloudfront.net/2017/02/Mens-Standings.pdf

Other than JPN who are like 7 or 8 of 10, most of your pros (Chinese, German etc) are all under 5 out of 10 participation

ITTF is forcing participation as if you don't, you will be ranked lower.
So imo, go play when your injured, and get a looser point in R32 is better than 0 points

Suga D · Nov 11, 2017

rainneverever said:
The points difference between good results (say finalists) and not-so-good results(say first round loser of main draw) is too small. Round of 32 in 6 Platinum Tours and 2 regular Tours add up 8550. If you check Nov ranking with new system, 8550 is higher than both #32 of men and women.

Not only that!

Good results don't get rewarded like they used to.
Example: let's say Alexander Valuch faces Xu Xin in the first round of a tournament. And now let's imagine he catches XX on a bad day and manages to win against him.
Then in the next round he has to face Jakub Dyjas and gets a 4:0 beating.
But now because he didn't manage to reach semis or finals guess how many points Valuch gets for his win over XX???

Exactly: ZILCH! ZERO! NADA! Not a damn point!

Opposed to the recent ranking system, where he would get at least a few points as a little reward!

So now what's up with that? Still a good system?!?!?!

ttpshot · Nov 12, 2017

Right now, I'm loving German open because many high ranked players are participating so even the qualifiers are great to watch.
If the new system encourages top players to attend more PTs, then I'm more for it.

I also think that taking ELO factor out of is a good idea because higher ranked players won't get penalized(ie. lose rating points) for participating.

TT Guru · Nov 13, 2017

Tony's Table Tennis said:
It should of been adjusted before going live...

So player A plays 3 Tours, player B plays 6

Player A
1) wins platinum
2) SF platinum
3) SF platinum
Total points 2250 + 1800 + 1800 = 5850

Player B
1) Looser R16, platinum
2) Looser R16, platinum
3) Looser R32, platinum
4) Looser R32, platinum
5) QF normal tour
6) Looser R32, normal tour
points: 1350 + 1350 + 1125 + 1125 + 1260 + 900 = 7110

Player A will be ranked lower than Player B
Player B has never made it into Top 16 on platinum tour
Player A has always been into Top 4
Even if player A wins all 3 platinum tours, that is only 6750 points and still ranked lower than Player B

Simply looser get way too much points

Hi Tony,

Just a small correction to the above.
In cases where a seeded player loses their first match in a world tour (R32) they will receive 50% of the normal points. This doesn't apply to players who qualified to that stage from group/KO qualification rounds.
I can still see your argument applying in certain circumstances, but if player A is not competing in more than 3 events within 12 months they shouldn't be ranked very highly. We must account for events outside of the World Tour, because while it is a very important part of the calendar there are still other competitions worth considering. The above scenario would not impact the ranking in the same way if player A (and B) are present in these other high profile events.

rainneverever · Nov 13, 2017

Another issue with the new system. ITTF tours are not well spread out in a year. There are several months with two ITTF tours and several months with none. This may lead to a dramatic change of rankings in certain months. The players should not be responsible for the rank drop which may affect seeding of the upcoming tournament because of the unevenly distributed schedule of ITTF tours. Surely, in the month without ITTF tours, there may be continental events or world team events. But only one continental event is counted and the points for team events are low.

TT Guru said:
I can still see your argument applying in certain circumstances, but if player A is not competing in more than 3 events within 12 months they shouldn't be ranked very highly. We must account for events outside of the World Tour, because while it is a very important part of the calendar there are still other competitions worth considering. The above scenario would not impact the ranking in the same way if player A (and B) are present in these other high profile events.

Tony's Table Tennis · Nov 13, 2017

Agree with Rain's part of the ittf schedule - there will be months where the seeding/ranking will be way way off.

So based on 2017 schedule, a lot of your seeds with become unseeded (player B ranked higher than player A etc)
To me its not logic on - a top 4 player ranked lower than a r32 player?

Then, please don't call it world ranking - just use what they call it - world tour ranking and keep it call world ranking the same as before (based on player skills with wins and losses)

What interest me is world team champs
I guess Germany has done enough for a good draw, so would be top 2 seed.
Imagine if the math is against Germany and Dima/Boll lost a lot of ranking point and end up Germany facing China in a QF

I just check WTTTC on ITTF, no prospectus yet... weird, normally it is out 1 year + prior
wanted to check when is the seeding deadline/world ranking list it would use.
I guess 1 March - so the 2 yummy platinum tours in March won't contribute to wtttc points seeding

TT Guru · Nov 13, 2017

If a player has only 8 events and some of them will expire during a month without world tour events, then they are not participating enough. I would hope the players have hindsight to keep a 9th and 10th (etc) as backup for that scenario, see Polcanova below. These players will remain at the top regardless of gaps in the world tour.

Re: Tony's comment on team seedings:
This will be overhauled after Halmstad WTTC, and it hasn't been done according to top 3 players for quite a while. Team seedings are tricky to get right so it's a work in progress, but it's good to see people taking an interest.

The New World Ranking System Explained - January 2018!

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