OOAK Table Tennis Forum

The USATT has now locked out all ratings data, including the ratings, tournament history, etc. of anyone who is not a CURRENT member.

Which, at first seems like no big deal. BUT...there are some potential scenarios that effect any USA based player:

-If you let your membership expire, you cannot access your OWN ratings data and history.

-If you have a CURRENT membership, you cannot access ratings data of any member who's let their membership expire.

-You cannot look up any data of expired members ratings prior to their expiration.

Thoughts? Comments?

I'll give my opinion after a few responses to avoid coloring other's opinions.

Sorry if this is a re-post..I looked but didn't find anything.

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Bolded parts are especially annoying to me. I am a paying customer (for now) and you've just made my experience much worse.

It's either a bug (I also can't see any tournament results beyond page 1, so it's not like rollout was flawless...) or a deliberate attempt to prevent access to ratings via paying friend. But then tournament/league directors presumably still can see it, so it's not like there is no way for 'freeloaders' to actually see their ratings...

Somewhat effed up, and will generate more ill will than incremental revenue, I think.

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USATT: 1818 | League: 1917

Weak move, especially as it includes local league ratings. This will discourage competition in a sport that sorely needs more participants.

Will a rival (free) online rating system emerge? Will clubs opt out of USATT's system for their local leagues? I hope so..

Agreed.

It's actually intentional, as I've emailed the USATT about it...it was pretty scathing...with me telling them how short-sighted this is, and how it feels like they are holding my ratings information hostage to extort membership fees from me. For many, ratings are a huge motivator (right or wrong) and it takes years to earn them. That it's suddenly unavailable to everyone is completely absurd.

In the very least, they could have given fair warning so we could have downloaded the data prior to hiding it.

How they think this will draw more people to the sport is beyond me.

I'll post my emails shortly... I recommend anyone who agrees with me write the USATT as well...preferably with some comparable vim and vigor. This is OUR sport, not theirs.

There is a "view only" fee you can pay to see ratings, but not play in tournaments. But...really? Who the eff would do that?

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Blog: "Holy Chtchet!" ⇝

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YOU READ MY MIND. All you need is a database, and some people to crunch the numbers. I know quite a lot of IT guys that could make data entry very easy to do for the tournament directors, and automated on the back end.

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Blog: "Holy Chtchet!" ⇝

Projects: Player Equipment Grid ⇝ Comprehensive Thin Inverted Chopping Rubbers Grid ⇝ Please send me corrections or new submissions

Since I don't play in the US what matters to me is being able to look up other peoples' ratings. And that's still possible, as long as they're still members. (I just had a look.)

(Incidentally, how do you spell Yankahardon's real name? I wonder if he is still a member, though I doubt it... )

Iskandar

This is absolutely appalling. The USATT Board was just recently forced to resign. Was this tone-deaf decision made by USATT Membership Director Ethan Figge on his own in the vacuum before the new board was even selected? If so, this blunder needs to be rescinded by the board a.s.a.p.

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How much is the membership fee for USATT?

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Enjoy the game. It is a never ending learning experience once you play and keep the ball on that 45 sq ft of space or should I say half of that space.

75 or 79 USD a year if you pay once a year and do tourneys... If you do 5-7 tourneys a year, the 75 USD is not such a killer expense considering players who play that much and play that many tourneys (a lot do) spend $1000 - $5000 USD a year on TT expenses.

I have been publically against this move by USATT (which I think is driven by the CEO) to white-out the viewability of ratings for non-current members. I get the leverage play with the intent to increase sparse revenue, but the factors were calculated wrong and this is not gunna work.

USATT takes members money and about IDK a half to one million in grant money per year and funnels the overwhelming majority towards the elite amateurs competing for national team slot... and spends so very little of the overal income for the average member...

The average USATT member must have been OK with this as we never had any riots or vote with feet over this... bt it is so wrong. The Natl assn should be setup to serve memebrs first, not elites. The natl assn does provide some level of value in terms of making an official infrastructure for official tourneys and tourney ratings... and that is about the only thing that have prevented riots or members leaving.

Unless USATT decides to serve the members with the great majority of the revenue it generates from membership fees and tourney fees, it really isn't serving its members... and an organization that does should exist and serve.

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Aside from the members-vs.-elites argument, here's how I think about this. What is the value of having a rating? It tells you where you fall in the spectrum of ability. This allows you to participate in tournaments and leagues at the level you play, and is of value to those who manage tournaments. Contrast that to other places in the world where there is NO ratings system (like here) - there are consequently far fewer tournaments that non-elites can play in. Unless you're an elite, you don't stand a chance of having a competitive tournament. If you are NOT a USATT member, then you're not playing tournaments (though you probably might participate in local leagues and such). If you DON'T play tournaments, your rating is of relatively limited use, mainly because it hasn't been updated. If you have a 3 to 4 year old rating (or 20+ years, like mine), then it's probably inaccurate, though it might be accurate enough to place you in a local league or team. If so, what would the utility be for it to be available on USATT's web site? (As an aside... five years ago I noticed my 20+ year old rating WAS STILL THERE.. though it's not any more now..). You know what it is. You can tell whoever runs your league what it is. If some unknown opponent shows up, if he's not a USATT member but has an old rating, heck, just ask him (or her). Yeah, he might lie about it, but gee... is it worth worrying about?

