RE-RELEASE: Is DUPR Driving Us or Dividing Us? CEO Tito Machado's Answer Will Surprise You

How do we get out of potential duper jail? Oh, yeah. I've been slagging my team. You guys are done. Yeah. Here's what we did. This is the confession. Don't tell anybody. We did create. Don't give people ideas. I know exactly what you did. Don't tell anyone because I'm going to have to put people in jail tomorrow if we tell anyone. Okay. We said we would actually, we think we would do well together in jail. We would own it. We don't. No, no. Listen, anyone listens to this and that's it. We'll kick you out of the platform. You guys. We are going to delete. It's all good. It's all good. We'll have verification in January. I don't know if I'm going to verify you guys, but tell the one else. That's fine. That's fine. Welcome to Dinks on Tap, where the pickleball meets the margarita. Or martini, because we enjoy a bit of both. We're your hosts, Casey and Lauren. And each week, we explore what makes pickleball so darn fun. Not to mention the community and the connection that's built along with it. Okay, y'all, today's guest is either the most loved or most yelled at man in pickleball. Some call him brave, others call him a glutton for punishment. He's the CEO of Duper, the rating system that's got half the sport cheering and the other half rage texting in all caps. He's got to balance egos, algorithms, and that one guy who insists he's a 5-0 because he once beat his cousin in rec play. Seriously, though, navigating the world of pickleball ratings is like trying to ref a mixed doubles match during a marriage counseling session. But Tito, Tito says, bring it on. And while the rest of us are out here whining about our 3.72s, this guy's out here trying to bring order to the dink-spirited chaos. And to his credit, he told us we could ask anything. which in hindsight was a dangerous move on our part, but here we are. So with that, please welcome the man who might be the most important and most questioned person in pickleball. A big welcome, guys, to Tito Machado. Cheers. Cheers, Tito Machado. Thanks so much for joining us. Did we get that right or about right? That was the best intro ever. I've done a couple of podcasts in my time and, like, the best one so far. I think I recorded and put it on my Instagram. Yes, this is the pinned one. We kind of want to start at the beginning. We've got a lot of listeners, thankfully, on this pod, a lot of whom play pickleball obsessively like we do, rec and or pro. But then we've got some people that don't necessarily play but are maybe getting interested or just supporting us. So for those people, can you remind everybody what Duper stands for and how it became sort of the leading rating system in the world of pickleball? Yeah. So Duper is the dynamic universal pickleball rating. So in short, you know, we we've always tried to be the language of the sport. Right. We saw this metric as kind of like a way to to understand level across ages, genders, continents, you know, so everyone can knows, you know, if I am, you know, John living in China, you know, my pickable will still translate to wherever I play in the world. It's a very difficult problem to solve, right? Because, you know, there's a lot of different components that come into level ego, as you guys mentioned, and a couple of different things. But that has always been the goal. It's like a universal language, universal scale where all of us can play, you know, and solving for, you know, the legacy of the sport, which had, you know, a little bit more broken down ratings, right the ratings used to be by gender by age by this so we kind of came in in 2021 changed everything as part of major league pickable and and ppa back then still but like we made a deal back then so we we set like as a very competitive rating and and it kind of like we decided we truly wanted to make it for everyone and kind of getting every single player in so it's been a journey but yeah, we are in 150 countries. We have 1.5 million users and growing at 20,000 users a week. 10,000 of them love me. 10,000 of them hate me. So it's a fun adventure. So Tito, speaking of which, a few weeks ago, we had Mike Barker from there on the show. And of course, for those that don't know, that's another rating system that's out there that's kind of new to the market. They've come on the scene recently. And you reached out to us after that episode and asked if you could come on and chat. And so we're just curious, what was it about that episode that made you want to step up to the mic now? Yeah, no, listen, I always have a ton of respect for everyone coming into the ratings world. Because again, it's one of those where you're never going to make everyone happy and you can't. And you simply can't make everyone happy. And again, I think there's a lot of misconceptions in terms of the data, no data, and all of the stuff. But I don't think that this is a Ver thing or a Mike Barker thing. I think there's just a lot of misconceptions that I keep hearing online, on a forum, on this and that. So when I hear some things and I hear some things in a forum or someone posting, well, Dooper has got my rating wrong, and I look at that person's rating, it's um you know it's um it's sometimes frustrating in a way of like hey like internally frustrating it's almost like whoa we're not doing a great job explaining things you know i think we we need to do a better job uh you know going to places and kind of like explaining i think people know exactly the logic behind it who is behind duper what is working we're like you know i i remember something specific about that about that podcast right talking about data right one of the great things we've done at Duper is we have partnered with every single platform in the sport. So we have 9 million Pickable games, 9 million. So no one in Pickable is even close to that. It's just like we have every single platform, every event from the beginning that has been recorded digitally, we have it on the Duper platform. So that gives us a really good basis to understand data. And we have, you know, we have like extremely, you know, PhDs and former like BPs of engineering from Goldman Sachs who runs insane financial models running our algorithm behind the scenes. So this is not me running a spreadsheet. This is really, really smart people running this. And the truth is, you know, algorithms are algorithms, you know, but an algorithm, you can say that you have the best algo, you have the best formula, this and that. all of that without data, it's meaningless. It doesn't really mean anything. So we've had a lot of, we've worked a lot of algorithms with Twitch, we've learned, but with all of this data, we've been able to look at the different models that work the most and no one has that data. So I think that was one of the ones that was like, no data, no clean data. We have more data of anyone in the world. So I just wanted to explain those things because I think, you know, people look at the rating or they heard someone at the park say, well, Dooper has me wrong. And, you know, so I wanted to kind of like, you know, come here, explain it, you know, be transparent and, you know, hopefully be useful for everyone listening. Very, very good point. This notion of algorithms are only as good as the data they have to work with. Yeah. And that you all as an original, you know, gangsta, as they say, in the sport, you've got a lot of data to work with. And that's important to note. It is. And that's really cool. And oftentimes, we hear people in our world, which is the rec world, we are not professionals, to be very clear, although we look real professional, don't we? So in our in our world, you know, as the rec player, you'll hear people kind of ask, hey, what's your duper? Or, you know, the term gets tossed around and people are talking about their ratings. And then a lot of people will follow it up with, yeah, but, you know, X, Y, Z, some excuse, or I don't really trust my rating, you know, but this is what it is, right? What do you think it is in particular about duper or the rating system as it is that causes people to qualify it with, yeah, but I don't really trust that. