Letters From Users (and some articles)

Below are letters from users and also links to some articles about ratings or Ratings Central. For letters about Zermelo see Zermelo Letters.

May 23, 2025

Dear Ratings Central team,

First of all, thank you very much for the time dedicated to build the platform. I believe it is very valuable to the table tennis community!

…

Thank you in advance for your help and advice.
João Correia

January 28, 2025

…

Thanks for excellent software and web interface. Appreciate your communications when you have the rare outages.

Kevin Alexander
Fort Collins Table Tennis Club

January 1, 2025

Hi David and Sean,

Happy new year! Thanks for your continued work on Ratings Central, it’s such a great resource for us in Edinburgh.

…

Gordon Muir
Edinburgh and Lothians Table Tennis League

December 14, 2024

Dear David,

Thanks to your support I have created a dashboard for the local TT team that keeps all of us motivated to improve our ratings :)

Rating Dashboard

Keep up with the great work
Paolo Furegato

August 15, 2024

Dear Ratings Central directors,

Congratulations on your site and the associated ranking system which is extremely interesting and seems much more reliable than the one implemented by the international federation.

…

Best regards,
Jan Moller

July 7, 2024

Hey David!

Good morning!

Thank you for being patient and explaining the process. After reading the page I did contact one of the directors and we will transfer one of the existing IDs to me. Thank you again and we really appreciate all the effort you and your team put into the Ratings Central program and management.

Cheers
Antonio Alves
St George & Sutherland Shire Table Tennis Assoc

November 29, 2023

Mr. Marcus,

I use Ratings Central ratings for seeding and Cantor for tourney results. I really like the way Cantor sends tourney results emails to all the players when the event is submitted.

…

Thank you,
Rod Cowles
Omaha Metro Table Tennis Club

April 6, 2023

Thanks David!

I submitted our first results and I found the program easy and intuitive to use, thank you very much. Looking forward to continuing to use it and get more accurate rankings for our members in the future.

Cheers,
Bonnie Bickel

February 28, 2023

Hi there,

This is Cong Minh from Melbourne, Australia.

I look at Ratings Central quite regularly and would like to say that it is a wonderful platform to show and keep track of players’ ratings.

…

Regards,
Cong Minh

February 17, 2023

Dear Mr. Marcus,

As a table tennis player in Austria, I firstly want to thank you for the amazing Ratings Central system you provide for all of us.

…

Regards,
Christian Ritter

December 6, 2022

Hi David,

Just wanted to say I’ve recently noticed the updated match search and rating history graph functions and REALLY love them. It’s great to be able to see the data in all these different ways.

Thanks for all of your hard work on the system!

Zachary Anstey
Coburg TTC, Australia

October 26, 2022

Hi David,

…

Finally, thank you for creating and maintaining such a valuable resource.

Thanks,
David McGrath

March 1, 2022

Hello David,

…

Thank you for creating an accessible program for the table tennis community,

Cameron Eggart

May 11, 2021

Hello David,

I have really enjoyed using the software while running tournaments for the University of Idaho’s table tennis class. Five total events have been logged and about 35 new players added to the Ratings Central system (a lot of who will continue playing at the school’s league and regional tournaments).

…

Thank you for your time and creation of this software,
Cameron Eggart

March 3, 2021

Hello David,

After reading through the manual, I have successfully uploaded my first event to Ratings Central (Event ID: 39473). First off, impressive software and manual. I’m sure I can’t imagine the amount of effort and time put in. The tutorial was helpful and the manual easy to work with.

…

Thank you for your time and insights,
Cameron Eggart

January 6, 2021

Dear David,

…

Thanks for your superb rating system that is really helpful to us.

Regards,
Suhaidin Azhar

June 19, 2020

…

And thank you for a great service. I used to do our own ratings years ago but your system is certainly better and more convenient (except for trying to explain standard deviation ;-)).

Bruce Kline
Champlain Valley Table Tennis Club

August 3, 2019

Mr. Marcus,

Thank you for developing and maintaining your rating system. This has enabled our club (Omaha Metro Table Tennis Club — OMTTC in Nebraska) to efficiently run non-sanctioned tournaments. We will be making a contribution to Ratings Central at our next tournament.

