The engine room

One engine.
Two lenses.
Every number.

Every rating, rank and win-probability on KickServe comes out of a single system — a dual Elo + Glicko-2 engine that has rated 23,000+ ranked players across four surfaces, and re-runs itself every morning. No ensemble of black boxes. Here's what happens inside.

23,000+Players rated
4Surfaces
2Models · Elo + Glicko-2
DailyRefresh · 06:03 ET
The signal path

Follow one result through the engine

The same match, scored two ways. Watch an upset ripple through both models — and see exactly why one of them hedges.

An example · Hard · R64
Qualifier
def. #8 seed
7-6 · 4-6 · 6-4
Elo · expected
The favorite was supposed to win.
28%
Elo · update
Big upset → big swing.
+21 rating
Glicko-2 · expected
Same call, but little data on him.
34% RD ±78
Glicko-2 · update
Upset, but still unproven.
+12 RD ±70
Win-probability
Two takes on how good he really is. That spread becomes the reliability band on his next match.

Illustrative — real shifts depend on the gap between the players and how settled each rating already is. Elo moves decisively on a surprise; Glicko-2 waits for the evidence to catch up.

Two lenses

Why the engine runs two models

Elo

Head-to-head expectation

One number per player, nudged after every match by how the result compared to what the model expected. Fast, battle-tested, decisive — it reads current strength cleanly and reacts the moment a result lands.

Glicko-2

Expectation, with a confidence band

Carries a reliability deviation (RD) that widens on thin or stale data and pulls its estimate toward 50%. So a three-match hot streak can't masquerade as elite until the record backs it up.

When the two disagree, that gap is the story — the model telling you how much to trust its own read. You can watch it move on the interactive methodology demo →

Surface-aware

Four ratings, not one

Hard
The baseline circuit — the surface most players are measured on most of the year.
Clay
Rewards defense and construction. A clay specialist's edge shows up here and nowhere else.
Grass
Fast, low, a few weeks a year. Small sample, big swings — where Glicko's band earns its keep.

Clay isn't grass. The engine keeps a separate Elo and Glicko rating on every surface — plus a rolling recent-form window — so specialists read as the different players they are.

Engine room

What's running, and how often

Coverage
23,000+ ranked players · ATP · WTA · hard · clay · grass + recent form
Ingest
Completed ATP, WTA & Challenger results, daily
Ratings refresh
06:03 ET, every morning
Model board
live
Outputs
Rankings · live win-probability · player timelines · model-vs-market
See it in action

The engine, on the court

Everything above turns into these — updated all day.