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think, I think, as I said before, this is a very difficult problem to, to solve, you know, and people, people don't trust it, but then they protect it, but they truly care about it, but then they check it. We have insane amount of engagement on the app. Like, you know, something doesn't add up here because then people truly care. And I don't want to play that because it's going to affect my duper. You know, I've heard that that happens a lot, a lot there. So if you don't trust it and you don't care, why are you protecting it? So, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a conflictive it's a conflictive concept. Right. I think it has to take it duper. And this is not how it was intended intended in a perfect world. Right. This is about level based play. Right. Finding people in my community where I can have fun with and have fun games. Right. And we all have busy lives and, you know, going to the park. ride. I just want to make sure that the two hours I'm at the park and I'm having great games, having great fun with people on my level, regardless of everything, but just having some great time. Now, it has turned a little bit into a status symbol. It has a little bit of like, well, you don't get invited into the four-hour group or I don't get invited into this thing. So it has gotten a little toxic in that way. And I think when people look at their duper as their identity, they're not thinking about the rating in the right way. And I think that's something that we want to fix, you know, like your rating, you shouldn't be embarrassed, there's nothing wrong with being 2-0. Like, no, that's the start of your journey. That means that you have, it's like watching a movie from the beginning that you never watched, you know, like, it's like, you know, it's like, this is the beginning of your journey, you get to get better, that you get to enjoy. And like, even if you don't, this is not about, you know, going to be a 7-0 or a 6-0. This is about having fun. So again, this is why it's very important for us to, you know, explain this. Like, you know, there is a 4-5 is not better than a 2-5. It's just two different people at two different sides of the journey. And it shouldn't identify you and it shouldn't be exclude you and you're not cool because you're lower than someone else. I think that's something that we need to change. And it's a little toxic in the pickleball community right now. It's almost as if I hear you saying that, I mean, like I love the example about a 2.0. It's the start of your journey. It's almost, and you said the start of a movie. It's almost as if this journey of watching your rating grow is your story in pickleball, right? Like how you started and how you progress and continue hopefully or not leveling up throughout the pickleball ranks. And so I wonder if people looked at it like that, if it might be a little bit more appetizing or people are able to see it more of a story of their, quote, pickleball career. Yeah. And the truth is, like, again, we're not we're not and you make a great point. But also we're not a we're not grading you. We're not that the teacher telling you that you have a D on your paper or an A on your paper. right and I think that's super important to understand because like some people might always be a 3-5 but there is nothing wrong with always being a 3-5 you know like you know like the you know age has an importance in it you know like like you know like you know I'm not as fast as I was when I was 20 or you know but all of those things matter and again like sometimes your your journey with Duper might not go all the way into a 4-0, 5-0, 6-0 and it doesn't have to right again And it's like, we just want to make sure that the experience where you're going into the court is level-based play. It's fun. It's engaging. We're getting, you know, it's not, it's something like, listen, like going up from a 3-5-6 to a 5-3-5-7. It's an improvement and it's something to work with. And we always strive to be better in life. So, again, everyone is going to have a different journey going up or down. It's not, this is not a game. It's not like, it's not like levels that you have to be passing, kind of like a video game. it's just simple representation with the data that we have of who you are today that's truly what it is we are not a magic formula we need data to be able to know who you are so the more data the more accurate that we get to be able to know where you're at on that pickable journey how do you you had mentioned this is an area that you feel like you want to address right we have to address this how do you plan to address that i mean it's a pretty human nature deal to be assigned a rating and therefore, you know, see it as simply where you sit on the journey. And that is true. I love the perspective. It feels resonant and important to remember, certainly. But how does Duper take charge of that? Yeah, I mean, I think we are not the utility that we were intended to be at the beginning. Meaning like we, you know, I think we've gained a whole different level of cultural adoption, right? You can have handicapping golf where people accept their handicap a little more and like, you know, it's just what it is. And yes, there's some people who are more obsessed with it, but like it's a different culture. Duper is a whole different thing. We have no place being how culturally important we are in the sense of like, you know, our socials are amazing. Like people are talking about it. we're on podcast, we have, you know, we have the amount of celebrities we have on the platform, it's absolutely wild, like, you know, it's something that you said, people go in any background, the people go in Vietnam to the local park, and they're like, what's your duper, you know, so I think one of the key aspects is, like, knowing our positioning in the market, not just as a utility, but as a cultural phenomenon, I think this is our job to educate people, you know, give them more pathways, you know, be more present, show them, again, And at the end of the day, it's all about information. I think the more, I always say this, I haven't had a single person that believes that their rating is wrong. Call me and leave that call saying, that didn't make sense. Because once I explained to them the mechanism, how it works, why is there, and this happened when we changed the algorithm. Actually, people were pissed. I don't know if you saw this, but I went out there and I put my personal phone number everywhere. I put my email. I spoke with people from like 7 a.m. to like 10 p.m. every day because I also wanted to learn, right? As a CEO, I wanted to understand. And there wasn't one person that they finished the call that they were like, whoa, thank you so much. That makes so much more sense to me now. I just didn't get it. I just never, you know, I played football growing up. There was no such thing as racket sports and rating. This is the first sport I played, you know, 10 years, you know, So we're dealing with not professional athletes. We're dealing with, you know, people like us, like, you know, we play recreational. We have fun. We work. We have life. So I think education and explaining and evangelizing the rating is super important. So we create a, you know, more healthy environment around this rating. That's incredible that you talk to that many people. And you were talking about sort of evangelizing this and communicating really what you guys are trying to do. But you talking to all these million, you know, 1.5 million users is impossible. So how do you continue to get that word out, one? And then also for those that think of Duper as, say, the Goliath of pickleball ratings, right? I mean if we being real for a second I mean you guys are big you have big money behind you you VC backed you