…

Thank you for your help,

Rod Cowles
Director, OMTTC

May 14, 2019

Hi David and Sean,

…

As event director, I like Ratings Central very much … I think it is an ingenious and smoothly working website and I look forward to continue using it to tabulate our results.

thanks,
Kevin Alexander
Fort Collins Table Tennis Club

March 24, 2019

Hi,

First of all, I take this opportunity to thank you for such amazing website. It provides an excellent record of a player’s performance, history and trend. It is a wonderful resource.

…

Regards
Shaun Ang

March 20, 2019

Hi there,

Well done on the Ratings Central site—it’s an amazing resource!

…

Many thanks,
Robert Stillwell

November 26, 2017

Hi David,

Please accept our small contribution of $20 AUD in recognition of the tremendous service you provide to table tennis players. The money has been forwarded via PayPal.

Yours sincerely,
Richard Mielczarek
Secretary,
The Sunbury & District Table Tennis Association, Victoria, Australia

October 17, 2016

Dear David,

My name is Fabio Zambetta, a player in the Sunbury & District TT Association (where Robert Katsipis is also based) and a lecturer in Computer Science. Rob may have mentioned to you I am writing a Windows app to manage our pennant, which interfaces to Ratings Central.

…

Cheers
Fabio Zambetta
Senior Lecturer
School of Science, RMIT University

P.S. Many thanks for Ratings Central, it is a great system and I thoroughly appreciate the model behind it (my area of expertise is AI in computer games, so I do know what your equations are for) :)

October 11, 2016

Hi David,

…

I see. I will read the user’s guide much more thoroughly now, and also try things out on the Windows machine tonight. Thanks again for the help, and, most importantly, for designing and maintaining such a phenomenal rating system!

Best,
Cory Trainer
Paddle Palace club

May 3, 2016

I played at the NSW [New South Wales] Country Championships on the weekend. About 200 people competing. Great fun was had by all (along with a few whinges from people who don’t like my long pips!). Interestingly, there was quite a lot of discussion about Ratings Central and how it all works. A number of people were asking others how it works etc.—it was good to hear a number of people singing it’s praises (me among them!). Might not be too long before NSW TT Federation joins the long list of “official” users.

I do like the way that the Bayesian probability system works—it seems to me that it provides a pretty good indication of a person’s standard. Someone who is improving quickly can be a bit of a surprise package in ratings terms for a while though!

Thanks for all your efforts with this. It is a great contribution to our sport.

Regards
Dr. John

Date: January 17, 2016
To: David Marcus, Greg Bristowe, Gerard McCarthy, Jeff Dever
Subject: Insports Table tennis sub-portals go live with Ratings Central interface

Greetings All,

I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to you for the time, effort and assistance provided in making the integration of the Insports table tennis sub-portals with Ratings Central possible.

Special thanks goes to Greg Bristowe (Croydon and Districts Table Tennis Association) who burned the midnight oil testing and helping iron out the bugs of the interface. The system went live in the wee hours of Saturday morning (16/01/2016 AUS time).

Thanks David for helping us sort out the pitfalls of the USA vs AUS date conversion; and thanks Gerard for working with us to develop a download to RCPennantSubmitter and the changes you had promptly incorporated into your software.

This joint collaboration will greatly assist clubs with their pennant processing and centralized ratings.

Regards,
Andrew Kurdzinski
Internet Sports Services (ISS)

January 15, 2016

Hi David,

I have uploaded all our singles matches with no problems. Our members do like your system and appreciate your effort and time and making this rating system available for us to keep track of our matches and ratings. Thank you!!!

…

Thanks again,
Den Lin

October 9, 2015

Hi David

We are using your system. It is very good system, easy to use, clear presentation. We appreciate what you’ve done.

…

Thank you for your time.

