FAQ - Leagues, Ladders & Teams

The ladder provides a way of recording match results and ordering players according to their wins and losses. Any player may challenge any other player up to a number (usually 3) of ranks above their current position. When a higher ranked player beats a lower ranked player, standings remain unchanged. When a lower ranked player beats a higher ranked player, the lower ranked player takes the higher ranked player's position in the ladder and the higher ranked player will drop one rank.

A team is a group of players. You can create a team for a given sport which will allow you to participate in team competitions like a football league. Only a manager/captain can enter the results, however the rest of the team can view the competition rankings.

It is not possible to delete a team in order to maintain the history of stats and messages. If you want to change the name and description, or you really need to delete a team please contact us.

Create a new team..

A club is a physical location where a competition is held. All the information on the club page is publicly available on the internet so it can serve as a placeholder for your website. You change the colours and style of your club page to match your club website.

Here also you can set up how many table or pitches you have at the club. If you have four courts, you can override the names of the courts (e.g. instead of 1-4 replace with red, green, blue, yellow). Now you can assign the ladder or league to the club in the advanced options for the competition and the names will appear when you make a booking.

Obviously this answer is from Wotscore's perspective. A singles competition is where every user account is a player participating in the competition and can challenge eachother and enter results.

A team competition is a collection of teams, and a team is a collection of players. Now it is the captain of the team who can enter the results only. The captain administrate their team and can add and remove players and join and leave competitions. The players can sign in to Wotscore but only to view what is happening.

So if in reality you are running a team competition you have two options. If you want every player in the competition to access the statistics then you should elect to use a team competition. If you as the competition administrator envisage that the only team captains need participate online then you could go for the simpler singles competition involving the captains only.

If the new competition is a singles sport, e.g. tennis singles, you can create a new league or ladder from your home page. You will be the competition manager.

If you want to create a team competition, e.g. a football league, first you need to create a new team for the sport. This team will be the team managing the competition. Now you can create a competition for this team on the team home page.

More info to create ladders..

Create a new singles ladder..

Create a new singles league..

There are two ways to bring players and teams to the competition, either through invite or approving their join requests.

If the new competition is a singles sport, e.g. tennis singles, you can invite players directly via email from the invite link on the competition page. If they are registered on wotscore they will be added immediately to the competition and notified via email. If they are not registered on wotscore they will be sent an email and appear in the competition when they register.

There are two ways to add a player account, either collaboratively as just outlined where players set up their own matches and results, or managed where the admin adds a player name and enters results on their behalf. Managed accounts can be claimed by a player if the email they register with matches.

If you invite via facebook, the players will not receive an email. Instead they will receive a request on their facebook page to use the Wotscore facebook application. So to use Wotscore the player will have to log into facebook, go to their apps and authorise Wotscore. The only detail we use is the name and email. We don't write any information to facebook (comments on facebook walls etc) to avoid privacy annoyances.

If the competition is a team competition the steps are slightly more involved. You invite using the captains emails. If the captain has not registered or does not have a team with the correct sport you can set a team name for them and they will have a team available when they signin. If the captain has some teams with the correct sport you will have the option to bring in an existing team or create a new one entering a team name.

The second main way is that teams and players can request to join. They can do this by going direct to the competition page or by searching for competitions in their area. The admin will have the opportunity of approving or rejecting any join requests.

The facebook wotscore app can be found at https://www.facebook.com/wotscore. Click on Goto App to use wotscore.

If you invite via facebook, the players will not receive an email. Instead they will receive a request on their facebook page to use the Wotscore facebook application. So to use Wotscore the player will have to log into facebook, go to their apps and authorise Wotscore. The only detail we use is the name and email. We dont write any information to facebook (comments on facebook walls etc) to avoid privacy annoyances.

A League is a ranking structure that allows for players to compete against each other on a set schedule, usually called a "season" or "round". A league is typically split into divisions of 4 to 7 players where every player is supposed to play every other player in their division before the league season ends. For every played match a player is rewarded League Points depending on the result:

Bonus points can be allocated for playing your matches early and playing all of them by the end of the season. When a league season ends, for a new season 2 (or an amount set by the admin) players in every division (except 1st) with the highest league points move to a higher division to replace 2 players with the lowest number of league points.

You can create several small divisions. You can set the competition running and let the software promote and relegate a players. Alternatively at the end of the season you can reorder the league with a couple of simple steps, dragging and dropping players into position or moving division boundaries.

It is also possible to hide away players. This allows players to temporarily drop out of the competition because they are on holiday or injured and rejoin the division when they return. I this alters the league dramatically then in a couple of clicks you can reformat the entire league.