have big media celebrities behind you guys What do you say to those that seeing Duper as this big Goliath and in what they may call a ratings war ratings race if you will and then there there new folks coming on the scene that are talking about being more community driven DC driven or capital driven How do you mitigate against that notion of maybe another misconception that's out there? right that's a that's a great point and and i think one of the one of as i was saying before you know at the beginning you know one of the you know i think sometimes people um you know they see kind of like the current status the final product but they don't see kind of everything that has happened before you know david tab for example we've been running i've been on a rainy day with david tab on a park you know watching an event and you know or like nationals the first year that with the Nationals for College Kids, you know, we ran this idea and we had all of these college kids come and like we've run waterfalls like we are the community. And this is something that people don't understand. I am not my background. You know, yes. Now I think you look at my LinkedIn and it sounds like I am like, you know, this, you know, big CEO of like this goalie that people think because they think that Duper is this, you know, as you said, Goliath of the ratings. But the reality is that I started here on a sales job growing. I've called every single person. I've spoken to every single club. We've built this from, you know, I remember showing literally Google Slides to people about how the rating was going to work because there was no platform. That's how we were signing clubs. So I've spoken to every club in this world. I've graded everything. And yes, we have this, all of this amazing VC, all of this amazing people behind, but the core people of Duper, we've been, we are a community, you know, we've been involved and I go to the park. I love Biggable. So many of my team members are the same. So, and we care. I mean, I, you know, this is our baby. This is our baby for so many of us. So that's why sometimes, you know, and I think I need to get better at this. But sometimes when I see like misinformation, I take it so personal because like, that's not true. We're working so hard to do this thing. So it almost like feels like, no, that's not true. I want to talk to you. Let's jump on a phone call. Like a player is on the kitchen complaining. I'm like, here is my cell phone. Call me. Let me explain it to you. Because we truly, truly care. And I want to circle back a little bit to what you were saying earlier is this education piece, right? People don't know what they don't know, and they assume and make up narratives about what they think they know. And then Duper representatives like yourself are having to kind of sweep in behind the misconceptions and clear things up, which is wonderful. And to that point, you had mentioned, you know, Duper had changed the algorithm recently. And with that, you spent this time on the phone with folks kind of clearing things up and people understood after which. So I want to give you this platform here to tell us a little bit about those changes and this idea of algorithm transparency, right? I mean, there's nothing more frustrating, Tito, than going to a tournament, winning a game, and watching your duper score go down. And this happens, I mean, it's happened to me personally. I know Casey's experienced versions of this. others have too. And it's just like how your brain, use the brain explosion emoji in explosion, like how did that happen? Right? I won. And there's obviously good reasons for that. What are they? Yeah. So this is, I love this question. No, this is, we are looking, again, I think one of the most important things is something I said before, right? We are not a gamifiable system. We are not a something that you are supposed to, you know, you play a video game, you win the level, you go into the next level, and then you win the level, and then you go into the next level. That's not what we are, okay? So if you define do-press like this, it's like, okay, we have 30 games from you, right? And these 30 games tell us this story, you know? This is the story. You look at the average of all of these 30 games, and we look at everything that we have, what can we say about you? And all of these 30 games are telling me that your level is a four or five, okay? Because I have this whole story about these games, okay? So the problem that we had with the old algorithm was the win go up, lose go down, is that I think this is very, people will understand it. People are gonna know exactly examples of what I'm gonna say. Okay. There is a inflation and deflation issue, okay? have a lot of people that were competing. There was people that were always playing in a group. They were the strongest team on that group, but maybe not by much. Maybe they were winning a lot. 11-8, 11-9, you know, 11-8, 11-9, or sometimes they lost, but most of the times they were winning, right? You know that team in your group that is always like, you're always close, but they always end up taking it. Okay. Were that team? I know, I'm just kidding. that team is old algo right when you have way more wins and losses it automatically inflates so if you're a 4-0 by level because your games with other 4-0s are 11-10 12-10 11-8 it means you're close to a range but if i keep playing only against those people you know what happens and i keep winning i'm gonna keep going up all the way into a 5-0 so i'm gonna create an inflation issue and we have people in communities we have people in a lot of communities and this is why a lot of people are a little upset with Alco because they know they were a little inflated maybe they weren't the 4-8 that they thought they were which is okay right but we had we were seeing this thing the disparity of like players who were competing against the all at the same group let's say two groups right the strongest part the strongest team and the weakest team so these two teams are not that far away from each other right but one of them is winning way more than the other it's going to the, it's going up and this one is losing way more than the other, keeps going down. So now you have the same team that are pretty close. Maybe they're like 0.1 away from each other. They're pretty close. One of them is going into the three eights, you know, and the other one is going to the three, two, three threes. Sorry, four twos, four threes. So this was happening across the board. So we're looking at this and we're like, oh, we have a terrible inflation issue. We also have the same situation with teams in smaller markets. We had someone in, you know, Pennsylvania, where they are very dominant compared to all of these people. So now they're winning and winning and winning and winning because they're the strongest person in their area, right? And now they come to Florida and they're like, well, I got Florida 5-0 is not the same as a Pennsylvania 5-0. It shouldn't be like that, right? That means that someone is off out of those people. 