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Is anyone else frustrated with how random padel games feel? (Playtomic, rankings, etc.)

I’ve been playing a lot through Playtomic lately and I keep running into the same issue: Games feel *inconsistent as hell*. Sometimes you get a super competitive match, other times it’s completely one-sided either too easy or just not fun at all. And even when you win, it doesn’t really *mean* anything long-term. There’s no real sense of progression or “I’m getting better and moving up.” So I’m curious: Would you actually care about a **proper ranking system** in padel? (like divisions/tiers that you have to earn your way through) Do you trust player-reported levels right now, or do you feel they’re inaccurate? If there was a system that automatically matched players based on performance (not self-rating), would you use it? And more importantly — would you play more often if matches were consistently competitive? I’ve been thinking about a format where: You queue into games instead of manually picking them Players are matched based on hidden skill (not what they claim) Every match affects your rank (up or down) You actually climb a ladder over time instead of playing random one-offs Kind of like how ranked systems work in video games, but applied to real-life padel. Curious if this is something people actually want, or if most people just prefer the current casual system. Be honest — would this make you play more or does it sound like overkill?

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Comments (37)

u/Upper-Application5835d ago

The netherlands has knltb ranking and a good system for tournaments and competitions. No playtomic where I live

u/Duxez5d ago

I mean, the knltb ranking has a somewhat similar issue imo. It's better and closer at higher rankings sure. But the lower rankings are incredibly wide in actual skill level.

u/IIIIIlIIIIIlIIIII5d ago

Thats normal because everyone starts at the same level.

u/LooseCandidate5d ago

Dnno, i'm a 7.2 KNLTB and when i sign up for lvl 5 and 6 tournaments its always very competitive and i'm often one of the weakest players on the court. I think it's upto the person themselves to decide what they want, if you want competitive games over rating, play above your rating and you should never get sleeper games.

u/cmc_9205d ago

Playtomic feels like it's slowly dying in my country. Hard to find good games, most are just club accounts posting games to get players in. Most genuine people are beginners with poor ratings and experience levels, or people who's score is too high because they play with friends or people lower rated than them. The best games I find are with social groups then getting names/numbers or good players and organising games ourselves. It's all pretty frustrating though.

u/AlarmedLanguage57825d ago

What country

u/cmc_9205d ago

UAE

u/rbrown19915d ago

Playtomic works well enough in theory. But it relies on players being willing to play with a variety of partners and opponents. Whereas humans prefer in general to socialise with the same people each week. There does exist an LTA system of events at different grades with a proper points system. But it is pretty rare for players to enter these tournaments, tends to be reserved only for those that are super-committed or for whom it is especially local. The amount of effort and admin that it takes to get a good game of padel is the reason I've significantly lowered the amount I play. I am in two minds whether to bother next winter at all.

u/Feeling-Effective-945d ago

I do not agree with what you're saying. Where i play (Netherlands, Amsterdam) people are not stuck in the same groups. In my experience all the competetive games are mixed up and no one intends to play the same people over and over again. People are open and willing to play with/against new people

u/rbrown19915d ago

Where I am if I enter a "random" game on playtomic nearly all the games have at least one obviously weaker player and it's usually a player who has rarely played outside their friendship group and don't realise the gap between their level and the level they think they are.

u/Katalan105d ago

Playtomic rankings feel too inaccurate. I can lose badly to a 1 and still beat a 3 comfortably. Matches should stay competitive, and points should update more consistently instead of making huge jumps early and barely changing later. The good thing is that Playtomic is open to everyone, so making the ranking system too professional would probably hurt that. Maybe there should be a third option: friendly, competitive, and ranked, where after a few matches you get placed with players at a similar level.

u/IllegalGrapefruit5d ago

I don’t really understand the difference between what you propose and what Playtomic does. But anyway, my local club doesn’t use Playtomic - the coaches rate you and the only way to move level is via a coach rating you again. I actually find this much less accurate than Playtomic as there is a lot of error in coach levelling, and it depends on various chance factors in the short levelling session (eg if you’re forced to play on a different side etc). Playtomic is not perfect for sure, you can cook it and raise/reduce your level if you care enough, but most people aren’t doing this to a significant extent.

