Duplicate bridge across ACBL District 17 — Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and West Texas (El Paso) club games (open, limited, and mentor), with more of the district on the way, plus all regional and sectional tournament pair events. Every rating is expressed against an average open field · Last updated 07/23/26. Ranked by rating; a rank appears only once a player has 500+ recorded deals overall — and, in a region or state view, 200+ of those at that area's own clubs. In the all-regions view it instead takes either enough cross-field play for a district-wide comparison — about one tournament day's worth of boards — or regular play at three or more clubs.
An experimental skill rating for duplicate bridge across ACBL District 17 — Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and West Texas (El Paso) so far, more on the way — built by Doug Couchman from public ACBL results. It estimates each player's matchpoint skill on one common scale (50 = an average player) using a board-by-board statistical model — not a simple average of session scores. The model takes into account your partner's and your opponents' skill levels, so you aren't “penalized” for playing with a weaker partner or against strong opponents. Recent games count more than old ones — a board played five years ago carries half the weight of one played today — so current form, improvement included, shows up in the rating. Time away never changes a rating, no matter how long — ratings move only when new results come in.
Unofficial. This is a personal project, not affiliated with the ACBL or any club, and not an official rating. It's a periodic snapshot (see “Last updated” above), rebuilt from public results now and then — so it won't reflect the very latest games until it's refreshed.
It covers every game these clubs have recorded to ACBL Live for Clubs (club games back to 2019) plus all regional and sectional tournament pair events back to 2018 — open, limited (99er through 749er and NLM), and mentor games — so anyone who has played at a covered club or tournament in that time is included; use the search box. Every rating is expressed as the expected score in an average open field. If you mostly play limited games, you can expect better scores there than the number shown here — the open-field competition this table assumes is stronger than the competition in limited games. To limit the display to the highest-volume players, check the “regulars only” box. Details on how to read the numbers are at the bottom of the page. Spotted an error in your record? Corrections are welcome.
▸ Click any player to open their full profile — declarer & defense ratings, every partner, ACBL links, and a shareable link.
Projected matchpoint % for the two playing together, from each player's skill, against the field they would actually face — pick the game above. A regional open pairs is a much tougher field than a club limited game, so the same partnership projects lower there. (Field strength only: we tested whether a pool's internal spread also needs rescaling and it does not — raw ratings already transfer across venues with correct calibration.) Both must be rated (they'll autocomplete); it doesn't model a specific partnership's chemistry. Handy for seeding or stratifying a field.
Directors: roster stratification helper — paste a whole game's signup list, get pair strengths and a balanced NS/EW proposal.
Ranked by Overall %. Players showing the same rating share a rank. A rank appears only once a player has 500+ recorded deals overall — and, in a region or state view, 200+ of those at that area's own clubs; the all-regions view instead asks for either enough cross-field play to a district-wide comparison — about one tournament day's worth of boards — or regular play at three or more clubs, so the regulars view can skip an occasional number — toggle the box to see who holds it. Click any column heading to re-sort: sorting by # lists ranked players only; sorting by any other column (or searching) includes everyone. The small range under each Overall % is its 95% confidence interval: we can't measure skill exactly from a finite number of boards, so we show the range we're 95% sure the true rating falls in — the more boards, the tighter it gets. One caution about comparing neighbors: each band describes one player's own rating, not the comparison between two players. Differences are measured more precisely than the bands suggest (much of each band's uncertainty is shared and cancels in a comparison), so a modest overlap does not mean the order is in doubt — two players can overlap and still be confidently ranked. Only heavily-overlapping neighbors are a genuine toss-up.
| # | ↓ | Player | Overall % | Declarer %ile | Defense %ile | Sessions | Boards |
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Reading it. Overall % is the expected session matchpoint % when you play with a partner of similar skill in an average open field — so two equally-rated players compose a pair that scores about this number against open competition, and the average open player's rating is 50. The band is the 95% confidence interval for that player's own rating; differences between players are known more precisely than the bands suggest, so a modest overlap does not put the ranking order in doubt. The # ranks players by Overall %; identical displayed ratings share a rank, and a rank appears only once a player has 500+ recorded deals overall — and, in a region or state view, 200+ of those at that area's own clubs; the all-regions view instead asks for either enough cross-field play to a district-wide comparison — about one tournament day's worth of boards — or regular play at three or more clubs. A player without that is still rated, but we don't claim a precise place for them in a district-wide order. Declarer %ile and Defense %ile are percentiles (field standing, 0–100) from double-dummy card-play analysis (declarer is individual; defense is a partnership rating); players with too few card-play boards show “—”. Derived from club games across Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and West Texas — Tucson, Phoenix-area, Green Valley, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Durango, Boulder, Fort Collins, and El Paso among them — plus District 17 regional and sectional pair events, all uploaded to ACBL Live — open, limited, and mentor — club games back to 2019 and tournaments back to 2018. Displayed percentages are calibrated to an average open field (robots excluded from that average); the open competition this benchmark assumes is stronger than in limited games, so limited-game players can expect better scores in the fields they actually play. Method: a joint statistical model — a board-level Bradley-Terry contest model on game results, combined with double-dummy declarer card-play through one latent skill per player (hierarchical shrinkage; every open game at these clubs on one common scale). Results are time-weighted with a five-year half-life, so recent games count more (the half-life is a provisional, deliberately conservative setting); time away, of any length, never changes a rating by itself — only new results do. The Declarer and Defense percentiles come from the same double-dummy card-play analysis. Built from public ACBL results. Robots (sometimes used to fill a half table) are shown with parenthesized figures and excluded from the percentiles. A † marks a player known by us to be deceased; this is not kept up to date.
Doug Couchman is a bridge player and instructor, and a private tutor specializing in graduate admissions exams (LSAT, MCAT, GMAT, and GRE). Click here for more information. Questions or corrections? Get in touch.
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