5-0 is a 5-0. So that's why we decided to move because the accuracy wasn't there. We were losing accuracy every single tournament, every single game. And if you think of Zupert as not as a game, but more as an identity, right, we decided to go into points because we were able to learn way more from you on how you competed in a certain game, right, than winning and losing. So, yeah, sometimes I get it. It's frustrating. But this is a calibration. You know, sometimes you're going to, and the averages, honestly, it all averages out. It's not going to be the other big thing that is kind of trying to create your line is we have, because we can change this if we want to. The two numbers that really matter is the first number and the second number. Those are the true numbers, right? We just decided that we wanted to give you a little more visibility, gamification, right? But people go down 0.001 to the 1,000th number. you go down and people are like oh my god super sucks that you went down into the game it's like if we didn't want to show you the number and we just kept it to the 4-1 that you are you didn't even know to the 1-10th it's really not that big of an impact on anyone it's not making a difference it's negligible if that makes sense this episode of Dinks on Tap is brought to you by Unearthed Experience the only safari company where roughing it means your personal butler forgot the almond milk. Unearth doesn't do basic. They specialize in luxury African safaris and unique bespoke trips that'll have you sipping champagne in the Serengeti while casually watching lions fight over brunch. Think less backpacking and more glamping on steroids. So ditch the cruise, cancel the staycation and go full majestic beast mode. Head to unearthexperience.com and tell them Dinks on Tap sent you. They might even guarantee the sunset's pause for your cocktail. Unearth Experience, because if you're going to get wild, you might as well do it in linen. Again, it's going back to the story of what type of player you are, who you are as a player in that rating versus it's just a single label. One of the questions I have is really about bad actors in the space, Tito, that, you know, a lot of times you'll hear about people that are able to enter a tournament at a lower level or, you know, they're sandbagging. So they can either, especially you hear this a lot with money balls being a problem because people obviously want to win money. And so they'll come in at a lower level so they can win or have a better chance to win. How do you mitigate against that? that's got to be a big problem. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely complex. And it's definitely something that, you know, first of all, we do have a thing called the Duper Police. And again, we are looking, you know, people report other people, we have, you know, we added some AI tools in the bag, we're seeing people when they're performing, you know, so we have kind of all of these tools that we're trying to get. Now, when it comes to a community rating, when it comes to a rating that everyone is using, you're going to have those bad actors. And I think, you know, they get singled out in time and it's extremely, extremely frustrating. I think one of the things that we're working on is on the organizer side as well. You know, I think one of the things that we are trying to get better at is like, you know, working with the organizer to make sure that we put those lines, because, again, I think a lot of the – in many occasions, you know, like I feel like we get blamed, but, like, you know, we are not really running the tournament, right? You control the tournament director. I get that. Yeah. Is it more a tournament director problem, you think? And listen, tournament directors are the champions in the community. Like they are it that, you know, they're spending their Saturdays and Sundays sometimes with full-time jobs and coming and running these events out of, you know, love for the sport. Sometimes they're not even making any money and just grinding it and do it. So totally appreciate it. But hey, you know, you have to talk to 200 players who are participating or 50. It doesn't even matter. You have to deal with all of them. You have to ask for their duper, which is already a big ask. Make sure. We always recommend that the more that we add the reliability concept to the money ball, the better, right? Because like someone with a low reliability, that's a low score of us. We just don't have enough information to know that Tito Machado is a 4-9. You know, we, you know, so I think people forget about reliability many, many times. They focus only on the number. We have low confidence on those numbers. And it's, you know, it's, I think those are things that we need to, because, you know, we operate through third party platforms as well. So I think we need to keep training. I think the organizers have to also feel comfortable to tell the player, hey, you cannot play here. Kick them out. Again, that's a tough conversation to have, you know, not always you want to tell someone not to. people are paying registration you're dealing with a lot of stuff like it's not an easy problem to solve and i think it's almost like a community concept right people like i love when people reach out to us like hey this person is on the wrong play on the wrong bracket or they cheat they're trying to cheat or they try to do this we ban them right away by the way you lose your duper so we ban people left and right and we give them a six month like for depending on the case we give them like a a little bit of like a you know punishment area you get a chance to prove yourself and come back. And if not, we kick you out of the platform completely. But again, those are things that we need to deal with. We need to assess. We need to figure out. And we're a young community and learning every day. I want to, we need to come forward with something. We have a confession. We need to go to Duper Jail. You talked about the Duper Police. We'll go ahead and turn ourselves in. We're putting out our wrists for handcuffs because we really, as players, we hear you. And we want the system to be the best it can be so that people feel like it is an equal opportunity scenario. And therefore, we wanted to, we'd heard rumors, we'd asked people before knowing that you would come on. One of them is manipulating the algorithm and how frequently people do that and how easily it's done. And we didn't necessarily believe that it was easy. So we put a little experiment into place. And Casey's going to tell you about that. Well, I'm curious about how common it is because you were talking about, I've heard you mention the Duper police before and you having a team that's dedicated to this. So, hey, Duper team, please don't kick us off the platform. We just did it for the time. But we are interested in, like, that's got to be a tough job just on its own. Like, how do you how do you mitigate against people that are literally using John Smith played, you know, Lauren Smith or whatever it may be? But how do you get how do you get really, you know, how do you clamp down? The Duper police usually catch you around, you know, we like, you know, I would say that no one, you know, I think we could catch people on like around the latest in a month. You know, it takes a while, but when we look at it, you know, we have a committee every single week that we look at all of the suspicious accounts. And then the committee looks at, okay, this is the ones that we have. And we kind of go through all of those. And it's honestly a horrible process, but we are like so, you know, looking at it. But we do it, we meet every single week. And then we look at all of those accounts. And then those people get an email. We give them a chance to like, you know, come clean. If they come clean, we give them like, hey, you're punished. But the one thing that we are doing now in 2026 is we are verifying accounts. So this is something that it's, you know, first of all, we already started doing this with tournaments. And certain tournaments are going to verify accounts. And the whole goal here is, first of all, we're going to start with the phone numbers. and at some point, the more serious that the event gets, we are going to also, you know, some tournaments are going to ask for ID once you get in. So we know that, you know, you are you and we show it and that's coming right now. So the account verification is a massive part of what we're doing to do that. We are going to put the self-posed matches as well. I think this has been a big debate internally, but like put the self-reported matches only for verified accounts. this is something that right and we're gonna put behind also because like i didn't want to take this away honestly i really want i really want to because again it it's it's it just sucks because the community is such a like a great community too and i wanted to make it super accessible and