When you add a player into a competition, they will be added to the competition when they register on wotscore. The competition is ranked according to the registration order. The later players being added to the bottom of the competition.

When you want to start the competition, as the admin you can select 'edit competition'. This will allow you to drag and drop the players into place allowing you to randomise the order, or to adjust according to skill level. If you are using a ladder and you want the players to challenge anyone you can set the challenge difference higher. If you want to encourage players to play frequently you can set the challenge expiry to a lower duration.

As a rule of thumb a delete button is in red and may have a garbage icon. To delete your account you must exit or delete all your competitions. Note also that when competitions become idle, then all accounts associated with the competition are deleted. So there is no need to delete your account unless you really feel you have to.

If you are not an admin and are not paying for anything, then you might want to stop the emails, or delete your account. To stop receiving emails, enter your user preferences from your home page by clicking the wrench button. Set your Email Preferences to No Emails. To delete your account, leave all competitions by clicking the leave button on each competition page. Then on your home page a red garbage button will appear which will permanently delete your account.

If you are an admin, you may want to remove a player, which is the red button on the admin console (the admin console can be opened from the competition page by clicking the cog by each players name). You may want to delete a competition which is done by removing all players after which a red garbage button will appear on the competition page which will delete the competition. Once you delete all competitions, you then may want to delete your account using the red garbage button that will be present on your home page.

If you are an admin and want to delete a match, you must set it to a draw and then on the next edit it can be deleted. Currently there is no way to delete all matches or delete a season.

If you want to unsubscribe or cancel the billing, you need to enter the billing options and select the free version. Wotscore will make no futher payments and your account will downgrade after some time.

WARNING - removing a competition is a none reversible process and all data is destroyed. First you must remove all players from the competition. A red delete button will appear on the competition menu dropdown, which when pressed will remove the competition immediately without confirmation. (Note, if you are running a league and the garbage icon does not appear once you have removed all your players, switch off the hide absentee players league option to see players who are away.)

There are two basic options that are configured for the ladder. The first is the rank range. This prevents people at the bottom of the ladder challenging people at the top and reduces excessive movement in the ladder rankings. However when the ladder is first created you might want to set the range high to allow players to challenge anyone and settle into position. This range ignores 'away' players unless the strict range option is switched on which is mentioned later.

The second is the challenge expiry, and is the time limit in days when the match must be played (or more strictly when the results are entered) from the time the challenge is created. If the match is not played, the challenge is forfeited and the defender automatically loses the challenge. This is enforced by the system. The challenge expiry is also used by the auto challenge mechanism which is explained later.

The advanced options includes the ban rechallenge option. This stops the same two players from challenging eachother repeatedly. They must challenge someone else at least once before they can rechallenge.

The strict range option forces all challenges to be within the max rank range mentioned above. It is possible that players can exist in a challenge outside the maximum range if someone enters an interim result which changes the ladder rankings moving the players further apart. This option will stop this from happening by cancelling any challenges with a difference range greater than the maximum.

Note also that normally if a player is away, the rank range is increased to ensure that a player always has someone to challenge (i.e. they are not blocked from playing by a bunch of away players above them). If the strict range is on, this will not happen and the rank range is always fixed.

The option for the challenger who loses is rewarded a position increment is available for leap frog ladders. So if a player initiates a challenge, but loses the match, they go up one position. Obviously if they win, they take the losers position. This encourages players to challenge, and also means inactive players move to the bottom of the ladder.

The hide absentees option is used to affect the behaviour of round based auto challenges. Normally all players will in included in generating a fixture. If this is selected only available players are included, excluding those who have set their status to away.

Normally a ladder allows one attacking challenge up the ladder, and 2 defences from down the ladder (meaning a player can be in a maximum of 3 challenges at any one time). If the two challenge option is switched on, the a player can make 2 attacking challenges up the table. Note that in certain circumstances this will result in the second attacking challenge becoming reversed, if the player wins their first challenge.

The played date option allows the player to enter a date for a match when they enter a result. This allows them to set a date for a match in the past if they did not manage to enter the result for some time. Normally the ranking uses the date of when they enter a result. Using the played date will rerank the ladder historically if matches are found to have been played later.

The no forfeits option will switch off forfeits. When a match expires it is considered cancelled as if it never existed. There is no winner or loser, no change in ranks and no points awarded.

There are four basic options that are configured for the league. These values can be changed at any time before the season end and will recalculate the current season's league standings. They are fixed at the end of the season.