Kind regards
Allan Xu
Sydney Northern District Table Tennis Association

October 7, 2015

After just reading about you and Ratings Central, I am glad TTV (Table Tennis Victoria) and my local club have started using your system. I admire your hard to work to achieve your Ph.D., your work history and contribution in the table tennis industry. The world is a much better place having such hard working motivated people like you around that will give your time, knowledge and experience to others … and also take the time for the minutiae such as updating a database with an email address!

Many thanks David.

Regards
John Griffiths
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

August 3, 2015

Hi David

…

As an engineer and currently a student of ICT (information and communications technology) I am always thinking of ways to improve the ergonomics of running a tournament. So your systems are very inspiring.

…

Cheers
Glenn Errington
South Australia referee

July 19, 2015

Hi David,

I am still very happy with your system to process our hardbat tournaments.

More and more people in the Netherlands now think it is a good system as an indication of the player’s strength in hardbat.

…

Kind regards,
Matthieu Wegh

May 7, 2015

Thanks David. … Everything you have done with this project makes managing tournaments so much easier, and more fun.

Michael V. Lauro, Jr.

April 7, 2015

David,

Holy crap you rock. Absolutely perfect. Thanks for the assistance and all that you do!

Dan Emord
Genesee Valley Table Tennis Club

April 3, 2015

Hi David

Thanks again for this great service. Your API documentation was excellent. The personal help sorting out the Pascal interpretation for encryption then encoding was essential. Having made many little silly mistakes in trying to create more than 12 months of Event Reports in just a few hours, I have been very impressed with the error checking and automated emails that your system provides. The resubmission process is so simple.

…

Happy Easter on Sunday

All the best,
Gerard McCarthy
ES&CTTA Admin Secretary and Website Manager

March 10, 2015

Thanks David,

BTW, if I haven’t already told you—both Zermelo, Cantor, and the Ratings Central experience is awesome, you don’t have to convince me.

I was just trying to be really good at using it, as I have to train up all our clubs, and I can forsee the questions they may ask.

…

On another note—do you ever sleep?

Thank you again for all your help.

Kind Regards
Robert Katsipis
Technical Committee Chair, Table Tennis Victoria

September 1, 2014

David,

The processing of the results is very quick and amazing. …

Thanks again for providing a great program which uses the power of statistics and probability functions to accurately assess a player’s skill rating. For our club we have been able to set up a meaningful competition and not have to artificially put players into grades. Players are grateful that they can see their results quickly and all the scores against their opponents. This allows them to plan tactics for future matches or see what problems they have against various styles of players.

Regards,
Tombo Lee
Cherrybrook Table Tennis Club

August 29, 2014

Hi,

…

Thanks for your help. And a word of appreciation that our club members enjoy the competition that is possible due to the quick and accurate rating system that rewards players winning against higher-rated players.

Regards,
Tombo Lee
Cherrybrook Table Tennis Club

April 12, 2014

… I have input two events into Ratings Central, and the ranking of Scottish players that have played since 2010 now looks like …

Was impressed at the painless nature of uploading via Cantor. I am quite happy with the numbers, a few outliers but a problem with lack of results rather than priors I think.

Gordon Muir
Edinburgh and Lothians Table Tennis League

January 16, 2014

Hello Marcus

…

Our players are very happy with your service. We have been doing this for 1 year now.

Neil Cossey
Director
Port Macquarie Table Tennis Club, Australia

September 1, 2013

Hello,

…

I really appreciate your excellent Ratings Central site and software. It’s a huge contribution to the sport of Table Tennis and I am grateful for your efforts.

Sincerely,
Tom Kisler
Des Moines Table Tennis Club

June 29, 2013

Hello David

Our Club has been using Ratings Central successfully for 16 weeks and our members are really pleased with it. Thank you for the program.

…

Neil Cossey
Port Macquarie Table Tennis Club, Australia

“A Self-Defeating Adventure in Self-Rating” by Paul Wachter, The New York Times, December 22, 2012.

This article is on the U.S. Tennis Association’s league ratings.

June 30, 2012

…

We really appreciate your Cantor program and Ratings Central.

Thank you,
Rod Cowles
Omaha Metro Table Tennis Club

June 29, 2012

Sehr geehrter Herr Marcus,
lieber David!