for everyone and everyone to get ratings but people try to gamify it and again it comes back to the misunderstanding on why do we have a rating why you know right like i why going from a 4-0 to a 5-0 if you're not a 5-0, you know? So we were trying to keep it as a community, right? Like, you know, this is what it is. I guess, you know, I'm an idealist and maybe that cannot happen. So we're adding those verifications and putting behind the stuff and, you know, and we've even thought about taking cell phones and matches completely out. But then there are some really amazing people who use the cell phones and matches all the time and I just don't want to punish them. There is people who have published matches every single week. They've been with us from the beginning. I don want to punish a big group of people because of a couple of bad apples So we adding this verification process And listen if you verified and we got you doing that you never going to be verified again And you not going to be able to play a tournament on any of the platforms that we're doing. So you're out, you know, you lost your privilege. It's really smart, Tito, because there are enough bad apples, unfortunately, that poison the soup. And it's, it's, it's not hard to do, as we found out. And disappointingly, so it's done. Now, we don't know how often it's done. And to your point, this whole notion and the position you're taking representing the company to tell the whole story, as opposed to this identifying marker on your, you know, career of success is, is a wonderful, wonderful approach. To that point, I'm curious what goes into the big picture of the person, right, from a rating standpoint. Because we do hear rumors or people talking about the fact that age, gender, whether or not you're playing singles or doubles or mixed, right, these things are not factored in. And some people want them to be factored in. And so what's your response to that? And what is it that is factored in, therefore, that does sort of paint that bigger picture you've been talking about of the player? Yeah, we're adding sub scores, first of all, we're adding sub scores. So these are coming in December, that means that we're going to be able to be going to be able to see a duper for mix a duper for for certain age groups, we're also going to do rankings by age groups and a couple of other things, which I know people really want. So that's coming. We're going to add it, but that's a sub score. And we're always going to keep it as a sub score. And I want to be clear why. I think, again, it comes back a little bit to ego, right? And this is not bad. I think I'm better than my rating reflects. No, I'm kidding. But the big thing is that we're trying to create a universal metric for level, right? So speed, right? If I go and I tell you that I'm going at 30 miles an hour, doesn't matter if you're 60 or 40? Or like if you're 60 going at 30 miles an hour, is it different than a 30-year-old going at 30 miles an hour? No, it's the same speed, right? You're both going at 30 miles an hour, but you're both going at different age groups, right? So this is exactly how duper is. We're a representation of your universal level at scale. We're looking at who you are. I think there's a legacy concept of the sport because back in the day, pickable was broken down by ratings by age, ratings by gender, ratings by this, ratings by that. If I play Bobby Oshiro, I play Bobby Oshiro. Her duper is like, you know, higher than mine. She's a female, but she's slightly higher than mine. She kicks my butt. She kicks my butt. That's an objective fact that she kicked my butt. So, so, you know, that skill is a representation of your skill. Now, so I think that's the already that I was trying to explain. And, you know, the other big thing that people don't understand is that oh well but it's not the same it's not the same being 60 65 playing against against you know 30 year olds well I get that but I do play with some 65 year olds that take my butt so what so you know level is not subjective right it's not subjective of each level is level and yeah like some people maybe don't move as well as other people but they find ways to compete in different ways and be better and have better shots and better placement. So, you know, we're trying, we've created a universal language. And I think like, just like if you are 60 and you are a 4'3 instead of a six-year-old 5'0, that's okay. You're a 4'3, that's level. You get to compete. You get to find some good games. And a lot of people tell me this, but, you know, a lot of the sport is played between different ages and different genders. It happens every single day in every single park so do we have to have four different language when we go to the park like well i'm you know i'm a 5-0 here on a tuesday but on wednesdays i'm a 6-5 you know and you know that's that's my explanation and i i understand there is a legacy aspect of it and i get it but again it's it's exactly the example i put we're just trying to look at all of your games with everyone you play with and give you that average through that rating from two to eight and honestly I've been on the court and I've beaten and lost against people of all ages all giganders and level is not subjective through the data it's just what it is what is it what does your algorithm look at yeah so our algorithm and there's a couple different factors so it so okay so early on I'm just gonna tell you the whole story okay because it's super important So early on, the first algorithm that we got out to the world was actually very similar to the one that is using other record sports. It was very dynamic. So what it meant is we had this concept of community, and every single point that is played in every single game across the community had an effect on your rating. So it's about points. So it looked at if we go and play, I have a partner, we go and play against you. It looks at, you know, what's your rating? What's your rating? What's my rating? What's my partner's rating, right? And it looks at all of the stuff, looks at who we're playing with, you know, and then it makes a prediction. So the algorithm, with all of the data says like, well, I'm supposed to beat you 11-5, 11-5, right? That's what it's last. So if I overperform, if I beat you 11-3, 11-3, that means that the range of the algo was, you know, had a bigger expectation of your level. So your level goes down, my level goes up because I performed better than it was expected of me. Right. Now, every single point on that connectivity thing, right, had an effect because the more information we're learning from the players, right, the more data, it had like this domino effect, like, well, we just learned this about Lauren today, right? Like we didn't know before. So because I beat Lauren last week, that's going to have a little take on my rating as well. So it was a constant living thing of calibration, that the more data you give them, the more you learn and the more you go people into the right place. I personally absolutely love that because that system is just like you keep feeding him more and more data. It gets getting better, better and better. Now, the problem was that it was very dynamic. So people used to get pissed off that they will go to bed, be in a 4-3, wake up in the morning because someone that we got more data and suddenly they're for one and they're like two of us sucks this this move i didn't even play why is my rating moving if i'm not playing which is a fair question to some extent one thousand percent one thousand percent i completely get it and i think it's a matter of like we're learning more where it's like almost like it's almost like your credit score you know yeah right you had to keep playing for the for the to help your duper out effectively. Exactly, exactly. So it's, yeah, it's perfect. Like sometimes, you know, like you get this, you get this notification from, yeah, I got my email from Credit Karma, like, you know, great job, you're doing great, you