Grading

Grading, or rating, is the process by which player ability is assessed.  

Players can do this themselves against a checklist of competencies, or take part in a grading activity, with a coach, a club which offers informal grading, or taking part in events.

Badminton England provides a player Grade (a letter from A - international standard.. downwards) and a ranking. These are great if you are a competitive player in tournaments, but meaningless for the million or so other players in England that are not.  

Self assessment

There are several ways to measure your own rating.

You can assess yourself using a rating chart (there are many variations on this but broadly speaking they are looking at similar traits, but may be different phrasing or resulting scores) or come along as a guest for an evening, we have players from 1.5 (experienced beginners) to 4.0 (high intermediate level players).

To give you an idea of player standard in the leagues we are entering teams in, the following would be the expected rating of players, using the above chart as guide.

• Sutton Division 4: 3.5+

• Sutton Division 5: 3+

• East Surrey League: 2.5+

Automatic tracking

The club uses an Elo system (similar to Chess, but more sweaty) on a club night, all recorded by our pegboard software.  This means that irrespective of your level, the pegboard system builds evenly matched games, predicts the outcome and adjusts your rating accordingly based on the exact score result. After ten or so games, your rating will stabilise.

This means every club player can track their historical performance, and we can build a club culture which moves away from specific cliques of players hogging pairs and courts, and new members get a varied and fulfilling experience.

These rating scores start at around 500 for complete beginners and go up to 2200 for our strongest players, and we use these ratings to decide which sessions players should play in.