Points Spy - Indian Wells

Hey everyone!

Now that the draw is out, I've launched the Indian Wells Points Spy, over at www.pointsspy.info

There have been quite a few changes to the site since I last posted on 606v2 for the Australian Open. There is now a front page, leading to two different tools. Firstly there is "Top 20" which is the pretty much the classic Points Spy table everyone knows and loves. Then there's "Wind Down", which takes a more long-term view of things, illustrating how the points would drop off each player's total if they did not play for a whole year.

Top 20:
In addition to the standard table, which I will update day by day as the rounds progress, I've also given you the ability to manually project what might happen, and easily see how this could affect the rankings. To use the manual projection feature, simply click on player names to bring up their profiles, adjust the slider (each notch on the slider signifies a victory), and click "Apply".

For example, click on Murray, adjust his slider bar to the second-to-last notch. This corresponds to a place in the final, as noted by the caption in the bottom left corner. Click "Apply" and you'll see that, on the main chart, Murray's row turns blue (to indicate that you've tinkered with him) and he moves above Federer. This shows you that Murray could overtake Federer by reaching the final.

Of course, you could go into Federer's profile, adjust his slider, and he might pop back up above Murray!

You can adjust as many players as you like, but once a player has been eliminated from the tournament their slider will be disabled. There's no point in projecting something that can't happen!

A few limitations to note... There's currently no logic implemented to stop you from doing silly things such as having two champions, or two players from the same quarter reaching the semi-finals. Also your manual projections will be lost when you leave the page. There's currently no function to save your settings.


Wind Down:
The graph starts at week-0, which is the most recent Monday (04/03/2013) and covers the full 52-week period, by the end of which, all current ranking points will no longer apply.

You can hover your mouse cursor over the graph to get more information on the tournaments and points being dropped each week.

By default, all players in the top 10 appear on the graph. This can get quite busy, so you have to option to turn off each player by clicking their name in the key to the left of the graph.

I also got a bit snazzy and included the ability to control the graph directly from your browser's URL bar. This is handy for sending a link to a friend where you only want them to focus on a specific player or players.

To do this, simply tack "?show=" to the end of the URL, followed by a dot-separated list of players to show by current rank.

For example, if I wanted to send you a link comparing the graphs of Federer (rank: 2) and Murray (rank:3) the URL would be:
www.pointsspy.info/winddown.php?show=2.3

I think that just about does it for now! I'm still working on improving the site all the time. So if you notice any bugs or have any suggestions to improve the site, please let me know!

Thank you Cogen, that's very, er, cogent

Great site, it'll keep me amused for a while

I had a look earlier, it looks nice.

So... Ferrer, Kohlschreiber and Isner all eliminated in the second round. They get only get points for the first round as they each got a bye.

Massive blow for Isner who loses a net 590pts after reaching the final last year. He now drops at least 8 places, from #15 to #23, and could possibly drop another place or two depending on how others perform.

Points Spy table HERE

Wow Cogen, the points toggle thing is a fantastic feature.
Nadal can win this and get to number 4.

Great stuff

Cheers,
Amritia

Great site Cogen. Very informative and nice layout and functionality!

One cosmetic change I would recommend: the column headers read Projected rank and Projected points. I would change those to "Live" rank and "Live" points.
I'm not a native speaker of English but "Projected" sounds to me like some sort of forecast.

Your english is better than some english people's english!

prostaff85 wrote:"Projected" sounds to me like some sort of forecast.

I see your point...

To be honest, I do sort of consider my table to be a "forecast", because I'm predicting how the rankings table will look before it is officially published. The problem is that my forecast is changing all the time as each result happens.

I can absolutely see how the wording could be confusing for someone taking a glance at the page though. I don't want people to think I'm doing some form of prediction or interpolation to guess what each players points/rank will be at the end of the tournament.

I've gone with "live" as you suggested.

So, a walkover for Nadal, straight into the last 16. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing for him at this stage? Might want all the practice he can get before Federer in the QF...

In other news, Querrey has popped himself back up into the top 20 with his win last night. That's the only real movement since I published the initial table. He'll finish the week no lower than #20 unless either Janowicz or Florian Mayer reach the final... or one of the other outsiders wins title. Can't see that happening really.

Cogen what about Janowicz, he doesn't have any points to defend how high can he get if he makes a push lets say to the quarters even?

Also Gulbis, I am interested in seeing where his ranking could go as well.

socal, I was having a look at that earlier for the other thread. Unfortunately even with a QF run, Janowicz can't go up many places - he'd need a SF appearance to break the top 20, and even then it would be by a slim margin. I'm sure Cogen could elaborate more.

