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Pickle Power to provide additional $100 gift vouchers for top male & female doubles players
11th March 2025
As well as providing 3x $100 lucky draw vouchers at the end of each quarter, MasterLeague sponsor Pickle Power is also providing another 2x $100 vouchers to go to each of the top male and female doubles player each quarter.
The vouchers are good for any of Pickle Power's advanced and intermediate paddle range, including Joola, Six Zero, Paddletek, Proton, Selkirk and CRBN.
Proudly NZ owned & operated, Pickle Power is run by avid players who are known to support a number of events and competitions including MasterLeague.
Visit www.picklepower.nz to browse their range and order some demo paddles, or visit their store.
Address: 8/6 Workspace Drive, Hobsonville, Auckland 0618
Contact: Josh Aquino, 021 028 30979
Pickle Power to provide 3x $100 gift vouchers each quarter
10th March 2025
Online and bricks & mortar pickleball store Pickle Power is proud to sponsor MasterLeague and is offering 3x $100 lucky draw vouchers at the end of each quarter.
The vouchers are good for any of Pickle Power's advanced and intermediate paddle range, including Joola, Six Zero, Paddletek, Proton, Selkirk and CRBN.
Proudly NZ owned & operated, Pickle Power is run by avid players who are known to support a number of events and competitions including MasterLeague.
Visit www.picklepower.nz to browse their range and order some demo paddles, or visit their store.
Address: 8/6 Workspace Drive, Hobsonville, Auckland 0618
Contact: Josh Aquino, 021 028 30979
Cash prize for most-improved
10th March 2025
No job seems too big for home prep and construction maintenance company Market Ready, but now it is proving that no job is too small with its Small Paint Jobs service.
Anyone needing a quote for a small paint job can simply upload a few photos and get a quote from one of their network of professional painters. Run by MasterLeague player Ian Morrow, Market Ready and Small Paint Jobs is offering a $100 cash prize to the most improved player each quarter for 2025.
Visit www.smallpaintjobs.co.nz to get a quote now.
Coaching prize for under-3.0 leader
7th March 2025
Luke Addison, the current overall leader in both singles and doubles ladders, is celebrating achieving his IPTPA certification by sponsoring MasterLeague 2025 and promoting Addison Pickleball Coaching. Luke is offering a free 50-minute coaching session to the top under-3.0 player at the end of each quarter.
Player ratings are determined by their DUPR rating prior to the final week of the quarter.
Visit www.addisonpickleball.co.nz to learn more about Addison Pickleball Coaching.
Q2 '25 ladders open for registration
1st March 2025
With one month left in Q1, the Q2 MasterLeague ladders are now open for registration.
All existing 2025 players have been added automatically, with new players able to join both the Q1 and Q2 ladders depending on their availability.
The MasterLeague points formula does not limit players' points potential based on how often they can play, so a player need only participate in one event to have an appropriate place on the ladder based on on-court performance and the level of the players in those games. While there is an idle penalty, it is removed once a player plays again, while the "sink rate" is logarithmic, meaning it slows the longer the idle period.
2025 Club ladder - how it works
10th January 2025
As with other ladders, points in the new Club ladder are awarded taking advantage of the versatility of the MasterLeague Points System. Whereas the rotating-doubles ladder uses the adverage DUPR rating on each court for each round, and the pairs ladder uses the average opponent rating for each match, the Club ladder replaces the average DUPR rating with the index 5.0 rating so that ladder points are based only on the proportion of points won by players from each club.
Club ladder points are calculated from both doubles and singles ladders. Players nominate their club during the registration process.
This is more intuitive and fairer than reporting the percentage of points won, or appying an aggregate. Also as with other ladders, an adjustment will be made based on how many weeks since the last time a player from each club has participated in any match, whether singles or doubles, apart from any challenge ladders such as the Pairs ladder, since these will be based on privately arranged matches.