know, hopefully. So you get this email also like it changes. There is different factors. There is, you know, when you pay your bills and all of this stuff and affect what duper was like that. I get it. Maybe it was way too performance-based, way too based maybe on like, you know, and other sports is more used for high-performance athletes. They're more used to this kind of like, you know, changes. We went into a very simple elo. Win up, go down. Very simple with the idea that we're going to kind of go back here, but we cannot go this dynamic from the beginning. Let's make it simple. Let's step it back. You win, you go up, you lose, you go down. Very simple. It's more of a ranking really than even a rating. It's almost like a point reward system. and that's when we were ready we saw this disparity happening and we decided to go back into a only play and change algorithm right or you right now you you you only change when you play and we included all of those different factors which is you know who i'm who is my partner right who am i playing with what's our average together as a team okay okay what i'm playing against and what is their average as a team and looking at your liabilities, which also includes when was the recent recency is very important on your reliability, how many games you have, how many partners you have, how sure are we with all of this stuff. We look at all of those factors between players and we say, okay, this is the predicted score. And again, we go into that spread and after the spread, if you beat the spread, you go up. If you don't beat the spread, you go down. again if you are reliable the going up if we have enough data view the going up going down is negligible it's not gonna be it's not gonna be meaningful i've been saying this like a month now maybe we even take away the two last decimal points so people stay happy you're a four two four three no one knows what's going on behind the scenes it's red arrow that points down we take it away you don't you don't take it away so but again then it gets more boring right because then you don't see any change for months that's fair so tito um what you're explaining then just to make sure that everybody caught this right because essentially you've kind of gone back to that average or the expected score. And what you're explaining, right, is duper forecast. Yeah. Is that right? And that's fairly recent, correct? Yeah. So one of the key things, and by the way, we had it already. We had it back in the day with the old algo. It's just like, we call it duper genie for the OGs here that I remember the duper genie. So we just launched the forecast with the goal of giving transparency. And again, the whole goal is that you completely understand why and what you're rating. And there is more things coming. We're having impact now as well in November. So that means that on the forecast, you're not only going to see the spread, you're also going to see, depending on the score that you plug in there, you're going to be able to see how much is going to impact your rating. Oh, cool. So you're going to be able to see that pre-match as well. The deeper impact is coming in November. Yes, November, yes. So actually, I had a meeting today and I was like, hey, maybe we can get it hopefully detecting first week in November, if not second, technology is always tough. But yeah, so it's all about adding transparency. And those are the kind of thing we're adding sub scores in December where you're going to be able to see your makes, your age, your dupers, you're going to be able to see all of these different factors as analytics. But at the end of the day, again, your dupers is going to be your dupers and so on. Yeah. So I want to ask you a question about this and I want to see if I can get this right, because I was talking to a tournament director recently about this exact scenario. And I'm specifically talking about dupers forecast. They were having trouble getting, and I made a note, it was a 4.8 team to sign up for a competitive level bracket, right? And the issue was, even though the 4.8 team would be playing against a, you know, slightly lower rated opponent, say it was 4.5 or 4.25, they felt like it was a lose-lose situation for them because if they didn't dominate and exceed the expected score, the rating would actually drop. So the team figured the risk of that happening was too high, so they opted out of that tournament. And so my question is, if we want the sport to grow, which is all of our goal, right, and encourage more players to show up for tournaments, how do we incentivize the opposite? It's like, are more people sitting out just to protect their DUPRA score? Are we avoiding, are we rewarding avoidance over participation? And so how does DUPRA then encourage long-term participation? Yeah, we should do this once a week. it's a great question we've been this is a great question go ahead fantastic so yeah so this is something that um i also love this question because again like i i think people are always they always look uh uh like you know the opportunity always down right but i think it's all a matter of average right like okay like if i am a if i am a i when i you are gonna have this and then we see is all averaging out across the board it's not that big of a deal you know and i think people give too much like you know like oh my god this is this rate this opportunity you know this i have the chance of of like going down but actually you also have the chance of going down if you play with people that are above you and you underperform like it's all about you know performing at the level that we think you are sometimes you're gonna underperform sometimes you're gonna overperform right like you could potentially play on a tournament where everyone where you were the weakest team, right? And still go down because you played, you underperformed the spread every single time that you played against those people. So it averages itself on that side and it averages itself on this side. And I think we are giving too much importance on this tournament. And honestly, I think this is like protecting your rating again. Like this is, that team should have played the tournament and they had a great opportunity because in my opinion, you have a bigger chance of overperforming with teams that are below you than overperforming with teams that are above you. If you think about it that way, I have a great opportunity. I'm playing with, I'm the strongest team here, right? I have all games that I choose supposed to win. If I beat the spread more times than less, which I'm the better team, my duper is going to go up, right? So the thought process here with that is almost like it doesn't make sense. And again, that's a little bit of very like forum. People read that, people hear that at the part. Someone tells them like, yeah, if you're the strongest team, don't play. If I were the strongest team in the tournament, first of all, you shouldn't be that worried about your duper going out 0.0001. You should go and play, have fun, try to have the best game that you can. And actually, in my opinion, I think you have a bigger chance of having your duper in a positive impact, playing with people below you than with people above you. That's a myth. It's to say it averaged itself out. That's one. The one thing we've thought about, which, I don't know, I think the community would find my house and hunt me. You're not going to give out your address, I hope. No, I don't know. I'm like the witness protection program. I'm such a 19 who has to go in hiding. I'm in the middle of the desert right now. I said Boca before just to confuse people. The one thing we thought about is decay. I think decay and I'm a big proponent of this but again I'm a big proponent of per game and I think I have a very idealist idea of what we should do but honestly I don't think you should sit on your 4-8 rating for a full year if you don't play I think that matches should really start dropping out of your rating right so six months