Get an Esports-style Match Making Ranking (aka MMR) to compete against other players!

Many badminton ranking systems follow the BWF World Ranking system.

Traditionally players earn ranking points by playing sanctioned tournaments, imitating the professional system. These points would disappear after one year.

However unlike professionals who need to enter tournaments to keep up their world ranking and income, non-professionals may enter tournaments seldomly or once every few years.

Even if tournaments are 'graded', players often encounter opponents (smurfs) who are well beyond their skill brackets, resulting in a sub-optimal tournament experience.

Commonly in online forums and social clubs, players often classify them as beginner-, intermediate-, or advanced-level players.

It is also not uncommon to see further breakdowns into 'low' or 'high', such as 'low-intermediate' or 'high-beginner' levels.

The broad strokes for these classifications are not too controversial.

However, disagreements often take place at the boundaries between these classifications as they are inevitably subjective.

Esports have long used innovative ranking systems to match players of similar skill levels.

Unlike traditional ranking systems where points are cumulative over a year, modern MMR systems seek to determine players' current skill level, updating with every verified match.

This means that higher-ranked players winning against lower-ranked players don't necessarily gain points, as they probably should have won anyway.

Conversely, lower-ranked players winning against higher-ranked players gain more points as they have demonstrated that they are better than their current rank.

This helps to overcome some of the problems with traditional ranking systems identified above.

Of course, MMR systems require a critical mass of players and verified matches to be effective.

This is why Courtex is introducing an Esports-style MMR system for badminton players: