Work out where you stand on your competition ladder

Your club might call it the comp, the pennant or the league. In SCRD it is a competition. SCRD works out your ladder position from the results every time anyone looks, so it is up to date the moment a match finishes.

How points add up

Your club picks one of three points tables for the whole competition, and the choice is fixed once entries close. All three always give more for a win than a loss, but they do not agree on what a close loss is worth.

• Win only, the default: 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss. Every win is worth the same, whatever the score.
• Per game: 2 for a win, 1 for a draw, plus 1 for every game you take, win or lose. At best of five a win played to the finish is worth 5, and a loss still banks 1 point for each game you won.
• Margin: 3 points for every match played, plus 1 per game won, minus 1 per game lost. At best of five that is 6 for a 3-0 win, 5 for a 3-1 and 4 for a 3-2, and the loser picks up 0, 1 or 2. A comfortable win scores more than a nail-biter, and a close loss is still worth something.

A match that ends in a retirement is scored as if it had been finished: whoever the retirement favours gets the rest of the match (the games they still needed in a best-of match, every game left in a Total of match), so if your opponent retires when you are 0-2 down, you win 3-2, and they keep the games they won. In a Total of match decided by Most games, if you have already won on games you keep it: 3-0 up in a Total of 5, retiring in game 4, is still a 3-2 win. A match retired on court as a walkover before a game is finished scores like a walkover: the games needed to win, not every game left. A win always scores more than the loss, whatever the games say: if you win on points in a Total of match decided by Most points but took no more games than your opponent, you get one more point than they do. And no match you play scores below 0, what a forfeit scores, so under Margin a 0-5 loss in a Total of 5 is worth 0, not -2.

Nights with no match

Not every fixture gets played, and the ladder has a rule for each way that can happen.

• Walkover: your opponent did not turn up, or someone from your own round refused to play you on the night. You are scored the games needed to win, none lost: 3-0 in a best-of division, even when your court plays best of three, or 3-0 in a Total of 4 or 5 (4-0 in a Total of 7). It counts as a match won.
• Forfeit: you did not turn up, or you refused to play someone from your own round when your club offered the game. You get 0 points whatever the table says, and the games count against you. If neither of you turns up, you both forfeit.
• Bye: the draw gave you no opponent that round, and nobody could be found for you on the night. You get the table’s win bonus with no games attached, 2 points under Win only or Per game and 3 under Margin, and it counts as a match won.
• Void: if a player withdraws from your division, they come off the ladder and every one of their fixtures is voided, played or not, for both players. A void counts for nobody, not even as a match played. The matches themselves stay in your history and at SquashLevels; only the ladder stops counting them.

A fill-in can never leave you worse off. When nobody from your round is free, your club can bring in a player from another division, or anyone else at the club. You get the game, and it counts as played for the finals. You get the better of what you actually scored and what you would have had anyway: the walkover if your opponent was the one missing, or the bye if the draw had given you one. Saying no to a fill-in costs nothing either: you keep the walkover or the bye.

Players level on points

Finish level with somebody and SCRD works down five steps, in order, until something separates you:

1. Competition points.
2. Head-to-head, only when exactly two players are level: whichever of you won more of your matches against each other goes above. A walkover or a forfeit between you is nobody’s win on court, and neither is a draw. With three or more level this step is skipped, and it falls through to the next one if you never met, or split your meetings evenly. That is common: the season’s dates decide how many rounds there are, so the last round robin usually stops part way.
3. Matches won: every win counts, walkovers and byes included.
4. Games difference: games won minus games lost. A difference rather than a count, because byes and catch-ups mean players do not all end up with the same number of matches.
5. Points difference: rally points won minus lost, with any handicap start taken off first.

Head-to-head comes straight after points because if you beat the other player on the night, you expect that to settle it. Still level after all five steps? You share the position, shown as =4, =4, then 6 for whoever comes next. SCRD never tosses a coin, and the ladder never shows an order it does not have.

Finals

When your division has finals, the top four on the ladder who qualify go through: 1st plays 4th, 2nd plays 3rd, and the two winners meet in the grand final. If players share a place in the top four, your club puts them in order before the finals are drawn, and the ladder still shows them sharing it.

• To qualify you need to play a minimum number of regular rounds, by default half of them, rounded down. Only matches you actually play count, a game against a fill-in included; a forfeit does not. Each bye, walkover or void you are given lowers your own target by one, never below one, so opponents who keep failing to turn up do not cost you your place. Your club can set a different number, or turn the rule off.
• Once you can no longer qualify, your own row on the ladder shows FINALS OUT OF REACH.
• A drawn semi-final or grand final goes to the better seed and is still recorded as a draw, so nobody replays it.
• A finalist who does not turn up forfeits.

Where you see it

Sign in and open COMPETITIONS from your dashboard menu. It lists every division you are entered in, with your position and your next round, once the competition has closed its entries.

Open a division for its Ladder, its Draw for this round and next, and the champion once the grand final is played. Only players entered in the competition, and players whose primary club is the club running it, can see it, and only when signed in: there is no public link.