Gulbis would easily break into the top 50 with a QF, not sure about beyond that really.

Yes, it gets harder to move up but janowicz if he keeps playing like this should be able to get well into the top 20 by the start of RG, he has nothing to defend. The real test will be how he plays on clay and if he can keep his balance when tested on the slippery red clay. I think he actually has the tools to be a good player on all the surfaces.

Gulbis is another interesting one although he seems to have run into some problems against Gazza.

Here's the breakdown for Janowicz you...

Started the week ranked 24.
R32 = #24 (current)
R16 = #24
QF = #23 (overtakes Isner by ONE point!)
SF = #20 maximum (overtakes Querrey by ONE point!) (Edited from #23. Oops.)
Final = #17 maximum
Champ = #13 maximum.

Sooo... no big movement unless he makes the final, but a QF or SF would certainly help him close the gap on the group above.

I don't have Gulbis to hand immediately because he's ranked #67, and I only keep the top 40 in my spreadsheet by default. 40 is a nice easy number to maintain and tick off the results. When it starts getting to the sharp end of the tournament if there's still any lower ranked players left in, I'll add them to my table to see what impact they might have on the rankings. Gimme a few minutes and I'll get the numbers for Gulbis. Shouldn't take long.

Incidentally, I'm thinking I might extend my interactive Top 20 to be a Top 40. The only reason I haven't so far is because I'm planning to add a section on each player profile which lists all the players who could catch them. The lower down the rankings you go, the smaller the gaps become, and the more people can start to catch them. So that means very long lists and more work for me! Maybe I'll only include that extra info for the Top 20, but still show you the Top 40. That'd be a good compromise...

Yes, definitely. Right now he's got a 300~ point gap to bridge to the players above him, but for an example two 4th round appearances at both IW and Miami will set him up nicely for the clay season. Having no points to defend certainly helps! I think he actually made the final of RG as a junior, so there's no reason why he couldn't do well on the surface. Even if he loses today, he should look at the long term view and continue to build

Edit: Cogen, would Janowicz not overtake Dolgo as well with the extra 360 points from a SF berth? 1,371 + 360 even beats Querrey's (#20) current total I think. I'm working off the ATP site rankings though, which could be outdated and doesn't take player movement into account like your Points Spy does.

Here's the figures for Gulbis:

Started the week ranked 67.
R32 = #65-ish (I don't know exactly as I haven't analyzed loss/gain for 41-66)
R16 = #58-ish (as above)
QF = #46-ish (as above)
SF = #37 maximum
Final = #26 maximum
Champ = #23 maximum.

Silver, my mistake! I made a typo and gave him 320pts for the SF instead of 360. It is very close around the #20 mark, so every point counts!

Janowicz would be... 1371 - 15 + 360 = 1716.

Those 15 dropped points are for the Sarajevo Challenger which drops on the same day the new rankings will be published after this tournament.

Querrey is currently... 1695 - 25 + 45 = 1715.

He would pass Querrey by 1 point assuming Querrey loses his next match! Very close!

No worries, you keep track of so many stats for the site that I'm amazed at your usual accuracy good catch on the Challenger as well!

Man, just goes to show how tough it is to break into the top 10. Even if he netted a title here and with Paris last year in the bag, JJ isn't that close. I see Gasquet could usurp Tipsy with a decent tournament...

Man, just goes to show how tough it is to break into the top 10. Even if he netted a title here and with Paris last year in the bag, JJ isn't that close.

Yeah. There's only one thing for it... he'll have to win Miami as well! That would put him in the top 10... as long as Gasquet doesn't get too many points.

Cogen you are doing a helluva job and thanks for the breakdown. The good thing for Jerzy is that he has nothing to defend, the bad thing is that as you go up the rankings it becomes harder to jump over other top player who aren't just going to sit pat either and who have bigger points leads to overcome. The top 8 or 10 have been very close although tipsy seems to be in a bit of freefall in form right now.

Won't take Jerzy long to pass Juan Monaco though. His W-L for the year is 2-4. Lost his opener here, and he has a semi-final to defend in Miami. Goodbye 360 points!

What a fool you'd have to be to pick Monaco to get to the Indian Wells fourth round in the ATP Challenge, eh? .......

I've just done some work on my backend so I'm monitoring the whole top 100 now.

I've added Anderson, Gulbis and Berlocq to the "Selected Others" section and they've reached the Last 16.

Gulbis is a qualifier so he gets 16 bonus points in addition to whatever he earns from the main draw, hence his weird total of 106 at the moment. There's a small bug at the moment where if you use the slider to manually adjust his points, it won't count his qualifying points. Hope to have that fixed very soon.