Five Key Takeaways from DUPR's "Ask Us Anything" with Founder, Steve Kuhn
Did you miss DUPR’s livestream “Ask us Anything”?
We’ve got you covered.
Here are the five key takeaways and most asked questions from the already popular event:
1.) Is a 4.0 50 year old man really the same exact skill as a 4.0 19 year old woman?
YES! The DUPR system is designed to be gender blind and analyze ONLY a player’s performance-not their hair color or their wingspan. The current state of tournaments and ratings is not sustainable for the growth of the sport—in the last month, a Pickleball event occurred with over 100 brackets! This is not only operationally unscalable, it’s completely antithetical to the culture and ethos of our sport. As a community, we don’t crave silo’d systems and brackets (ie a new bracket for every 5 years of age and .5 of skill)—the community craves fair play. The solution is more accurate ratings—NOT more bracketing. American Tennis had been on life support for 20+ years until UTR (Universal Tennis) exploded onto the scene with an “innovative” concept: level-based play. Pickleball needs to learn a lesson from Tennis before it’s too late.
2.) How can I get my club up on DUPR or run a tournament and send results to DUPR?
Easy! Email support@mydupr.com. It’s totally free to send results to DUPR and there are ZERO up front costs to running a tournament on DUPR’s new tournament management platform that launched last week.
3.) What does the future of tournaments look like?
Tighter bracketing—DUPR knows that competitive play occurs when players’ DUPRs are between .25. Currently, events are run within a .5 differential—this is WAY too high and creates completely unbalanced, non-level-based matches. We’ve analyzed thousands of results to find that on average, a medalist can be as high as 1 full point above their registered bracket (ie a 4.0 winning a 3.0 bracket) and only 20% of matches actually go to three games (if the current ratings worked, this number should be much, much higher). Using the DUPR software, every single match can be competitive, players can find partners more easily (because the only requirement is skill—not age or gender) and organizers have the ability to guarantee more matches (imagine playing four matches guaranteed!) Organizers can also provide guaranteed time slots in three hour windows (ie 8-11, 12-3, 3-6) AND with dedicated warm up courts. Now isn’t that #dreamy
4.) Do all four players have to be signed up to post a score?
No! You can invite players who aren’t already signed up for DUPR all within the post a score “flow”. Once they accept the invite, the match will validate. It only takes one person on the opposing team to validate the match for the score to post. However, we are reversing that logic soon to be an “invalidation” process— if one person from the opposing team DOESN’T invalidate the match within 72 hours, it WILL post to your DUPR account.
5.) Who can have a DUPR and how many matches does it take to get rated?
It's totally free to have a DUPR and it only takes ONE match against someone who has a DUPR to get rated. It takes between 5-10 to see what we call a totally "reliable rating". If two people play and neither has a DUPR--that match can still count! Once one of the players “touch” someone who has a DUPR, their previous match will retroactively “count”. No data is ever lost!
Want to learn more about DUPR? Check out the company's origin story from the founder himself, Steve Kuhn, in an open letter to the global Pickleball community.
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