Colley Ratings
Season Finale
Import Results
Admin only · reads the Adjusted tabUpload the season workbook (.xlsx). Each row of the Adjusted tab becomes a round, with player names taken from its header row. Rounds already in the app for that season are replaced, so the spreadsheet stays the source of truth.
Rounds
Scoring
Cup handicap uses the score differential for each round: (gross − course rating) × 113 ÷ slope. It averages the better half of those differentials and ignores the worse half: every Cup round for the overall figure, or the last N rounds for the rolling one (with an odd count, the extra round counts). Lower is better; a negative number shows as a plus handicap.
Player
Rounds
Position
Position by Season
Lowest Rounds
Against Each Opponent
Sorted by opponent ratingAwards
Rating Timeline
Each player's Colley rating after every Cup round of the season. Click a name to hide or show it.
Title Odds
Simulate
Make up rounds that haven't happened yet: add a round, add the players in it, and set their scores. Each score starts at that player's expected score (from their last 10 rounds); change it to anything. The standings and title odds below update for your scenario. Only you see it; nothing is saved to the Cup.
Standings If It Happens
Title Odds, Now and After
Head to Head
Meetings
Matches played between each pair this seasonOpponent Network
Network Analysis
Award Posters
All-time records across every season. Development data for players who weren't Cup members is left out.
How a Round Counts
Each day you play, you enter a round-robin against every Cup member who shows up. Lowest gross score wins each pairing; equal scores are a draw, worth half a win and half a loss. Margin doesn't matter: winning by one counts the same as winning by ten.
Four players in a group make six matches, five players make ten. Every match goes into the matrix.
Rules and Etiquette
- Regular season runs from the Saturday before the first Sunday of March to the second Sunday of October.
- 10 round minimum to qualify (rounds, not matches).
- 10 stroke maximum per hole. Scores are gross, never handicapped.
- Only give high-percentage gimmies. Your score affects the whole field.
- Non-Cup players may not concede putts.
- Post a picture of the scorecard to the group chat after every Cup round.
Season Finale
From 2027: the top two qualified players meet in an 18-hole match play championship. The winner takes the Colley Cup. Third and fourth play the 3rd place match in the same foursome. Everyone ranked lower may play one last round into the matrix.
The Colley Matrix
The Colley Matrix was created by Dr. Wesley Colley, an astrophysicist, and was one of the six computer rankings used in the BCS era of college football. It was valued for being transparent: it uses only who you played and whether you won, and anyone can reproduce it.
Where It Starts
Before anyone plays, every player is rated .500. A plain winning percentage, wins ÷ matches, jumps to 1.000 or .000 after a single result. Colley instead starts from (1 + wins) ÷ (2 + matches), so one win moves you to .667, not 1.000. Ratings stay sensible early in the season and settle as results pile up.
Strength of Schedule
Then it adjusts for who you played. Your rating is pushed up by the ratings of the opponents you faced and pulled down when they were weak. Written for one player:
An opponent you've played six times counts six times in that sum. Every player's rating depends on everyone else's, so the whole field is solved at once as one system of equations:
A Small Example
Three players. A beats B, and B beats C. Win percentages would say A 1.000, B .500, C .000. Colley gives A .667, B .500, C .333: A is ahead, but one result isn't proof of dominance. If C later beats a strong player, B's win over C becomes worth more and B rises too, even without playing.
What That Means for the Cup
- Beating strong players is worth more than beating weak ones, and losing to a strong player costs less.
- Your rating can move on days you don't play, because your past opponents' results change how good your wins and losses look.
- When a match happened doesn't matter. A win in March counts the same as a win in October.
- Draws count as half a win and half a loss, so they leave the (wins − losses) term unchanged but still add a match against that opponent.
- Ratings average .500 across the field. Above .500 is better than average, adjusted for schedule.
- Playing more doesn't help by itself. More matches give the rating more evidence, but only winning moves it up. That's why the 10 round minimum exists: to make sure a rating rests on enough golf.
- The opponent network matters. Ratings are only comparable between players connected through matches. The more the field mixes, the more the ratings can be trusted.