Mike Dale, editor of The Padel Paper, also happens to be a lifelong squash player, long-time writer for Squash Player magazine and head of comms for the European Squash Federation.
He has witnessed, and written extensively about, the positive impact that SquashLevels has had on grassroots participation in squash clubs across the world.
Whilst padel is currently in a very different life phase to squash, the launch of PadelLevels promises to have a similarly glavanising effect on everyone who plays competitively on the 20×10, once it’s widely understood and adopted by the community.
Here, in an article originally published in Squash Player magazine, Mike explains how SquashLevels has energised players and clubs, stimulated better competition and created engaged communities — and looks forward to PadelLevels doing the same:
Declining participation and bulldozing of courts in some traditional strongholds make it easy to be pessimistic about the state of grassroots squash. So it’s important that, wherever possible, we celebrate the bastions that help keep the flame burning.
To its 60,000 active subscribers, SquashLevels has always felt like a jewel in the crown of squash’s global infrastructure. Its role in motivating players to improve, stimulating competition and creating engaged communities gets ever greater as each new club and nation cottons on to its potential.
Sceptics have been converted, almost one-by-one, over the 12 years since its invention. It often feels like SquashLevels’ sophisticated algorithm knows us almost better than we know ourselves, such is the unnerving accuracy of its ratings.
LevelTech — the technology innovator that powers SquashLevels (as well as its offshoots Squash57Levels and PadelLevels) — has been recognised for its impact by being awarded the prestigious “GSIC Certified – Performance” seal by the Global Sports Innovation Center (GSIC) powered by Microsoft.
This independent validation confirms what devotees of SquashLevels have known for some time, that LevelTech delivers industry-leading predictive accuracy, outperforming traditional methodologies across the global racket sports ecosystem.
SquashLevels and Squash57Levels now has over seven million results logged in its database, dating back its launch by software architect Richard Bickers.
Its genius lies in its performance-versus-expectation principle. Before each match, the system calculates what should happen if both players perform at their rated playing level. After the match, it compares the actual scoreline — down to individual points — to that expectation and adjusts ratings accordingly.
Every point therefore contributes insight. For example, a 11–9, 11–9, 11–9 scoreline and a 11–2, 11–1, 11–3 scoreline are radically different information (despite both being straight-games victories). SquashLevels takes that into account in a way that systems in other sports (notably padel’s leading comparable platform Playtomic) do not.
The algorithm also takes other factors into account to achieve its (certified) industry-leading accuracy, such as:
⦁ Behavioural modelling: each player’s likely effort level based on context (e.g. playing a significantly stronger/weaker player)
⦁ Match importance weighting: Tournament matches (where elimination is at stake) carry 100% weight; league matches 75%; box/ladder matches 50%.
⦁ Dual reliability weighting: Rating confidence decreases both with fewer matches played and with unexpected results. An implausibly good or bad performance triggers a reliability reduction that allows the rating to adjust more rapidly toward the player’s true level.
⦁ Geographical calibration: Players who compete across different regional or national pools act as natural calibration bridges, allowing LevelTech to automatically measure and adjust for level differences between pools.
⦁ Recency decay: Older results are progressively down-weighted so that a player’s rating reflects their current form.
Elo-style and Glicko-based systems commonly used across racket sports typically operate within a 65-75% accuracy range. But the GSIC Testing Lab’s review showed that LevelTech’s algorithm delivers a 78.0% overall predictive accuracy across all match types.
This precision gets even greater in competitive environments, with 79.0% accuracy in tournament and event play, demonstrating superior reliability for seeding and competition structure.
The system achieved up to 80.0% accuracy in padel, confirming the algorithm’s seamless cross-sport applicability in fast-growing markets without the need for manual algorithmic changes.
The GSIC assessment highlighted this cross-sport scalability without requiring manual redesigns or specific tuning for different disciplines. This allows the technology to be adapted as a consistent ratings framework across a broad range of racket sports, potentially including table tennis and badminton.
“This certification validates what we’ve believed for a long time: that racket sports need a more intelligent and portable approach to ratings,” said Jethro Binns, co-CEO of LevelTech.
“We didn’t build this system purely for squash or padel. We built a scalable performance engine designed to model competitive behaviour consistently across racket sports. Having that independently validated by GSIC is a major milestone for the business and reinforces our vision of supporting the next generation of connected racket sports infrastructure globally.”
The LevelTech system empowers global governing bodies, tournament organisers and clubs to improve matchmaking, refine event seeding, and support grassroots development through more well-matched, meaningful play.
By making skill progression visible and objective, LevelTech deepens players’ engagement with the sport and its community, allowing them to follow, interact, and arrange competitive matches based on accurate and independently validated performance data.
As we head towards squash’s Olympic debut in 2028, the impact that SquashLevels has made on the squash community should be celebrated. Padel, which has similar Olympic ambitions, is set to benefit in the same manner.