Möchte mich im Namen des Kärntner Tischtennisverbandes und vor allem der vielen Jugendlichen, für die Tischtennis eine sinnvolle Freizeitbeschäftigung ist und so diese von vielen negativen Dingen ablenkt, sehr, sehr herzlich für die Entwicklung der Rangliste bedanken.

In Kärnten sind alle Funktionäre nur ehrenamtlich tätig, es gibt auch kein Büro und so war es uns eine sehr große Hilfe, deine Rangliste übernehmen zu können. Unser Ranglistenreferent Kurt Goritschnig, der auch mit Hrn. Baurecht gut zusammenarbeitet, ist in Sachen EDV gottseidank auch sehr bewandert und so können wir nunmehr unseren Tischtennisspielern ein wirklich gutes Service bieten.

Nochmals vielen, vielen herzlichen Dank und alles Gute für die Zukunft.

Liebe Grüße
Karl Waldhauser
(Präs. KTTV)

Translation:

Dear David!

On behalf of the Carinthian Table Tennis Association, and especially in the name of the many young people for whom table tennis is a meaningful leisure activity that distracts them from so many negative things, I want to thank you very very much for the development of the rating/ranking system.

In Carinthia, all officials are just volunteers; there is no office. And so it was a great help for us to be able to use your rankings. Our ranking officer, Kurt Goritschnig, who works well together with Dr. Baurecht, has thank God much knowledge in IT, and therefore we now can offer our table tennis players a really good service.

Again, many, many thanks and best wishes for the future.

Greetings,
Karl Waldhauser
(President KTTV)

“Ratings Central: Accurate, Automated, Bayesian Table Tennis Ratings for Clubs, Leagues, Tournaments, and Organizations” by David J. Marcus, NESSIS (New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports), September 24, 2011. Video of David‘s Presentation, Program and Abstracts, Presentations and Videos, Photos.

“Ratings Central: Accurate, Automated, Bayesian Table Tennis Ratings for Clubs, Leagues, Tournaments, and Organizations” by David J. Marcus, Joint Statistical Meetings, July 30–August 4, 2011. Session, Abstract.

June 21, 2011

…

Thank you for the great rating Web application that we are using right now.

Resty Rojalez
Philippines

“Das Ranglistensystem von Ratings Central”, part 2, by Dieter Baurecht, ÖTTZ (Österreichische Tischtennis Zeitung), No. 100, May/June 2011, pages 8–9.

March 22, 2011

Hi David,

…

This system is very easy to use.

I know most of our players and the ratings are looking good at the moment. By the time I have entered 2010 results it should reflect abilities.

…

Regards,
Doug McLean

March 15, 2011

Hi David,

First of all I want to thank you for Zermelo and Ratings Central. It works great!

…

Adrián Boimvaser

“Das Ranglistensystem von Ratings Central”, part 1, by Dieter Baurecht, ÖTTZ (Österreichische Tischtennis Zeitung), No. 99, March/April 2011, pages 8–9.

February 24, 2011

David:

…

Thanks for the work you are doing on the ratings. The players do appreciate it.

My club is located in a sports bar with six tables and it is growing to the point that we are pretty much to the limit on the number of players we can handle. In a large way Ratings Central has helped the growth. We have a team league over four days with 96 players and will most likely go to 5 days with 120 players. I think beer and Ratings Central is the answer to all the problems.

Tim

January 19, 2011

Dear David,

Using the strong support of our friend Dieter Baurecht, the Austrian Table Tennis Association is from now on using Ratings Central as its official ranking system.

We have tried and used quite a number of different ranking software systems, but were not able to find one which could be adapted to our requirements.

However, our experts are convinced that with Ratings Central we have now found an excellent tool for arranging an accurate and fair ranking of players participating in Austrian table tennis.

So let me please express my sincere thanks for providing this system to us.

I hope you are planning to visit Austria in the near future. We would be happy to have you as our special guest at one of the forthcoming international table tennis events in our country.

Looking forward to keeping in touch with you,

Rudi Sporrer
General Secretary
Austrian Table Tennis Association

November 2, 2010

Hi, Sean and David.

