Seasonal rankings and how points work in Iron bracket

A ranking system is only useful if athletes trust it. Trust comes from three things: a clear formula for how points are awarded, a fair way to weight events of different sizes, and a predictable reset so a strong last season does not shield a weak current one. Iron bracket's seasonal ranking is built around those three principles.

Points for match wins

Every match win in a sanctioned bracket awards base points. Base points are constant within an event but scale with the event's tier, so a win at a national is worth more than a win at a local. Losses inside the double-elimination lower bracket do not zero out the points earned from earlier wins — they simply stop the athlete's placement climb at that point.

This structure rewards athletes who consistently show up and win rounds, not just those who peak at a single high-tier event. Over a season it produces a ranking that reflects general performance, not one big result.

Points for placements

On top of per-match points, each final placement earns a placement bonus: first, second, third and (in fields large enough) fourth. Placement bonuses scale steeply with event tier — a national gold is worth many times a local gold — which is what allows a national champion to sit above a locally dominant athlete even if the local pulls more total events.

Placement bonuses are also class-scaled. A gold in the deepest class at an event carries a small multiplier over a gold in a class that filled with only four athletes. This keeps rankings honest when class sizes are uneven.

Supermatches and challenges

Supermatch victories award ranking points too, weighted by the ranking gap between the two athletes at the time of the match. Beating a similarly-ranked opponent produces a modest bonus; beating an athlete ranked well above you produces a large bonus. Losing to a much lower-ranked athlete costs points; losing to a similarly-ranked or higher-ranked athlete is neutral.

This is deliberately Elo-like. It means an unranked athlete who beats a top-10 opponent in a supermatch immediately climbs the ladder, and a top-10 athlete who loses to unranked opposition immediately drops. The system rewards ambition and punishes coasting.

Season length and reset

A season runs 12 months by default, resetting at midnight on a date chosen by the federation or by the organizer running the ladder. On reset, all athletes return to zero. Historical seasons are preserved on the athlete profile, so a top-10 finish never disappears from the record — it just stops feeding the live board.

Some ladders opt for a rolling 12-month window instead of a hard reset. Iron bracket supports both models; the choice is made at ladder creation time and appears on the leaderboard page so athletes always know which system they are competing under.