The Rules, for the Lucky Loser Tennis League
If you don't understand tennis terms like "Lucky Loser", "Seed", "Race rankings", and so on, please have a look at the tennis glossary : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_tennis_terms
Principle
The Lucky Loser Tennis League allows you to predict for free the outcomes of tennis matches all year long for many ATP tournaments (male singles only). You will earn points for each tournament you play, and the total will be used for your annual ranking. Since 2016, we use the points scale as in ATP.
Like a real ATP player, you will have your own yearly ranking, Race ranking, palmares, and rankings breakdown !
The LLTL yearly ranking is based on the calculation method of the ATP ranking. A maximum of 18 tournaments played during the last 52 weeks are included, according to the following breakdown :
- 4 Grand Slams (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open)
- 8 Masters 1000 (Indian Wells, Miami, Rome, Madrid, Cincinnati, Toronto, Shanghai, Paris)
- 6 best performances among the Top 20, the Olympic Games, the Masters Final, the Monte-Carlo M1000, the Davis Cup, and the ATP 500 and 250.
AS in the case of the ATP ranking, missing a GS or one of the 8 M1000 will lead to a null score for this tournament. No other score will be taken into consideration to compensate for this loss of points, even if you play more than 18 tournaments in the year.
Another important point : if a player is W/O in the tournament after the deadline of the prediction process, he will be replaced in the draw by a Lucky Loser. For instance if you pick Stanislas Wawrinka as the winner of the tournament, but he has forfeited and he is replaced by Victor Estrella-Burgos, it means that the winner of your draw will become Victor Estrella-Burgos !
The tournaments
Playing a tournament consists in picking a winner for all the matches of the draw before the beginning of the tournament. A countdown indicates the remaining time upon completion of your draw. Deciding on the whole draw will only take you a few minutes. You will earn your points each time a match ends.
Just like in the ATP, your rankings will allow you (or not) to enter a tournament. The most famous tournament is the Masters, with only the 8 best players. But since 2019, the new CUT system was extended to almost all the tournaments. Which means that you can be kicked out from a tournament if your rankings is not good enough !
In case of a tie, the winner(s) will be the one(s) who has(ve) the highest number of correct picks. => IMPORTANT : A new rule has been created in March 2017. In case of a tie, the players share the ATP points. You'll find more details in the dedicated article.
Once these rankings have been calculated, the points are distributed just like in the ATP. Here is the current point distributions.
- E.g. :
- the player who ends number 1 in a Grand Slam will earn 2000 points for the LLTL rankings
- a player who ends number 2 in a M1000 will earn 600 points, just like the ATP runner-up
- the numbers 3 and 4 in an ATP500 will earn 300 points each, the semi-finalists prize
- and so on
The Top 20
Before the 1st Grand Slam of the year, you will need to predict the Top 20 at the end of the year.
- Here are the rules regarding the points you get :
- The "standard" bonus given for the number 1 player of the Top 20 is 20 pts. 19 pts for the number 2, 18 pts for the number 3, and so on until 1 pt for the number 20.
- Each rank gap between the real ranking and the predicted ranking will lead to a reduction of your score by one point. Until the lower limit of 1 pt.
- You will earn a 1 pt bonus if you picked the correct ranking of a player.
- E.g. :
- the player W is ranked number 12 of the ATP ranking at the end of the year, and that's exactly what you predicted. You earn 9 pts (standard bonus for the 12th) + 1 point (perfect ranking) => 10 pts.
- the player X is ranked number 4, but you ranked him number 9. The standard bonus for the 4th is 17 pts. The gap between the real ranking and your prediction is 5. You earn 17 - 5 => 12 pts.
- the player Y is not in the top, but you ranked him number 1. Too bad ! => 0 point.
- the player Z is ranked number 16, but you ranked him number 8. The standard bonus for the 16th is 5 pts. The gap between your prediction and his real ranking is 8. You will earn the minimum bonus of 1 pt (because 5-8 is negative !).