As I’ve now submitted all of our tournaments to date I thought it a good time to review the results. I have to say I am very impressed as the ratings are pretty much in line with what I was expecting at the start.

…

David, may I also compliment you on the software [Cantor]—once I got used to it, it was very easy to use, even for a Luddite like me! Now that I have used it and seen the accuracy of the ratings, I would be very pleased to recommend it to anyone.

Thank you both very much.

Regards,
Chris Pickard
Hardbat English Association Of Table Tennis

September 4, 2010

Thanks! I’m still getting used to navigating through Ratings Central.

This is the best ratings system I have seen for table tennis and perhaps for any sport. I wish USATT would consider it. The USATT rating system is inflated and not as accurate as it should be.

Keith Pech

July 21, 2010

David,

…

Again thanks for your work. The players here in Portland really enjoy the rating system.

Tim Titrud

June 17, 2010

NÖTTV Interview with David Marcus

November 21, 2009

Hi, David.

Thanks for developing and hosting Ratings Central. It has been very useful in our local leagues in helping us know players’ current skill level.

Thanks again for providing the rating service. It’s really allowed us to create better league teams, seedings within our club, etc!

Brian Clark
Table Tennis Minneosota

October 24, 2009

Hi, David.

The club here at UC Berkeley has recently been using Ratings Central to facilitate our weekly round robins and it’s working out very well!

…

Mark Wei
President of Cal Table Tennis Club

September 13, 2009

…

Tomorrow the Maine Table Tennis League will start our new season of table tennis. We have 8 permanently set up tables and 70–80 members now.

The Ratings Central website has been invaluable in helping us rate the players.

Rick Shea

August 29, 2009

David,

… Cantor is such a great program and is so easy to use. Our players really enjoy seeing the results.

Thanks for all your work with Ratings Central.

Ray Spann
Lakeland Table Tennis Association

August 29, 2009

Hello.

… I like the fact it is free, easy to use, and allows for immediate posted results.

I also feel that overall, it is superior (more accurate) than the USATT rating system.

…

Thanks,
Russ Walker

August 9, 2009

Hi, David.

…

By the way, thank you so much for the assistance and the great online rating is so far the best and also for the great software Cantor :) very friendly and with the complete manual.

…

Ratings Central is very effective and useful. This could eliminate players who give matches to their friends. This means that every match has a bearing …

I love this! Thanks David.

Resty Rojales

August 7, 2009

Hello again David.

I spent a lot of time to study the software and Cantor Users’s Manual.

First of all I would like to thank you for creating this program and for sharing it with all table tennis fans around the world.

I think it is a great and easy to use software.

…

Best Regards,

Atanas Gadje
Administrator
Table Tennis Fans

July 22, 2009

David,

Thanks for your prompt attention to my problem. The players here really enjoy watching their rating results; it adds significantly to their enjoyment of the game. We wouldn’t like to be without Ratings Central, since it is invaluable setting up the draws and giving feedback to the players.

Thanks again,
Joseph Sabas

December 4, 2008

David,

Lower Austria is one of nine Austrian provinces and the home of Werner Schlager. The Lower Austrian Table Tennis Association (NÖTTV) has introduced the Ratings Central system as the official rating and ranking system starting with the 2008–2009 season. Since the data was available, we first submitted a lot of events from previous seasons, enabling us to start with a large number of already-rated players. We use the system for all purposes where a ranking list is necessary, and players love to inspect their results weekly. We also extract ranking lists of individual groups out of the system, e.g., different age groups (young players as well as veterans) or women.

Games of all our events are submitted weekly including all playing strengths, genders, and age groups: from Austrian First League to the under-eleven junior leagues, all tournaments, and a Cup system. Due to your submitting results of events from the ITTF Pro Tour and European Champions League, our best players are also rated in the same system—something we never had before. Although most of the leagues are played in isolated local regions, Lower-Austrian-wide events calibrate the playing strengths of the different regions quite well so that we have for the first time an accepted ranking system for the whole of Lower Austria.