Pairs ladder added to 2025 series
2nd January 2025
As part of its promised expansion in 2025, MasterLeague is excited to announce a new pairs challenge ladder.
Points will be awarded taking advantage of the versatility of the MasterLeague Points System. The way the formula is applied to pairs is such that players need not seek out the best possible partners, as the points awarded to each pair in a match will be different based on the average rating of their opponents as well as the total number of points won, with the win/loss differential being applied the number of games, rather than matches, won or lost.
Factoring in the average opponent rating rather than the average of all players on the court:
if one fixed pair is rated an average of 0.5 lower than their opponents on the Player Skill Ratings scale (say 3.5 and 4.0 respectively), they will earn about the same ladder points if they win two-thirds as many game points (e.g., 14-21).
if one fixed pair is rated an average of 1.0 lower than their opponents on the Player Skill Ratings scale (say 3.5 and 4.5 respectively), they will earn about the same ladder points if they win one third as many game points (e.g., 7-21).
Each pair will be able to play against any other given pair for up to three games, whether as a single match or in discrete games.
Players are able to arrange matches privately or take the opportunity to play ad hoc to time during organised events.
It will be possible for players to be in more than one pair - for example, both a men's or women's and a mixed pairing.
MasterLeague to adopt USAP rally point scoring rules
28th December 2024
Now that USA Pickleball has added rally point scoring to its format options, MasterLeague will adopt the version chosen by USAP where rally point scoring is used in 2025.
In the chosen format, whichever side wins the point not only wins or retains the serve, but always swaps positions. The difference compared to the previous MasterLeague rally point scoring format is that players will swap positions prior to commencing serving following a side-in and always start serving from the right. This means that once a team reaches game point, serving for the game will no longer always fall to the same player.
While other racket sports have largely moved from side-in to rally point scoring, pickleball retains the former as its standard format. However, this can result in large variations in match length, which can lead to delays for a court to commence the second round in a two-round fixture. For this reason rally point scoring is most often used in the first round, while the MasterLeague Points System allows players to benefit from their best single round from week to week, as well as their best round in the series to date.
MasterLeague surpasses 150 doubles players
23rd December 2024
Just ahead of the final fixtures of 2025, we are delighted to announce that MasterLeague has had over 150 players participate to date.
Our 150th participant played at Browns Bay on Sunday, a fitting location to achieve this milestone as it has become so popular that Pete Curham and his fellow organisers have hosted not one but two doubles fixtures each Sunday.
Escaping gravity
26th November 2024
One of the features of the MasterLeague Points System is a bonus or deduction based on the square root of each player's win/loss differental for the series.
At the time of writing Mousa Eid is our current record-holder, at 31 games to the good. This gives him a handy bonus of 5.568.
On one hand, 31 games is an awful lot, but even this record-setting number is still tempered in terms of bonus points, at the square root of this number, which equates to a 10% bonus, more or less.
So what if Mousa doubles this difference? Even at 62 games to the good, his bonus would be relatively modest at 7.874 points, preventing runaway win/loss bonuses from doing more than they were intended - namely, to acknowledge the potential of players who have hit the maximum number of points available in a round.
Meanwhile, the promotion/relegation nature of the court allocation structure is designed to pull players toward an even win/loss record, rather than setting the scene for an endless winning streak. So every point they get out of their results is well deserved.
Midweek sessions added at Ellerslie
14th November, 2024
For the final weeks of 2024, a Wednesday session has been added to the MasterLeague schedule, giving players more opportunities to participate and improve their rankings before the final placements for the year.
Sessions will be held from 4.30-7pm each Wednesday through until 18th December.
In 2025 MasterLeague will see even more venues added to the existing roster, with one or two potentially coming online before the year end.
Keep an eye on the East Auckland MasterLeague calendar to register for MasterLeague events at Ellerslie and Panmure.