The first is the points display and is a coarse grained way of improving the ranks of players who play all their matches as opposed to a traditional way of using points.

The second is the points system, the default setting be taken from your sport (e.g. squash will result in a squash points system being used) and can be overridden here. The third and fourth are the bonus points including setting extra points per match for teams playing their matches in the first half of the season, and the other is just a set amount allocated if they play all their matches before the season ends.

The advanced options include whether to generate away fixtures (generate 2 fixtures per pair of players/teams instead of the standard 1).

The other advanced option is the hide absent players which may be useful in box leagues. Normally a fixture will be generated for every player, and if they don't play their matches they may be in danger of relegation even if their status is away. If this is switched on and a player sets their status to away, it means that in the next season no fixture will be generated for them and they will be hidden from the league. When they set their status back to available, the fixtures will be generated and they will participate in the division they were in before they were away.

There are several autochallenge options available depending on what type of competition you are using (none apply for leagues). The challenge expiry determines the length of round or season after which the system will restart the round, creating new fixtures and forfeiting unplayed if you require. It is also affected by the hide absentees advanced option. Points will be allocated by the fixture points dropdown if it is not default, or if it is the standard challenge points. This allows fixtures or first matches to be allocated different points to manual challenges or other matches.

The softest option is the autochallenge for quiet players. If a player is available to play, and has not participated in a match within the challenge expiry (measured since the last game they played), the system will create a challenge with an arbitrary free player. This should encourage players to keep playing.

The other options force the ladder to proceed in a series of rounds set by the expiry. These start when the admin starts the competition and finish and restart automatically until the admin pauses the competition.

Challenge from free players to the highest player	Coming soon
Challenge from free players to the adjacent player	Coming soon
Challenge from all players to the adjacent player	Creates challenges for all players to the adjacent player above them in the table
Challenge from all players to the highest player	Creates challenges for all players to the highest player within the max challenge range. Note this may create 2 matches, a challenge up and defence down, for players in the middle of the table.
Shuffle players based on win/loss	First this forfeits all challenges which have not been played. It then creates challenges for all players to the adjacent player above.
Challenge from each player to player at top of challenge range	First this forfeits all challenges which have not been played. It then creates challenges for all players to the highest player within the challenge max range. Note this may create 2 matches, a challenge up and defence down, for players in the middle of the table.
Random challenge from each player to player upto 5 positions above	Creates a random challenge with a rank difference between 2 & 5, for every player. This ignores the max challenge difference setting.
Forfeit & random challenge in the range 2 to 5	First forfeits all challenge then creates a random challenge with a rank difference between 2 & 5, for every player. This ignores the max challenge difference setting.
Random challenge in the range 3 to 5	Creates a random challenge with a rank difference between 3 & 5, for every player. This ignores the max challenge difference setting.
Forfeit & random challenge in the range 3 to 5	First forfeits all challenge then creates a random challenge with a rank difference between 3 & 5, for every player. This ignores the max challenge difference setting.

Finally there is a pause/restart option which simply allows the admin to control when the competition is running. This may allow the admin to start the competition manually at a given time, or to create challenges before the competition is started.

The idea behind ladders and leagues is to try to get to the top of the table. Therefore in a ladder you can only challenge up the table. You can record results down the table, which includes games played outside the challenge mechanism.

If you find that players are waiting to be challenged, and other players are sitting quietly not challenging, the admin can initiate challenges from a player to another further up the table. The admin can also switch on the auto-challenge feature which will create challenges automatically.

If you want all the players to play a match against all other players, please consider using a league.

There are two possible reasons if you are a challenger and you have not challenged anyone. The first is that your admin has the ability to create a challenge between any players, so they may have assigned you a challenge and an opponent.

The second is the auto challenge mechanism has been switched on for the ladder. This means that either the admin has set the ladder to proceed in a series of rounds with automatic fixtures. Ot it could mean that if you have not challenged anyone since your last match within the challenge expiry, a challenge will be created with an arbitrary player. For instance if the challenge expiry is two weeks, this will mean you will play a match at least once a month (2 weeks for the challenge to be created, and 2 weeks for the challenge to be played. Note you may be involved in an auto challenge if you are free to play a player who has not played. You will therefore be defending against their challenge.

As an admin you enter any score for existing challenges and fixtures. Matches that you are not participating in are shown on the 'Other' tab on the competition. Here you can select the Record result button and enter a result.