Of course, in the beginning it took some time to persuade players of all the advantages of the system. Now, most of them (especially the interested ones) have learned how point changes occur and what the size of point changes depend on. Although the algorithm that produces this is not understandable in detail for most of us, we see that the system works very well. So, I can attest that it is much better to have a well-accepted ranking system using a sophisticated algorithm than to have a system where point changes are done by a few easily understood rules that result in an always-disputed rating list. For the first time that I can remember, there was no discussion about the draw at the 2008 NÖTTV championships! ;-)

In addition to the quite perfect ranking, the history graphs are a great feature to track playing strengths. In particular, we can monitor the development of young players not only on the table, but also as hard facts.

Therefore, when talking to our players, we get a lot of very-positive feedback that really should be passed to you and your team. Thanks a lot for your work.

Dr. Dieter Baurecht
Board Member
Lower Austrian Table Tennis Association

Photo of Dieter, Werner Schlager, players from Dieter’s club
European Champions League match
December 11, 2009

December 4, 2008

Thanks so much for your help, David.

I’ve managed to post (incorrectly because I inputted estimated ratings for new players) and re-post one of the divisions of the tournament. So easy—and it looks great! Thanks so much for this.

I will work on inputting the rest of the events, slowly but surely. We ran a 3-person team event, so I’m trying to use a format that will allow me to post only the matches that were played—and delete the matches not played. We’ll see how that goes.

Love the software. We tend to run some funky formats here (2-person team RR, etc.), so it may take a bit of tweaking.

Much appreciated!

Craig Tafel
Shanghai

April 15, 2008

Hi, David.

Thank you for your quick response, and for granting me access to the data files (which I have since downloaded).

David, I have already begun experimenting with your software (and data), with a view to using it to ensure the smooth running of the 2008 WTTA “Wynnum Open” on the 26th and 27th of this month.

It is only early days at this time, but from what I have seen thus far, the software looks to be very functional and a well thought out system (including your “user friendly” documentation). I too am a computer programmer (20 years experience), and can fully appreciate the tremendous amount of time you have so willing put into your application. The “Table Tennis Community” is just so fortunate to have great people like yourself, who have such a passion for the sport, that they are prepared to dedicate their personal time (purely out of goodwill) to assist others—Truly commendable—Well done!!

Thanks again David for all your great work in this regard, and I will be in touch again in the near future—Thank you.

Cheers
Grant Beale

“A Story of the Rating” by Jota Ito, World Table Tennis, December 2007, volume 127, page 147.

Click the link above to see the original Japanese. The following translation is by Shigeaki Nishina.

A Story of the Rating
by Jota Ito

What is the best way to introduce a rating system, numerical evaluation of players’ strengths, in the Japanese table tennis world? First, we need to determine the target players. High school or junior high school students are the most active table tennis players in Japan, so you might think they would be the best targets. But unfortunately, they are not. Because a rating system detects absolute strength of players based on relative strength, or match results, it does not work well for a group whose members are all getting better and better every match. So, although it might sound ironic, the system should be introduced mainly for college students or older players, whose table tennis strength is stable. Secondly, we have to find out someone who can actually introduce and run the system. The simple and reasonable answer is JTTA. But highly possibly it won’t happen. There is no one who are actually feeling inconvenience without a rating system in Japan. “Looking interesting” will not be a sufficient reason for them to bear monetary and labor costs.

So, what is the possible story? Use the Internet. What if someone, who has spare time and computer skills, makes a rating system, collects the match results from all over Japan, and calculates the ratings for players, independently? Of course, such a system does not have any authority or practical effect. It would be just for table tennis fans enjoying discussion about the matches. But it sounds fun, doesn’t it? And if the calculated ratings accurately evaluate the players’ strength, it could become popular. And finally, it could have some authority, or could become even a standard. At this point, JTTA might want to adopt the system. Then just let’s give it to them.