I figure if you want to be part of the ratings ecosystem and maintain a current rating you're going to attend more than one tournament a year and will spend far more on travel alone than you'd spend on a USATT membership. It costs money to run a ratings system (note the uproar when the OTHER ratings system wanted to start charging a while back...) - volunteer labor only gets you so far and isn't sustainable in the long run. True, maybe 80% of your dues goes to paying for coaches for elite juniors, but even so, it's going to be a fraction of what you pay if you want to attend tournaments.

Iskandar

In England, AFAIK, everyone who plays sanctioned league or tournament table tennis has to have a paid up membership of Table Tennis England. The names of the tiers have just changed, but the basics are the same as they were. There are two paid tiers, plus one free for people who just play socially (they don't actually need membership obviously), and a supporter free membership for those who don't play , but want to keep in touch with the game (this includes volunteers, umpires and coaches who don't compete). I pay the lower amount as a "Compete" member; it costs £16 PA. Above that is the "Compete Plus", which costs £38 PA. I can play in leagues and 1 Star Tournaments. For Higher level tournaments, the "Compete Plus" membership is required. You do not have any kind of rating/ranking if you do not "compete". Everyone grumbles a bit about where the money goes, but by and large, it works. Anything that is not under the TTE sanctions (eg, summer league at our venues, which has been played with handicaps and games up to 21) does not allow anyone to accrue points. https://tabletennisengland.co.uk/member ... ategories/
Outside of this are the World Championship of Ping Pong (invitation?), which is not under the umbrella of TTE, and the VETTS. You need paid up membership of the VETTS (actually they seem to have come within the aegis of TTE, so no extra payment, apart from the tournament fees) to play in their tournaments, although this is reduced if you only want to play one tournament. https://www.vetts.org.uk/file/850675/?dl=1
From what I understand from this forum, USATT allows non-members to have a rating? Which is probably where the issue is.

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So far so good for the membership categories, but what mechanism do they have so that those who do attend tournaments get to compete against others of more or less the same level? That's what the ratings system does in the US.

Iskandar

Iskander, I think you have experince in USA so you probably alreadt get it...

Famed TT forum memebr Heavy Spoin summed it up with a pic of a nametag he wore to a few tourneys..

The nametag (like the ones you wear to random meeting of large groups of people you do not know... it said...

HELLO.. My RATING is... XXXX

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Nexy Batos ALC - FH Tibhar MX-K - BH Tibhar FX-S
President, Korea Foreign TTC
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We rarely have an issue with people wanting to play only people in their rating-group. For a start, not enough people playing tournaments to worry (except in VETTS which is age-bracketed), and everyone has to fight their way to higher level if they want to win. But still, everyone has to have a paid membership, and I feel that is standard.

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DHS H301 Blade/DHS Hurricane 3 Nat/Loki GTX Pro
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No, what I meant was - when you attend a tournament, is there a category you can play in where you at least have a chance of winning or placing? Or at least have a few matches in which you're actually competitive and not blown off the table? Or is everyone who attends a tournament an elite player? Sure, everyone has to work their way up.. it's true in the US also. You are allowed to play in classes which don't fall BELOW your rating - if you're rated 1869, you're not allowed to play in the U-1800 or U-1600 classes. But you CAN play in the U-2000 and the U-2200. You can even play in the Open category (and lose to Danny Seemiller, if you're lucky enough). People will do this - they will play in "their" category, in the two classes above, and perhaps in the Open. Maybe also a doubles class. So you have a chance to win a trophy (or at least, win a few matches) in "your" category, especially as there will be some lower rated players in it, while you have the chance of knocking off better-rated players in the higher categories (beating a higher rated player earns you a lot of points, while you get a very few for someone rated the same and no points for beating a lower rated player). How many people play in the English Open? Are they all elite players? Go to a US Open (it's usually in Las Vegas these days) - it's over a whole week, and there are literally HUNDREDS of players and dozens of tables. The players range from U-1000s to international pros. Most of these people will fly in from across the continent and spend hundreds of dollars on flights, meals and hotel rooms, and many will stay the whole week to watch the Open finals. There are lots of smaller regional and local tournaments that take place over a weekend, some of the bigger ones (such as the Duneland in Michigan City, IN, which I attended 3-4 times in the 1990s) had 50 or 60 tables, it took up a convention center. Maybe 200-250 players total. Three or four large vendors selling rubber, blades, shoes, etc. There'd also be small one-day tournaments (such as the one in Columbus Ohio) that had maybe 10-15 tables in an ice rink (summer, no ice.. ) that had maybe 50 or 60 attendees. For a "minor" table tennis country that doesn't produce many highly ranked international players, they're doing something right with tournaments, considering the amount of participants they get, and that "something right" is the ratings system.

Tournaments aren't everything, of course, there are also clubs, which run leagues and open play, and even there the ratings system helps. You can more easily subdivide the leagues into classes, more easily set up balanced teams, and you can even find appropriate playing partners for open play.

Iskandar