What are the World Pickleball Rankings
With 3,000+ tournaments expected to run on PickleballTournaments.com in 2025, we are in the unique position to create a tournament player ranking system that takes into account the vast majority of tournament play in determining how players stack up in their state, region and country. The World Pickleball Rankings (“WPR”) understands that not all tournaments are created equally. The WPR evaluates every tournament and bracket to determine the competitiveness and awards ranking points based on this. The more competitive the tournament and associated brackets, the more ranking points get awarded.
No matter how big or how small, the tournament results will count towards the World Pickleball Rankings.
Tournament Directors may specify if a bracket should be ignored for ranking purposes. This is typically the case for brackets that are not considered “competitive” in nature (e.g.: parent/child events, etc.).
How the WPR works
Let's talk about the key factors that calculate the WPR ranking points:
Minimum 2 Tournaments
To be ranked in the World Pickleball Rankings you must have at least 2 tournaments recorded within the timeframe of the ranking. Players playing in only 1 tournament will not be listed with a ranking.
Top 5 Results
To ensure our World Pickleball Rankings are both fair and accurate, we use a "Top 5 Results" model instead of simply adding up all tournament points. This approach solves a common problem in ranking systems by preventing players from artificially boosting their rank through a large volume of low-point tournament results.
Top 50%
The top 50% of teams/players in a bracket will get ranking points. If a bracket has an odd number of teams/players the 50% will round down. Example: 50% of 9 teams/players is 4.
Size of the bracket
The larger the bracket the more ranking points that bracket can produce.
Bracket Strength (BS)
Bracket Strength is the number of ranking points assigned to a bracket in a tournament. The BS depends on the total count, ratings, and experience of the players in a bracket. Players earn ranking points depending on the bracket value and their performance within a bracket.
BS of a Pure Bracket
Pure brackets include players of the same skill. Example: all players in the bracket are 3.5 (which is a rating of 3.500 to 3.999)
BS of a Blended Bracket
Blended brackets include players with varying skill (example: 3.5 and 4.0 players in the same bracket). The points given for a blended bracket are based on the average skill of all players in the bracket. Example: If you have a 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5 player in the same bracket the points given would be based on the 4.0 player.NOTE: A blended bracket gives points for each skill represented in the played bracket that were merged from another bracket.Example: If a 3.5 bracket was merged into a 4.0 bracket (making a 3.5 to 4.0 Bracket) then the 3.5 subset of players that did not get points from the top 50% may earn points based on a "subset" of 3.5 players. If a 3.5 player registers directly into a 4.0 bracket they will not get points on the subset because they choose to play in the 4.0 bracket.
Tournament Strength (TS)
Tournament Strength is the sum of the bracket values in a tournament. TS represents the overall strength of competition at a tournament. The more brackets there are, the more competitors, and the stronger the competition, the higher the TS.
Reliability Index
This is a measure of a player's bracket skill reliability. The more matches a player plays, and the more recently those matches were played, the higher the reliability index.
These factors result in the total WPR ranking points to be awarded to players in a bracket. WPR ranking points are then awarded to individual players based on where they finished within the bracket (i.e.: highest WPR ranking points are awarded to the gold medalist, lowest WPR raking points awarded to the last qualifying points paying position).