u/Royal-Dish5364OP5d ago

Yeah that’s fair I probably didn’t explain it well. I think what I had in mind is less about just ratings, and more about how the games themselves get formed. On Playtomic you still kind of choose or join games, so you can end up with mismatches even if ratings exist. Out of curiosity do you feel like most of the issue comes from inaccurate ratings, or from how the games are actually put together?

u/Optimal-Pudding-Suzz5d ago

What do you mean by “put together’ it’s not clear at all what you are proposing to do differently. Most countries by now have a pádel federation and national ranking. That’s for players who want to be federated, only advanced to very advanced usually. Playtomic lets you join random games with strangers, and checking games played + results tends to give you a good idea of their skill level “. If games feel random it’s because they are, but Playtomic reduces the volatility by a lot more than any other current system, particularly for beginners and intermediate players. You can also use it to find players whose level is where you like, and then organize games with those people.

u/IllegalGrapefruit5d ago

Ah gotcha. In my local club, you can only join games at your level, so the issues all come from level misratings. However, within playtomic/padelmates, there can definitely be some issues caused by both. You do have to watch out to make sure the game will be competitive (e.g. that someone hasn't approved someone massively out of band). That is especially bad on padelmates where the approval only has to come from the organiser of the game, and not from every player.

u/Good_Solution_5d ago

I think you should be able to lose a match but still go up in score if people vote you better than your rating. It looks like PT drops yours score for a loss, not taking into account you could play well during a loss in a close game, and effectively be considered a worse player for it. I self rated low as I was new to the sport and although was not a good tennis player, am able to play racket sports and consider myself to be at least 1.0 higher than my present rating. You’re expected to win 5 in a row approx to go up 1.0 level which really isn’t that realistic I don’t think unless you’re intentionally playing lower ranked players just to tank them and get your scores up. I have found myself playing with people I get on with who are a similar level rather than joining too many random matches as I agree it can be swings and roundabouts on match quality.

u/nsm15d ago

your rating can still drop when a draw/tie game is logged

u/karlitooo5d ago

Check the person has at least 50 games and it’s usually fine. Games played is often a much better indicator. I’d much rather have a note/badge feature to help me remember who I want to avoid or repeat with.

u/gadrev2d ago

There's a note feature in the app already for people you have played with. It's in the "X matches in common" subscreen.

u/RAlNDROP5d ago

I would definitely use this. In my country, we use a 1-7 ranking system, where once you play at a level above approximately 4,2, nobody uses the ranking system anymore, you only match based off of tournament level. Every single player below average ranks themselves around 3-3.5, which means intermediate at this point is around 3.7-3.8. On a good day, I can compete with players who rank themselves 3.8, which means I dont typically sign up for these games, because I will be holding people back at that level most days. On the other hand, if I sign up for games at level 3.5, I am typically the best player on the court by a pretty large margin. I hardly ever play even games, and it's starting to kill my motivation to play and improve, since none of my friends play padel, so I rely heavily on these random games.

u/Itchy-Artichoke-12135d ago

Playtomic IS based on performance, not self-rating. And I find ratings to be reasonable accurate. The system can be manipulated a bit, but you can only keep that rating by avoiding normal matches, so one doesn't run into manipulators a lot. Allowing only paid official matches is what UTR does for tennis, and I don't find it much more accurate - any gains due to integrity are just lost due to lack of volume. Seems like your system would be essentially that, since far fewer matches would be played without the ability to choose opponents (i.e. people who can play at the same time and location) I find matches pretty much always competitive, even with some difference in rating - that's the nature of pádel, and the big advantage of the serve helps that. Yesterday, for example I, a 4.5, played with a 4.7 against a 5.1 and 5.2, and we lost by one break in each set, and we could have broken several times in the first set.

