Mike - this is the link to a previous forum post  which I had done a bit of work on ages ago.

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hi mike

whilst i am not sure of the exact system. this is the general outline:

• Points are based on prizemoney for tournaments. the points they get depends on what the tournament is worth and where they finish in the tournament.
• points last for 12 months although most pro tours have a cut off point at which they proclaim the world number 1 for that year
• once you have played a certain number of tournaments you can drop your worst results from your tally
• in squash, i am pretty sure the ranking points are averages, not pure totals
• in this way it is possible for a player to drop in rankings after making a final, if they were the winner the previous year (they drop more points than they gain)
• it is also why many players cannot play in secondary tournaments, purely because there is not enough points on offer. even if they win, they may drop points ( in recent  years they have made  some changes to this rule to allow players play in their national championships without fear of losing points)
• shabana will be number 1 when the season starts because of the points he accrued in the past 12 months. i he were to lose in the first round of a tournament he won last year, he would drop perhaps 1000 points from last year and only gain 50 from the first round apearance (number of points is an educated guess). this might drop 60 - 80 on his points average.
• another player who lost in the first round last year might do the reverse, thus resulting in exactly the opposite. that player would perhaps make up 150 points on shabana. if that player were at number 2,  140 points behind before the tournament, he would then take over as number one. (this scenario might be complicated by the fact they can drop their worst results if they have played enough tournaments)

mens tennis has what they call the "ATP Race"  (or something like that) which they touted as taking over from the rankings a few years back. this starts at 0 and is an accumulation of points throughout the year. at the years end they declared a winner. i think they are still promoting it, but the rankings have remained the benchmark, publicly.

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Not sure exactly how it works myself, but I would have thought that there must be a time limit on points otherwise anyone who'd been playing for a long time would always have a high score.

I believe it rolls over a full 365 days with anything outside of that period ceasing to count towarsd the total. That's the way it works in Tennis anyway!

Cheers

Adz

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