After dreaming of such a story for a while, I sent an email to USATT and asked about the theory on which their rating system is based, and the outcome was quite unforeseeable. I received a reply from a man named David Marcus. “There’s no theory in the current USATT rating system”, his email said from the beginning. It continued saying that the USATT’s method is determined arbitrarily based on their experiences, and not based on any theory. I felt from his arrogance that he is not an ordinary man, and knew that he has a doctor’s degree in probability from MIT, the world-famous university known as a Nobel Prize factory. According to him, there’s another table tennis rating system developed by himself. The system is designed to hold each player’s table tennis strength as a probability distribution, and update the distribution based on a “probability-of-upset function” and match results, in a way with logicality and strictness that all the people who major in science and engineering would love. Why isn’t the system adopted by USATT if it is superior? He explained the reason to me, “The USATT president Sheri and her followers hate me.” You would see the personality of this person by the fact that he told such kind of a story in the first emails to someone he has never met. Well, I like such a person.

Then he showed me the Ratings Central website, and it made me jump up in surprise. Believe it or not, the site collects the match results from arbitrary tournaments including the World Championships and Pro Tour, calculates the players’ ratings using his system, and opens them freely to the public (of course, no players nor ITTF would know this). According to the site, Wang Hao holds the highest rating,3175​±38 (mean ± standard deviation), and Jun Mizutani has the highest among Japanese, 2956​±36 (as of October 4, 2007). Furthermore, the site allows everyone to register players and enter match results. What I dreamed already exists here. Amazing!

So, if you are the person who is interested in the idea I wrote in the first part, please access this website and enter results of tournaments (you will need some communication with him in English). Because there have already been around two hundred Japanese players registered in the system, it would be good to start from JTTL or All Japan Championship, the tournaments in which those players play, and then move on to the other tournaments for general players, so as to expand it to nationwide with keeping the accuracy of the ratings. So far, the total number of registered players is about seventeen thousand primarily from the US, and he said no worry about the storage limit. The system doesn’t have a fancy display for distribution for example, but it is still the first and only rating system that covers tournaments worldwide. We can become a friend even with people from countries we have never heard through the rating system! This is all possible only at this IT age. How magnificent and fun it is!

June 16, 2005

There are three men from Taiwan on the Class 5 (wheelchair) IPTTC (International Paralympic Table Tennis Committee) Ratings Central rating/ranking list. Before the National Championships on May 29, 2005, they were ranked right next to each other in places 9–11:

Many players and coaches in Taiwan did not believe these ratings/rankings. They thought there must be some error because, in the past, Tsai almost always lost when he played Lin or Chang. Lin and Chang competed in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens and are not beatable in Taiwan.

Tsai is a nobody and can only participate in open tournaments by paying his own way because he doesn’t have enough ranking points on the official IPTTC ranking list to qualify to be selected for major international events, such as the Paralympic Games. (While IPTTC is currently testing/evaluating Ratings Central, the official ranking list uses a system where players accumulate points based on international match wins. The more tournaments you play, the more points are available for you to accumulate.) Tsai has beaten some very good players recently in international tournaments, but hasn’t played as many such tournaments as others in his class.

However, in the National Championships, Mr. Tsai beat both Mr. Lin and Mr. Chang and became the Men’s Class 5 Champion! As a result, Mr. Tsai is now on the National Team and will participate in the Tribute to Peace World Wheelchair and Amputee Games.

The Ratings Central rating system has done a very good job of predicting true playing strength. Mr. Tsai’s results are only one of many examples of this.

Dr. Chi-Shih Wu
Former Director for Rankings
International Paralympic Table Tennis Committee

January 26, 2005

David,

… I once again wanted to thank you for making such a great resource available to the table tennis community.

It is through the efforts of people like you and Scott Gordon that keeps table tennis a community instead of just a bunch of players.

Howard Blum

January 24, 2005

David,

…

I continue to be amazed at the quality of Cantor. Since I input results into both the USATT League system and Cantor, I much prefer using Cantor.

Thanks,
Raymond D. Spann
Lakeland Table Tennis Association

December 23, 2004

David,

I just want to thank you for your assistance and patience while helping me import the 116 historical AGTTA [Atlanta Georgia Table Tennis Association] league sessions into Ratings Central. Without it, AGTTA would not have this excellent resource for our members.