u/bachaterol5d ago

Playtomic ratings are primarily there to get your money via gamification. It pushes you to increase your rating by playing more matches, and Playtomic makes more money through that. The whole "get better, compete, and find matches according to your level" is the marketing cover of a sneaky algorithm. It also gets more difficult to increase your rating as your reliability increases so you spend more money to increase faster. You can do leveling with a coach, which bumps your rating up, but sets your reliability to 50%, quickly sending you back to where you started if that is not your actual level (for most people, it is not). Then the whole grinding on the hamster wheel starts again. On a professional level, Playtomic rating means nothing. Some countries do not even use Playtomic. They just rely on how people judge themselves and book matches through Whatsapp, Viber, etc. On a recreational level, it is very hard to standardise the system. Maybe what could help for more transparency and easier matchmaking could be Playtomic ranking players based on number of losses and wins per country/city/club. Then if I want to book a certain match in a club, I would know how I compare against my opponent. Introducing statistics like Winners, UE, and FE would also make it more precise.

u/Klutzy_Anxiety_11175d ago

Nice. It would be really nice to be matched by actual current level. But what do you mean by «hidden skills»?

u/Available_Animator355d ago

What do you mean with Player reported Rating? I never Play with Playtomic but to my Understanding you only give yourself a Rating once in the beginning. After that it goes up or down with your wins/loses so your solution could be to just play with ppl with a decent amount of Games. The self reported Rating is a Problem we have in my City. The oldest and then only padel facility Here Made Up a Rating from 6 (beginner) to 1 (national Elite). So now everyone uses this although there are several new padelclubs etc. The huge majority of Players think they are lvl 3. So Most Games are bad because everyone and their mum thinks theyre lvl 3. There even is Inflation now and Most ppl declare themselves as a 2,5 its insane

u/Royal-Dish5364OP5d ago

In playtomic people can rate you higher lower or accurate to change your rating and I mean exactly everyone thinks they’re at a certain level, but no one actually truly has a rank given that even playtomic gives you a rating but that also could be somewhat not accurate.

u/fuck-yeah-guy5d ago

I've been working on a project for a little over a year now to try to fix this, few companies have signed up already.. but I'm a bit pessimistic. The biggest player in the market is playtomic and i highly doubt it will stop being the king

u/alexdabombdotcom5d ago

I made an app for racket sports somewhat addressing this. Basically something to use for your club or group of friends. Uses the chess rating system and keeps an extensive match history and tons of data points.

u/Sure-Key68825d ago

Playtomiccalso uses chess rating system though..

u/alexdabombdotcom5d ago

Do they? Your rank would be like 1500-200 not 1-5

u/Kolokol8885d ago

Several clubs here in Denmark has an ELO based ranked format. You sign up and the app pairs players by rank 4x4. Then you play a set with each player as your partner. The positive is that you can always get in a game and without much commitment. After the rankings settle down the matches get very even. The negative is that you always play with unknown partners and if 1 player is significantly better or worse than the others, the results are basically given beforehand - your just playing for score.

u/aeneasawooga5d ago

There’s a couple of big problems with playtomic, one of which is that people manipulate their rankings. Have had a fair few games ruined by people who have had recent levelling sessions join and their level is hugely inaccurate. But in terms of progression I try to mix in coaching sessions and americanos in between my matches

u/Stup2plending5d ago

Where I am we use the same Categoria system Argentina uses although our players are newer to the sport and not as good yet. And it mostly holds up in regular games. It's the tournaments, esp if there is a money prize, where too many play down to try to win. And interestingly, there are 2 or 3 clubs in my area that have the rep of players not knowing their level at all and thinking they are better than they are and that attempt to try to "play up" often ruins games when 3 are at a similar level and the 4th clearly is nowhere near as good. And it's this I have had to deal with a few times recently and that is frustrating. There are only 8 levels so you can have wide varying skills per level. A low rated Cat 6 is still mostly a beginner while a High 6 is def on the lower end of intermediate as a player.