DARWIN PRO LEAGUE — SEASON 1
The Darwin Pro League is the competitive Darwin Project ladder, running on this site. Scrim sets are recorded as they're played and priced into the season's ladder when they publish, and the full game-by-game record is public: the LADDER, the set boards, and every player profile update live.
DPL S1 is complete. Its final standings are locked — the top 1 / 10 / 25 finishers carry season trophies on their profiles — and the whole S1 ladder and set history stay browsable under the DPL S1 tabs. DPL S2 is coming soon; its tab fills in as the first sets are recorded.
S2, the community scrim season that came before the DPL, is closed and archived the same way, under the S2 tabs.
The DPL is rated with Glicko-1 — DPL S2 uses the same settings DPL S1 did. Each player has two numbers: a rating, and an uncertainty (RD) that measures how sure the system is about it.
- The number on the ladder is the conservative estimate: rating minus 1.5 × uncertainty. As you play, the uncertainty drops and the displayed rating climbs toward your actual level. The ladder sorts by exactly this number.
- Until your first five sets are in, your rating is marked provisional (shown dimmed) and can't outrank established players on the board.
- If you stop playing, your uncertainty slowly widens again and the displayed rating drifts down until you return. On top of that, top-15 players with five or more sets lose rating to inactivity decay — see the penalty system.
The S2 formula had two known flaws, confirmed by backtesting the full season: it rewarded volume (grinding sets beat playing well) and it was blind to opponent strength (beating a stacked lobby paid the same as beating a quiet one). Glicko-1 fixes both. Every result is weighed against who was actually in the set, and the uncertainty model keeps small samples from outranking a season's work. Replayed over the whole S2 record, it predicted set outcomes measurably better than the shipped formula.
- Play in community scrims, organized on the community Discord (join here).
- The moderator team records each set as it's played; results land on the ladder when the set publishes.
- Your first sets will show as provisional. That's normal — it clears after five sets.
The full competitive ruleset is on COMPETITION RULES; quick answers are on the FAQ, and ABOUT covers what this site is.