What is SquashLevels, and why should you check it out?

For any squash player, whether young or old, beginner or advanced, professional or amateur, data can be a brilliant tool to help track your progress and understand how well you’re performing.

You wouldn’t really associate playing squash with data though. Especially not at the amateur level. The best analysis I’ve ever had between my games was ‘try to serve more often, you might win that way’ (yes, that actually happened).

It turns out though, that if you’re a squash player looking for data on yours, your friends’ and your favourite players’ matches, there’s an awesome website that you might want to check out.

Take to the stage, SquashLevels. 

Squashlevels.com is a website designed to give squash players from all walks of life the ability to see and analyse the results of their games. If you’ve ever played league squash, or your club feeds in box league results, there’s a significant chance your matches will already be stored on SquashLevels’ records. If you’re a veteran player, you’ll probably be surprised to see just how far back your match history goes. The website is well engrained within UK squash, and appears to be growing internationally as well.

The premise of SquashLevels is simple. Each player has a level, if you play someone with a similar level, you’ll probably have a close game. If you play someone twice your level, they should theoretically score twice as many points as you in a match. If you play someone half your level, they should score half as many points as you, and so on.

This means that players’ levels are all relative. For example, if my level was 2,000, and I played someone with a level of 3,000 (i.e 50% greater), I could expect results in the range of 10-15, 10-15, 10-15. That’s the theory, anyway.

If you score a greater amount of points than SquashLevels expects in a match, your level should go up. If you score fewer points than SquashLevels expects, your level will go down, regardless of whether you win or lose.

There’s a tremendously complex algorithm that calculates players’ levels (20,000 lines of code, I’m told!). This algorithm features allowances for better players lowering their standard when playing lower ranked players – it’s all very smart! If you want more information, the site features some in depth FAQs on their level system.

So, how can you use the data in SquashLevels?

I’ve personally used SquashLevels since my first ever league match. For me, as an improving amateur player, seeing my score increase over time has validated the work I’ve put in. Since starting league squash, I’ve gone from a level of 700, up to 1,600. It tells me that the hard work I’m putting in is paying off (slowly, but surely!). I’d like to think if league squash had continued through 2020, I’d be closer to the 2,000-2,500 mark by now, but that’s another story!

I’ve often used SquashLevels to nosey through opponents’ match histories before playing them. I’m criminal for underestimating new opponents, so being able to see their level and match history gives me a good idea of what I’ll be up against. It also serves as some personal motivation when playing higher ranked players, as it’s always a good opportunity to increase your level.

With a Gold subscription, you can also compare yourself or other players against one another. This gives you an expected match result, probabilities of winning, suggested handicaps and more. You’ll probably be surprised how close the expected results and actual results are (especially useful for predicting professional match results!). You can even compare yourself to the best players in the world, though prepare for some crushing disappointment if you do!

For the real squash nerds among us, the site has now calibrated players’ levels throughout history. This means you can get an idea as to how the best players of all time might fare against each other if they played at their peaks today. I’m told it’s not possible to prove mathematically who the best player of all time is, though it does give a good idea how close your dream matches might be.

Testing out your skills

SquashLevels has also recently partnered with SquashSkills. Together they’ve introduced a series of tests that allow you to test your skills against players of different levels. This includes things such as figure-8 volleys, number of consistent drives, consistent drops and more. It’s a neat feature – I often use this to form solo-training sessions and check my progress over time.

You can compare your results against averages from players of all different levels as well. This is a brilliant tool for identifying any potential weaknesses in your game. Of course, having the data is one thing, knowing what to do with it is another. It’s always worth talking things through with your coach before deciding to work on something in particular.

Following other players’ matches and progress

The homepage of SquashLevels now features a ‘feed’. On here, you can follow your friends and favourite players and see their latest results. It’s a great way of keeping tabs on what’s happening in your squash circles.

The middle tab on the feed page is for communities. Not only can you find PSA information on here, but it also auto-creates communities for your club, county and even your teammates (it works out who’s in your team – clever stuff!). The communities tab features rankings, recent matches, player of the month and more.

The PSA World Tour has also recently partnered with SquashLevels. They feature monthly ‘power rankings’ on the worlds’ top players, based on their SquashLevels score. I personally find SquashLevels provides a much more accurate view of how well professionals are playing, as opposed to their world ranking (which is based on an average of their previous 12 months’ performance).

Upgrading to a paid SquashLevels membership, is it worth it?

SquashLevels is a platform I’ve raved about for the past few years. I’ll happily talk about it to anyone that’ll listen as I genuinely think it’s a fantastic tool. Speaking from personal experience, the only downside is it can sometimes be a little too easy to get caught up on your level. I have flashbacks of playing a shocker of a match and seeing my level plummet the next day. I threw a hissy-fit for a week or two until my score recovered!

It’s fair to say a paid membership won’t be for everyone. If you’re a casual ‘just for fun’ player, being able to see yours and other players’ levels is probably more than enough for you to enjoy the site. If you’re an England Squash Member, you’ll also get a few more features for free. These include local club rankings, your three most recent results and access to the SquashSkills testing feature.

However, for players who are particularly into their squash (you’ll know who you are!), having a full history of all the matches you’ve ever played, a view of your level over time, analysis on the score of your matches, comparisons with other players, community features, the ability to test your skillset and a fantastic integration with the professional game, I would say it’s well worth the upgrade. England Squash members can upgrade for £15 a year – or £1.25 a month if you look at it that way. You can view the full pricing plans here.

I personally think that as squash players we’re incredibly fortunate to have this data at our fingertips. If you’re a fan of numbers and data, you could spend hours getting lost looking through the SquashLevels features. Overall, I think it’s a fantastic tool to help support the growth of squash, and is well worth checking out if you haven’t already.

Note from the author

I just wanted to quickly let readers know that this article isn’t an advertisement. There’s no incentives or affiliate fees for publishing this. I love writing about things I think are great for the squash community and educating readers on the tools available to them. I also believe in supporting people looking to innovate and make our fantastic sport even better. SquashLevels is a perfect example of this. All the information in this article is entirely my own personal opinion – I hope you enjoyed the read!