Henderson marks milestones with first ML event
2nd November, 2024
Pickleball Henderson, at Henderson Squash Club, achieved a double mileston in MasterLeague, both as the fourth club to host an ML event and the first one to be held outdoors.
The sold-out fixture brought together experienced MasterLeague players and those trying the format for the first time. Feedback has been very positive following the event, with organisers looking ahead to further fixtures.
Extensive play at Labour Weekend
28th October, 2024
Ellerslie and Browns Bay held a number of MasterLeague events at Labour Weekend. On the Sunday Browns Bay held a two-round doubles session while Ellerslie hosted an hour of singles.
On Labour Day Ellerslie saw two doubles sessions, with an invitational session following an open session which saw previous league winners and participate as well as a number of other top players.
During this session Sue Evans, the women's singles record holder, set a new women's doubles round record of 75.862, finishing the day on a nett 74.200 after two rounds and accounting for win/loss track record to date.
These two days' play resulted in a number of other changes to the leaderboards, with Michael Coutts and Solo Latu entering the top 20 overall and several movements in the women's doubles and singles leaderboards.
The following weekend Henderson will host its first MasterLeague fixtures, with Mahurangi set to join in in the coming weeks as well. Several players from these clubs have participated in past leagues when they were held at the Lagoon Stadium in Panmure, so we look forward to seeing their results come in soon.
Browns Bay full for first 6 rounds
17th October, 2024
Browns Bay Pickleball Club will become the third club to run MasterLeague rounds when it launches its first round on Sunday, 20th October, but its calendar is currently fully subscribed until December.
Players can still join the waiting list for any cancellations. Meanwhile, Ellerslie has two special Labour Day doubles rounds - one open, and one invitational, as well as regular doubles, singles and skinny (half-court) singles rounds scheduled on Sundays.
Look for more events to be announced soon, as additional venues and dates are added to the growing MasterLeague roster.
Blastoff!
7th October, 2024
For many players, last Sunday was their first-ever experience of what is now the MasterLeague format.
With no further changes to the formula behind the MasterLeague Points System from term 3 testing, we will roll results through to the end of the year. That means data from the term 3 trials will be included in points calculations, just as in 2025 we plan to run the tables for the entire year rather than restarting periodically.
However, to give you an insight into how Sunday’s points turned out in a vacuum, here are the results solely from that round:
Kevin Gock 70.764
Martin Caie 69.705
Luke Addison 66.123
Anthony Tan 55.210
Mousa Eid 53.955
Scott Borren 53.908
Tedrik Orante 52.840
Ian Morrow 44.153
Wictoria Markula 43.550
Siri Sriamporn 43.200
Lorraine Steele 42.650
Deb Robson 41.786
Richard Zhou 41.293
Andrew Pettengell 40.630
Jim Dyer 37.800
Marion Acojido 37.210
Rachel Jane 36.784
Cathy Yang 35.696
Ann-Marie LeClair 35.516
Michelle Bouhdoud 35.066
This provides a good example of how players from a lower court can be awarded more points than players above them, and vice versa. Tedrick, for example, was on court 3 with 10 players on the courts above but finished 7th under the MasterLeague Points System. And Lorraine was on court 4, with 15 players on the courts above, but finished 11th.
One of the challenges the points system is intended to overcome is to allow these movements in the ladder even when there is only one round in a fixture, whence players cannot win promotion to a higher court for the final round of the day. In fact we inserted some players below where they might have deserved in order to ensure all courts had at least two players with an existing DUPR and GPN rating. This was to provide a yardstick for initial player ratings to be calculated under DUPR’s and GPN’s algorithms.
Speaking of which, you might have noticed the speed with which were are able to upload results to DUPR, and get live ratings updates. Your GPN ratings will also be updated within 24 hours.
Thank you again to those who participated - next week many will be away at the NZ Open tournament, but we will have singles on at Ellerslie with the following week seeing the first doubles round at Browns Bay.
Cheers,
Martin
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