…

René Nielsen

December 22, 2004

David,

Thanks for all the work you have done on Ratings Central. It is now a great deal easier to use. I am going to try to get the other clubs in Oregon to use it.

…

Tim Titrud

October 20, 2004

David,

My club has been using Ratings Central for two years now, and we find it useful and exciting. It really is a neat program/service if you like to play for rating points and consider them a sign of progress (or lack of). And, it’s absolutely free to us!! The results are processed within minutes once we have entered them, so we get almost immediate feedback of results. And, the Ratings Central rating system eliminates wild swings in ratings—up or down.

For me, it has been similar to playing in a tournament twice a week for two years! Some people may not like the pressure it can put on you, but I am sure that if a club tries it out, they will arrive at a suitable conclusion of if, and how often, to count matches for ratings. For me, it nearly fulfilled my need for the pressure, and made it more likely that I would pass on USATT tournaments since I got, in effect, the same intensity of play and pressure without having to travel.

Rick Mundy
President
Tidewater Table Tennis Club

October 6, 2004

David,

Thank you for Ratings Central’s support of the Rhode Island table tennis tournament on Sunday, September 26.

This was our first non-USATT-sanctioned tournament. The tournament was very successful: we had 60 participants, including the two highest rated players in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and 24 unrated players who had never played in a tournament before. In comparison, our August USATT-sanctioned tournament (which we also submitted to Ratings Central) had only 44 participants.

Everyone was impressed with the speed and accuracy of Ratings Central’s posting of the match results. Not only were the results posted very quickly (the evening of the tournament day), but Ratings Central sent each participant an email containing a link to the player’s own match results.

We especially appreciated the fact that there are no membership dues nor any fees associated with Ratings Central. Since the cost was very low, players were able to play more events.

We look forward to running many future Rhode Island table tennis tournaments with Ratings Central’s support.

Thank you!

Chuck Cavicchio
President
Rhode Island Table Tennis Association

August 17, 2004

Hi, David.

Using your software was very easy, the tournament seemed very organized, and you were very helpful in every question we had.

…

Thanks,
Mohamad Al-Sabek

May 3, 2004

David,

Thank you for Cantor!

Submitted my first matches for a tournament in April for the Virginia Tech T.T. Club. My biggest surprise was how fast the ratings had been processed, immediately!

And as for the program, my work as Ratings Director for the NCTTA has just become so much easier.

I think I can convince now most of the college clubs in the US to use the system also.

Thanks,
Seemant Teotia

April 29, 2004

Hi, David.

First, I wanted to thank you for the great program you have created. Using Cantor and the new website is so easy and the players appreciate how in minutes they can view their new ratings. On behalf of them, thank you.

…

Thanks,
Oleg Zalesskiy

April 25, 2004

David,

We used the new Cantor program and new website for the first time on Sunday, April 25, 2004, for our weekly “Lakeland Sunday Round Robin Spectacular”. As I noted in an earlier email, we have not been keeping game scores, only match wins and losses with the previous system. I was pleasantly surprised at how well our players adapted to the new system. We produced simple match cards for the players to take with them to the tables and a tray to deposit the results at the control desk. The players were excited about the new process and there were no complaints from anyone.

When I arrived home, with the match cards, I quickly processed the results with Cantor. I was very pleased with the minimum amount of time it took to enter the players and game scores. I then went online, set up the email and did a test. I then submitted the results, had a confirmation from Ratings Central about the test and the results that I had submitted. Our new ratings were processed rapidly, and I then emailed the results and the new ratings to all our players. We completed play at our club at 5:45 p.m. and our players had the results and their new ratings before 7:00 p.m.

In conclusion, this is a superior system and I know all our players are excited. As for problems or bugs, there were none that we observed. The system worked flawlessly for us.

Thanks for the great program!!!!

Best wishes,
Raymond D. Spann
Lakeland Table Tennis Association

“Devil to Play” by Eric Dexheimer, Denver Westword, July 1, 1999.

This article is about the U.S. Tennis Association’s league ratings.