If the competition is a ladder you can create and enter a result between any two players. On the ladder there is a blue button dropdown which will allow you to create a match between two players. To create a challenge and let the players decide when to play, select the button next to the lower ranking player and challenge upwards. To enter a result immediately, click the menu for the higher ranking player and record a result against a player lower down.

Note, the admin cannot create a challenge nor record a result if the challenge already exists. So if the option to create a match for two players is not in the admin menu, please check the 'Other' tab where you should find the match and enter a result there.

If you created a challenge you can cancel it by clicking the x button in the top right corner of challenge. In all other cases you should contact your admin who can cancel matches on your behalf, restore cancellations and forfeits, and edit any mistaken match results.

As an admin you can edit a completed match if a mistake was made. On each match the wrench button will allow you to edit the score.

If the competition is a ladder you will have the opportunity to rerank and will show the before and after ranks. Click the rerank select box to rerank, or leave unchecked to allow the edit to take place without any ranking adjustments. Note if you have manually reranked the players using the edit competition screen after the match was played, wotscore will not be able to perform a rerank as it assumes your manual adjustments take priority.

If the competition is a league the points will be adjusted for that season automatically. If the match was part of a previous season no adjustments will take place to the promotion or relegation choices, but again you can manually adjust this when the season ends.

Only matches which are a 0-0 draw can be deleted. So if the match is not a draw please use the edit score option and change the score to be a draw performing any reranking if necessary. Now when you edit the score for a draw, a red delete button should appear at the bottom of the page. This will completely remove the match and is a none reversible process.

The lower limit of 4 is needed for the promotion and relegation to work correctly. Currently it is always 2 players at the bottom and top. The upper limit is to avoid the website becoming prohibitively expensive to run, limiting leagues to 120 player maximum and 70 matches per division.

First configure your league using the resize divisions screens which you can access when you have more than 8 players in a league. The size of the possible promotion and relegation zones is dependent on the minimum division size. So if you have more than 5 players per division you can set this to 1 or 2.

When you have set the divisions to allow promotion and relegation sizes to be greater than 1 player (i.e. more than 5 players per division), then you can change this in a dropdown in the edit league page.

If for any reason the division size becomes too small to support this promotion size by the end of the season (e.g. because players have left), then the next smallest promotion size will be used.

Ideally an administrator will only start a season once all the players have joined, and the divisions have been setup. If a player joins after the season has started they will be added to the lowest division. This player will have no fixtures and there will be a refresh icon next to their name.

The administrator can use toolbar buttons to rerank the player and refresh the season on the league page. Use the rerank to add the player to the correct division and then refresh the season.

Bookings and suggestions are optional features of this website that may help with allocating courts and pitches. You can do any, none or all of the following : setup your free time; make match suggestions; book a match.

The first step is to create your free time. This is on your home page, and gives some rough idea week on week of when you are available to play (for instance Wednesday nights or Sunday afternoons).

After a player has made a challenge or wotscore creates a fixture, you have the option to suggest up to 3 dates for that challenge to your opponent. When a competition calendar is opened all current match bookings that have been made for the competition are displayed. This may or may not reflect the actual match bookings on the court in real life depending on how your competition colleagues are using wotscore. At the very least can be used as a guide and at the most as a basic booking system. If you and your opponent have both set your free time then in the background in green is the intersection of you and your opponents free time (i.e. increases the possibility when you are both free).

If you make suggestions, your opponent will be offered the chance to select a suggested date when they accept the challenge. This will then become the booked date for the match.

Whether or not you have made a suggestion, you can optionally book or edit the booking for a match. The calendar will again display when you are your opponent are free at the same time, and all other competition match bookings, to help you avoid conflicts. The competition admin can also book and edit match bookings on your behalf. If you hover over the booking it will be display who last edited the match and when.

You can create a club and edit the number of resources and the names of the resources. Now on the advanced settings for the competition you can select the club in the dropdown. The resource settings will now appear in all the calendars.

Every user, team and competition has a location which should be the (nearest) town where the competition is held. Internally this is represented as a point of longitude and latitude that google maps can understand.

Locations allow users, teams and competitions to find eachother in an area. This is done in the search results which will search locations in a 50km radius.

The search button will check the spelling of the location, that google can recognise it, and allow you to choose if multiple locations exist with the same name.

When you signup, the first place wotscore looks for you profile photo is on gravatar.com associated with your email. If you sign up with facebook or google these profile photos will be used instead.

Alternatively if this is not good enough you can override these photos with a link to your own photo which you can add to your user profile page. You can add a link to your personal website or imgur.com for example. NB this an image link, not not a web page link, and an image link will probably end in a well known extension such as jpg, png, gif. So find an image, right click and select 'Copy image address'; or something similar and paste into the text field.