after your last game that game stops counting so once that game stops counting you lose it I'm actually if you don't play and you don't participate right your duper is going to keep decaying it's going to keep going down and you're going to lose more weight and lose more weight and lose more weight so now when you get that money ball opportunity or that tournament opportunity right it's a chance for you to keep your duper where it is to keep it active keep it engaging and want to play again this is the balance between you know ego and doing the right thing and how do you control that gosh it's such a hard question And I love that you're tackling it. I really do. I love the suggestion of Talking Weekly. I mean polling your people right is probably a very big part of what you guys do in terms of figuring out how to plug these holes I mean I love the duper decay except for those folks that get injured and they're out, you know, and they can't play. So it's, shoot, it's tough. And you've said it a few times, and it really feels like a resonant approach, which is this notion of education and duper positioning themselves as a company that is for community, for fun, for continual play, and to keep reinforcing the message that the number is not your identity. The number is simply a story that's told around your journey. And that re-emphasis over and over feels like the right approach. And I don't know, you and your marketing team get together and make that work. But ultimately, the way that you've addressed a lot of these questions today rolls back to that. And it's lovely to hear, certainly from your perspective specifically. And it has reframed, at least for me, how I want to talk about my duper and reinforce as an ambassador of the sport that the number is not who I am, but the number is how I continue to play and play against people that will be a match to my game? 1,000%. I mean, you put it perfectly. I think that's exactly the message that we want to give. I think that, I mean, one of the things, I don't know why it really resonates with me, is like that Duper is just an average of the games that Duper has. So, you know, the more, you know, the more matches that you add, the more data we have and the average is going to reflect the whole story. So that's, I think, simplified like that. I don't know why when I say it, it feels like an average. Everyone understands what an average is. So that's it. That's what we are. And with this average, find level-based play and compete and stuff like that. The whole making sure that people don't see this as a gamifiable system. Listen, I had this mistake as well. I played tennis in college. I've been a high-performance athlete all my life. When I got into the court the first couple of months when I was playing pickleball, the first thing I said is, I'll be a pro in the next six months. No, I wasn't. But we all come into the game and we hear about Duper and we think about, hey, I need to go into the 4.0. Actually, we have companies that do programming programming based on how to increase your duper, you know, which is great. Like, I get it. Like, yes, like, like, like everyone should strive for better. But I think the duper is not something that you gamify actually improving your game. And so it's a result of improving your duper. So the focus should be like, you know, improve your game. And as a result of being a better player, you get your duper goes up, right? That's all that's all it is. Everything else is just an average of the games that we have from you. Really, my last question is really about what's coming. You've talked a lot about, you know, Duper increasing transparency with the algorithm and just kind of telling, you know, maybe being more educational and communicative about the purpose behind all of this. but what what's the future hold for Duper? You've talked a little bit about kind of what's coming from from just you know the the technical side of things but what it where is Duper you know a year from now three years from now five years from now what's the long-term future look like? Yeah I mean listen I think I think that the key aspect of Duper is keeping that engine off pickable like I you know that the more the sport grows the more we get adoption the more that we keep adding more tools, more transparency. We make the sport more fun and less toxic and more engaging and growth. Like you go to, you know, the really neat thing that we're seeing right now is our growth in Asia. For example, we are Vietnam, Malaysia, China, like those markets are almost more users to do better than, than the U S you know? So honestly being, you know, being the rating of the sport is obviously the goal, right? We want to, we want to, we want to talk a universal language, you know? And of course, there is always welcome, you know, listen, competition makes everything better. Honestly, it's a reality. Like, you know, I'm a competitor myself. Always have been. When UTR came in, it fed me, it fed me, you know, because I used to work at UTR. That's a funny part, you know. So, you know, UTR came in, they're a big, big company tenants, you know, they have, you know, 300 employees, they're big, they're coming in. Like, you know, we feel like we've done very well in that regard. And I think it feeds us and it makes us do better and it makes us learn and it makes us see things at work and the complaints and address all of those different things. But I think for us, honestly, I think it's so easy to go and write KPIs and build projections and build so many different things. But if you're in business, you know that most of the time those things don't work. I think most things are about pivoting, about learning, about new projects. I think Duper, it's very tough to tell you where Duper is going to be in three years, because I would never have told you three years ago that Duper was going to be, you know, 1.5 million users and growing at the rate that we are. So I think we have a very, at least myself and the team that we have an amazing team, very focused on like, you know, what can we solve now? What can we fix now? What can we keep creating? What is the next solution? and hopefully you know instead of being 50 50 we keep going more 60 70 till it comes to a place that there is only a few people that that don't hate me so that's the that's the goal right now I love it a great goal not a bad ball hating me less witness protection more play time on the court Got it. Yes. So we want to transition here a little bit, Tito, and just get to sort of the player to player conversation in the sense of we all love the sport. We all love the up, down, left and right of it. And we're curious. This is a question we ask a lot of our folks on is, okay, if you could design a dream foursome, so you and three other people to play with, Any celebrity alive or dead or anyone you admire alive or dead, who would you bring to the court? Oh, this is this is this is I should have a beer with two beers in. I would have a great. Very passionate about, you know, grid and like, you know, you know, people, you know, you know, people have super tenacity issues and people that are, you know, figure out a way. you know I think you know so yeah I mean um I think you know someone like easy someone like you know a would love to have like a Kobe Bryant you know kind of like the mama mentality idea I think that would be a little fun I'm very competitive you know someone someone like that I think it will be it will be great and like the wingspan alone would be very helpful will be extremely helpful so I think I think I will have Kobe on my on my side I think we will we will do a great team. And then I'm Spanish. I love soccer. So I always hated Cristiano Ronaldo. Never can understand him. Too much of a pretty boy. So I would want to body back him. So let's have him on the other side playing. And then He's on the other side. Yeah. We'll play with him. Yes, yes, yes. And Royer Federer, because I've always had him. I think he is I think he's a robot. I