Revision as of 20:17, 28 December 2023

Since 2009-07-01, NASPA has assigned ratings to players based on their performance at NASPA-sanctioned tournaments. On that date, NASPA inherited the NSA’s rating system, copying all current ratings to the new system.

The rating system is designed by the Ratings and Recognition Committee, implemented through a web application developed by theWeb Committee, and operated by the Tournament Committee.

NASPA tournaments are either fully rated or, in the case of Capped and 3-Game Tournaments, 1/3-rated; the latter meaning that normally applied changes are divided by three. As of 2024-01-01, Local Club Tournaments, which were also 1/3-rated, are not offered.

As of 2009-01-01, tournaments are now rated in the order in which players began to play them, rather than in the order in which their results were received. This means that in some cases, late submission of rating data may result in re-rating of subsequent events; a late fee applies to rating data submission in order to prevent this from occurring too often.

The rating system overview describes how the rating system works at a very high (and not too technical) level.

The submitting tournament results article describes how to submit tournament results into the rating system.

Current ratings

The database of current ratings is updated immediately when the results from a tournament are processed. You can access the current rating information in the following ways:

• full rating list as a 400K text file
• search by name
• search by rating or rank

You may also be interested in the tournament results (cross-tables) that contributed to these ratings.

NASPA maintains a separate ratings system for games played with the CSW (Collins Scrabble Words) lexicon. Click here to view those ratings.

You can estimate your new rating after a tournament by using the Rating Calculator.

Monthly ratings

For the sake of historical continuity dating back to a time when ratings were not available online and printing and shipping costs were significant, a monthly rating list is published near the beginning of each month. This list includes the results of all events that have been received as of when the list is finalized. When there are events which take place near the end of a month, and directors are late in submitting rating data, those events may count toward the following month’s rating list. Directors are encouraged to use the most recent available ratings for placing players in their tournaments.

How to read the ratings

The listings are simple text files with columns delimited by tabs. Each row contains the data for one rated player.

List of columns starting January 2009 (including the current file):

1. Player’s name (in all caps, starting with the last name)
2. Rating
3. Ranking (among all active players in the system)
4. NASPA membership expiration date in ISO8601 format (for the monthly listings for the first half of 2009, this value reflects the membership status as of the beginning of July 2009).
5. Cumulative number of rated games in the system (including games rated by the NSA).

List of columns for 2008 and before:

1. Player’s name (in all caps, starting with the last name)
2. Rating
3. Ranking (among all active players in the system)
4. NSA membership expiration (the number of the last issue of Scrabble News paid; EXP means expired, *** means non-member or non-matching name).

For rankings, a player is considered eligible to be ranked if he or she has played at least 14 rated games in the preceding 12 calendar months (until October 2013, the criterion was 28 rated games in the preceding 24 calendar months; until May 2007, 1 game in 12 months).

State and provincial rankings

The list of state and provincial rankings lists all active NASPA members according to their U.S. state or district or Canadian province. This list is updated automatically (whenever the current ratings are updated) and archived at the end of each rating month. Archived lists prior to July 2009 were made available by the NSA.

Although our state and provincial ranking software continued to run monthly throughout the pandemic hiatus, rankings were recalculated when we resumed play, as though the missing months were removed from the calendar.

Please note that it is currently each player's own responsibility to maintain his or her address in the membership database. You can access your profile in the membership database through member services.

Address updates are not reflected in the state/province ranking lists immediately. The lists are updated whenever new ratings are computed after a tournament.

CSW (Collins Scrabble Words) ratings

In January 2010, the Advisory Board approved the creation of a separate rating system for rated games played using the international CSW (formerly known as SOWPODS) lexicon at NASPA-sanctioned tournaments.

Click here to view those ratings.

External links

• WESPA ratings