It is important that you receive email notifications from wotscore so you are aware of challenges. The email is probably arriving in your spam folder. You can either mark the email as not spam, and/or add 'support@what-score.com' to your email contacts. Alternatively check that your email preferences are set correctly in your user preferences linked from the home page.

On your home page you can set your status to 'Away'. For a ladder this will mean that no-one can challenge you in your absence. Reset if when you are ready to resume matches. Note wotscore can only allow 10 individual absences over a 6 month period, otherwise your away status will be switched off. For a league using the hide absentee option, you will remain hidden from the league and wotscore will try to hold your position until you return.

The admin can change the away status if they administer all the player's competitions. This is achieved by viewing the players profile from the competition page.

The away status allows players to avoid being challenged and forfeiting a match if they are on vacation or are injured. However a side effect is that players can set their status to away when they are doing well and then sit doing nothing at the top of the ladder, a way of gaming the system. Wotscore allows the admin from stopping this from happening using the time off allowance in the competition settings.

This can be set to no time off, in which players are not allowed to set their status to away, to all time off when they are allowed as much time off as they like. The out of office means they are allowed 50% days off within a 20 week period. Holidays allows them 20% time off over the 20 week period. In both cases the maximum break is 2 weeks and they will be forced back into the competition when they use up the allowance. If they are away for longer than 2 weeks the player should contact the admin to be moved temporarily out of the competition.

There are two types of message, private message from one person to another, and match messages which are like group chats. For singles type competitions these are effectively the same. But for doubles and teams, match messages allow everyone to join the conversation. Match messages have a two speech bubbles icon.

A message thread is initiated from the competition page. Click the envelope button next to a players name on the table will initiate a private message and for team messages allow a selection of a player to receive the message. Click the envelope icon on a challenge will initiate a group match message. All message threads are displayed on the messages tab of your home page where you can reply to any type of message.

Wotscore can create a new calendar in your google account if you pair and authorize your google and wotscore account from wotscore.

First you need a google account and to download google calendars app to your phone if you are not using android. Sign in to google calendars online and make sure there is no wotscore calendar visible (or delete it in the calendar settings if you want to start again).

Now in the user settings when you signin into wotscore you can pair the wotscore account with the google account. When you load the calendar on your google account you should see a new wotscore calendar. This is where wotscore bookings will appear. You can now sync the wotscore calendar with google calendar app in your phone.

Attempt to sign in with your email only on the front screen. An error message will be displayed with a recover button. Clicking this button will send a recovery email to you with instructions and a unique link to reset your password.

You can also change your password when editing your personal details.

No one will ever know your password to this site except you, unless you share it with someone else. Try not to use the same password as you do for other sites.

The best way to change the language is to change it in the settings of your browser or your platform/OS.

However Wotscore allows you to change the language of the site using the globe icon on the footer. Or you can change the language for your profile by editing it from your home page after signing in. This way your preferred language will be chosen every time you sign in.

Wotscore allows you to set up competition entry fees for players. In order to accept payments you must link a payment provider to Wotscore. We use Stripe as a payment provider which makes it really easy to receive card statements. Stripe securely holds all your bank details but allows us to take payments on your behalf which pass straight through Wotscore.

Create a club if you have not done so and from there you can create a billing account at Stripe and connect it to Wotscore.

	Challenge a player to a game. A player above you is available to challenge. Not all players can be challenged because they are away, already in a challenge, or they are out of range. You can hover the mouse over the icon to find out why.
	Accept a match. This means you are happy to play a match. You should set up a data and time for the match using the booking features. Some competitions will require you to make a booking before accepting the match.
	Record a result. This allows result entry either directly on the competition page or via a challenge.
	Join a match. For a team or group match, you can join the match.
	Suggest a date. Suggest up to 3 dates to your opponent for when you are available to play.
	The player is currently away. The player has set their status because they are injured or on holiday and are not available to play a game.
	You are in a challenge with this player. This may mean you are unable to play anyone else until you play this challenge.
	Player is already in a challenge with another player. This player is in a challenge with someone else and because of competition rules you might not be able to challenge them yourself.
	Active player. This player has played more than one game in the past round (e.g. 21 days).
	Inactive player. This player hasn't played any games in the past round (e.g. 21 days).
	Managed player. This player is has not registered on Wotscore, but the competition administrator is handling their games.
	Send a private message/view contact details. Use this button to send the player a message through the site, or to view the contact details such as email and phone number to contact them offsite.