think he's the perfect human being. You know, I mean, it's the elegance on the tennis court and the elegance of the side of the tennis court. I mean, you know, the guy has two sets of twins. I mean, who has that? You know, it's so. That poor guy. I'm kidding. It seems like, you know, the perfect, the perfect human being. So I think that would be a good, you know, very sporty for some right there. Ah, very good. That's a good one. That's a really good one. I want to ask you actually kind of a fun duper related question. What's the wildest thing you've ever seen someone do to protect their duper score? You have no idea. They're crazy. Can I curse here? But the crazy shit I've seen this last three years, I've seen like you would not believe like, you know, and it comes back to people saying that they don't care or they care. Like, I think there's a, people care too much, not the opposite, you know? So we've seen, I mean, we had, I've had to blog people because I was getting threatened, you know? And like, my number, I had. What happens when you put your phone number out there? Yeah, yeah, no, I had blog people on social media or LinkedIn. Like we had someone that just kept reaching out on every single site possible. I had my teams getting, like, it's, And we had, we got reported to the Bureau of Good Business or the Bureau of... Oh, the Better Business Bureau, yeah. Because we were affecting, because our rating was affecting their life and they couldn't work. I don't know. Oh my goodness. So we, yeah, we, and then we see, I think the most protecting the rating comes from a lot of the high level players, the pros. you know, they're actually, I would say the 5-0s and listen, I get it. A lot of them, you know, get sponsors by it or like, you know, get sponsors by it. They're getting coaching gigs through it. You know, if you're a 5-0s, I don't want to play. I don't want to touch it. We see that a lot, but, but, you know, as I said, we've, we've seen, it's so tough to put a finger on it. We've seen so many crazy stuff this last couple of years that you would not believe it. My, my, my, my support, My director of support is just like, you know, the poor guy is like, you know, sometimes he tells me like, people are crazy. He calls me. He's the nicest guy ever. He's like, I don't know if I can do this, y'all. I don't know if I can keep doing this. We're absolutely crazy. You need the raid. You need the raid. You need the raid. I know. Again, we are the team freaking. Most of us have been here from the beginning. We really do care. So, again, all of this goes, you know, it's deep. I wonder, Tito, what is your pickleball pet peeve as a player? um i i can't i really as much of a a competitor as i am i i can't stand when people are like you know we're playing like a red game and they're you know like you know rubbing balls and like you know i'm playing with maybe a weaker player than me and they're trying to hit every single ball on a red game and kind of like body but like like the nazi play again on many many different things when it comes to a reg play, it really annoys me because again, I've been on my laptop today. It's 6.35 right now. If I were to go and play some Pickleball right now, I've been all day sitting in my laptop. I want to go and have a great experience. So when people are being assholes on the court to other people and being disrespectful and not being nice and all the stuff, it's like, what am I doing here? Why am I putting myself through this right now? Like, do I really need this? You know, so sometimes I've stopped playing for a period because I've left the bar, go to the club, so pissed off that I'm like, listen, I don't want to be here anymore. So that's, again, it's usually people. It's that thing, like people. A little, uh-huh. Last question I've got, and I don't know if you have anything else, but we tend to have our guests sort of do a 20-second love letter to Pickleball. what would you say to pickleball if you could sort of give it some love give it some gratitude for any kind of impact it may have had on your life what would you say I mean I think I mean I think I have a little bit of an unfair one because if pickleball has given me absolutely the wildest experiences of my life you know I came I said I can I didn't even know what pickleball was I came into Duper to run the commercial side started playing pickleball I've traveled the world. I just came from Singapore. I've been to Vietnam. I've been to Malaysia. I met so many amazing people. So, you know, it's built me professionally. It's built, it's built, it's brought some of the best friends I've had in my life. I've had some of the, you know, it's frustrated the hell out of me professionally and personally. And like, but I mean, I am, you know, this, I don't know if I'm going to be working. I hope I am. I don't if I'm going to be working in Pickable for the rest of my life, but I'm always going to look at Pickable, like the thing that changed everything for me. You know, it truly took me to a whole different dimension. It allowed me to go and work with some of the biggest, you know, you know, celebrities, VCs, like met some of the coolest people and be in the room and not only be in the room, but at some point own that room and, you know, and like make it my room and be able to raise capital and be part and present and be so, you know, it's one of those life-changing experiences like, you know, college coming to the U.S. as a 18-year-old Spanish kid, you know, with a strong accent to all of that, Pickleball is one of the most important things ever. So, you know, I have absolute love for Pickleball. So, yeah. Cheers to that. Yeah, cheers to that. We can certainly relate. And, you know, the magic of this sport is just, it's, it's, it's all about the joy and the laughs and, you know, the community that it brings. And we so appreciate you coming on and, and, and talking to us today and especially giving us your point of view about, about rating systems and, you know, the, you know, it can oftentimes feel like chaos. And of course your, your system is driven by data, but of course, at the end of the day, it's, it's all about community. And I really appreciate the fact that you guys are, are, are driven by community feedback and you're taking it in. And so it's fun to be a part of that community and be able to be a part of shaping it all. So, so cheers to you, Tito, and all the great work you guys are doing. And thanks again for coming on the show. No, thank you. I honestly, I think some of the best questions I've ever gotten in a, this was awesome. It was an absolute pleasure. It was great. And, and you know, you know, it's, it's been awesome. Usually at this time of the day, I'm not going to lie, I have like two brain cells left. So us too. You know, that's why we drink. Yes. Kill a couple more and activate the ones that are still awake. But no, it's been a lot of fun. It was, you know, it was an absolute pleasure to be here. So thank you so much. How do we get out of potential duper jail? Oh, yeah. We got to get weapons. I've been slagging my team. You guys are done. here's what we did where this is the confession don't tell anybody we did create don't give people ideas let's let i i know exactly what you did let don't tell anyone because i'm gonna have to put people in jail tomorrow if we tell anyone okay we said we would actually we think we would do well together in jail um we would own it we don't we don't know the new black yeah no no listen and no you guys are fine if anyone listens to this and that's it we'll kick you out of the platform we are gonna delete it's all good it's all good we're gonna we'll have verification in in in january i don't know if i'm gonna verify you guys but everyone else that's fine that's fine And that's a wrap on this episode of Dinks on Tap. Thanks for listening. And if you like the pod, leave us a review and share it with your favorite dinking buddy. After all, Pickleball is more fun with friends, both on and off the court.