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Reading the league table

What every column means, how points and tie-breaks work, and where penalty points fit in.

6 min read
Updated about 1 month ago
For Members
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Reading the league table

The league table for each division is on the competition's public page. The overview page lists a quick link for every division under "Tables", and once you're on a table you can jump between divisions with the dropdown next to the division name.

What the columns mean

A typical league table looks like this:

# Team P W L RW RL PP Pts
1 Trowbridge A 12 11 1 78 30 0 78
2 Chippenham A 12 9 3 71 37 0 71
3 Salisbury A 12 8 4 65 43 1 64

The columns:

  • #: current position in the division.
  • Team: the team name, with the club it belongs to shown above it. Several clubs often enter an "A" team in the same division, so the club name is what tells them apart.
  • P (Played), matches played so far.
  • W / L (Won / Lost), match-level wins and losses. A match is "won" if the team won the majority of rubbers.
  • RW / RL (Rubbers Won / Lost), the rubber-level totals across all played matches.
  • PP (Penalty Points), penalty points applied to this team (see Penalty rules).
  • Pts: final points, used to rank the table.

How "Pts" is calculated

The default for league competitions is the rubber count system:

Pts = Rubbers Won - Penalty Points

That's it. Every rubber a team wins is one point. Penalty points subtract directly.

Some leagues use alternative point systems set by their organising committee:

  • Win only: 3 points per match won, 1 per draw, 0 per loss. Used in low-rubber-count formats.
  • Point difference: Rubbers Won minus Rubbers Lost. Penalises lopsided losses more than rubber count does.

You'll see which system applies on the competition's overview page.

Tie-breaks

Two teams on the same Pts are split by, in order:

  1. Head-to-head rubbers won. Whoever won more rubbers in the matches between the two teams ranks above.
  2. Head-to-head matches won. As a fallback if rubbers were equal.
  3. Total rubbers won across the stage. RW from the table.
  4. Total rubbers lost across the stage (fewer = higher).
  5. Alphabetical as a final fallback (only used in true edge cases).

The tie-break is recalculated every time a result posts, so positions can shift even when the points totals haven't changed.

When does the table update?

Within roughly a minute of a result being confirmed, contested-and-adjudicated, or auto-confirmed. The materialised view that drives the table refreshes on a 60-second timer.

If you submitted or verified a card and the table hasn't moved, refresh the page after a minute. If after a few minutes it's still not updated, ping your committee, there may be an issue with the result's state.

A team with no completed results yet (for example, before the season starts, or when every one of its matches so far was cancelled) still appears in the table, at the bottom with zeroes in every column.

End-of-season honours

Once the organiser closes the season, the table marks the outcome: a trophy icon next to the division winners, a green up arrow next to each promoted team, and a red down arrow next to each relegated team. How many teams promote and relegate comes from the division's setup (see Managing divisions). A legend under the table explains the icons. Teams in an unresolved tie keep their tie badge until the committee records the outcome.

The results grid

Below the table, the results grid shows every pairing in the division at a glance: rows are the home team, columns the away team. A played match shows its score (home team's total first) above the date, and clicking it opens the match's detail page. A match that hasn't been played yet shows its scheduled date (or "TBA" when no date is set), postponed and cancelled matches say so, and the diagonal is blanked out because a team cannot play itself.

Provisional vs final results

A result is provisional until verified. The table shows provisional results immediately, they count toward the standings, but they're flagged on the match detail page. If a provisional result is later contested and adjudicated to a different score, the table updates accordingly.

This means the table can shift mid-week as old results get verified or adjudicated. End-of-stage standings are based on the state at the close of the stage, with any open contests resolved before the stage is officially closed.

Promotion and relegation

The number of teams that promote or relegate from each division is set by your league committee, see Managing divisions for the admin view. Typical district-league pattern: top 2 promote, bottom 2 relegate.

Promotion / relegation is computed from the final standings at stage close. It is not a live calculation; it doesn't appear on the in-season table.

Knockout draws

For knockout / cup stages, the league-table view is replaced by a draw view. Teams either advance or are eliminated; there are no rolling points. See the competition's Draw tab for the live tree.

The draw shows every round from the first to the final, including rounds that haven't been played yet. Where a pairing isn't settled, you'll see a placeholder in place of a team name:

  • "Winner of QF1" (or SF1, R16-3, and so on), that side will be whichever team wins a specific earlier match. F means Final, SF means Semi-final, QF means Quarter-final, and R16 means Round of 16, followed by the match number in that round.
  • "Bye", that side had no opponent in an earlier round and went straight through.

Once both sides of a pairing are known, the placeholder is replaced by the team name and the pairing links to the match page like any other fixture. This happens round by round as results are confirmed: you might see every Quarter-final tie finished and named while the Semi-final still shows "Winner of QF1" placeholders. The committee confirms each advancement before the next round's pairing fills in, so it isn't instant the moment a match ends.

Two teams can also meet a round earlier than you might expect if they both had a bye. A bye simply skips round one, so two bye teams can end up facing each other as soon as the next round.

Tips

  • The PP column matters. Teams sometimes lead on Rubbers Won but trail on Pts because of penalty points. Always read both.
  • Tie-breaks are not arbitrary. They follow a strict order. If you think a ranking is wrong, check the head-to-head between the tied teams first.
  • Subscribe to your team's updates (from your team page) to get notified when the table moves.

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