Should a winner swap rungs or should everyone in between move down?

Both are real rules. Swapping exchanges the two players and affects nobody else. Shifting — the traditional squash ladder rule — gives the winner the rung they challenged and pushes the loser and everyone between down one. Shifting makes the ladder much more mobile, because a single win past four rungs demotes four people. Pick one, write it in the club rules, and do not change it mid-season.

How far should players be allowed to challenge?

Three rungs is the common club setting. One rung makes the ladder very stable and very slow, which frustrates a strong newcomer stuck at the bottom. Five lets somebody cross a small ladder in a couple of weeks and leaves the top players defending constantly.

Does the ladder survive closing the tab?

Only if you tick Remember, and then only in that browser on that device. Nothing is stored on a server. The Forget button deletes it, and so does clearing your site data.

What happens if someone refuses a challenge?

That is a club rules question and the tool deliberately does not decide it. Most ladders treat a refusal as a loss for the player who refused; record the result that way and the ladder moves accordingly.

Can I use this for chess or darts?

Yes — nothing here is specific to a racket sport. Any club where players of mixed standard want a rolling order works the same way. Chess clubs in particular often run a ladder alongside rated play.

What is the difference between this and a box league?

A ladder is one long order and you challenge upwards. A box league splits everyone into groups of four or five who all play each other, then promotes and relegates between the groups. The ladder is simpler; the box league guarantees everybody a full card of matches, which is why big clubs use it.

Challenge Ladder Generator

The ladder is what a club runs when there is nobody to write a fixture list: everyone has a rung, you challenge somebody above you, and a win moves you up. This draws the starting order, produces a round of challenges in which nobody is asked to play twice, and applies each result to the ladder — including the rule most clubs argue about, which is what happens to the players in between.

Players

One per rung, top of the ladder first. Rung numbers pasted from a printed ladder are stripped. Names stay in this browser.

10 players

Starting order

Movement rule

Challenge reach

How many rungs up a player may challenge, 1 to 5. Three is the usual club setting.

Seed (optional)

Makes the opening draw reproducible, so you can show the club it was not arranged.

Remember this ladder in this browser

Your ladder will appear here.

What this generator does

Keeps a ranked ladder and moves it on as results come in. It draws the opening order, works out every challenge the rules allow from the current standings, and pairs a full round off so no player is in two matches at once. When you record a result it applies the movement rule you chose and tells you in words which players changed rung, so you can read out the changes rather than compare two lists. The ladder can persist between visits, which matters because a ladder is not a draw — this week's order is the accumulated result of the whole season.

How to use this tool

Paste your players, one per line. Rung numbers copied in from a printed ladder are stripped automatically.
Draw the starting order at random, or keep the order you typed if the ladder already exists.
Set how far up a player may challenge, and whether a winner swaps rungs or takes the rung with everyone between moving down.
Generate a round of challenges, then record each result to move the ladder on.
Tick Remember if you want the ladder to still be here next week.

Understanding the controls

Players: One per rung, top of the ladder first. If you paste a printed ladder complete with "1.", "2)" and so on, the numbers are stripped. Two players with the same name are numbered, because a ladder cannot have one person on two rungs.
Starting order: Draw at random for a brand-new ladder, which is the fairest opening when nobody has a record yet. Keep the entered order when you are carrying an existing ladder over — including one this tool produced last week.
Challenge reach: How many rungs above themselves a player may challenge. One makes the ladder slow and very stable; four or five let a strong newcomer climb quickly but mean the top players are challenged constantly. Three is the usual club compromise.
Movement rule: The rule clubs argue about. Swap exchanges the two players' rungs and moves nobody else. Shift gives the winner the loser's rung and moves the loser and everyone between them down one — the traditional squash ladder rule. Over a season they produce noticeably different ladders.
Remember this ladder: Keeps the ladder in this browser between visits so you do not retype the club every week. Off by default, stored on this device only, and the Forget button deletes it.

Worked examples

Swap versus shift over one result: On a ladder of Sam, Alex, Jo, Kim, Lee, Kim beats Alex from rung 4. Swap gives Sam, Kim, Jo, Alex, Lee. Shift gives Sam, Kim, Alex, Jo, Lee — Jo drops a rung without playing.
A full round: A twelve-player ladder at reach 1 produces six matches and nobody sits out. At reach 3 the pairings vary week to week, so the same two players do not meet every time.
Climbing from the bottom: On a ten-player ladder at reach 2, a player winning every challenge reaches rung 1 in five weeks. At reach 1 it takes nine.
A defended challenge: The defender wins, the ladder does not move, and the tool says so explicitly rather than reprinting an unchanged list.

Common use cases

A squash, tennis or badminton club ladder run over a season
A table tennis or pool ladder in an office or common room
A chess club wanting a rolling order rather than a rated tournament
A coach ranking a squad for selection across a term
Any club where a full fixture list is more organisation than anyone has time for

How this generator works

A ladder is a permutation — an ordering in which every player appears exactly once — and every operation here has to preserve that. Drawing a round is a matching problem rather than a shuffle: choosing challenges at random and discarding the ones that clash leaves players idle who could have played, so the tool walks the ladder from the bottom upwards and gives each still-free player a randomly chosen opponent from those they are allowed to reach who is also still free. Working bottom-up matters, because the players with the fewest available opponents sit at the top of a challenger's reach, and serving the most constrained first is what keeps the round full. Applying a result is then either a swap of two entries or a removal and reinsertion — the winner is taken out of the list and put back at the defender's rung, which is what shifts everyone between them down by exactly one.

Randomness and fairness

Two things are random and nothing else is. The opening draw uses the browser's cryptographic random number generator to order players when you have no existing ladder, and the weekly round picks between equally legal opponents so the same fixtures do not recur. Everything after that is deterministic: given a challenge and a result, where every player ends up is fixed by the movement rule. Entering a seed switches the draw to a reproducible, non-cryptographic generator so you can show the club the same starting order twice — that mode is deliberately not cryptographically secure, because anyone who knows the seed can reproduce the draw, which is the whole point of it. Nothing on this page is security-sensitive either way.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

The first name you paste is the top of the ladder, not the bottom.
A challenge is always issued upwards; there is no rule here for a higher player challenging down.
Every challenge in a generated round is actually played before the next round is drawn.

Limitations and good to know

It does not track who has played whom, so at a wide reach the same pairing can come up in consecutive weeks. Reach 1 or 2 largely avoids this on its own.
There is no concept of a declined or unplayed challenge, which most club rules punish in some way. Decide that yourself and re-record the result as a win for whoever the rules favour.
Scores are not stored, only outcomes. If your ladder needs a points table as well, keep that in the league table generator alongside it.
Nobody is ever forced to play. A player who is never challenged and never challenges will sit on the same rung all season, which is the ladder format's real weakness and the reason box leagues exist.
The ladder is stored in one browser only. Clearing your site data, switching device or using private browsing loses it, and there is no account to sync it to.

Common mistakes

Setting the reach so wide the ladder churns every week: At reach 5 a good player can cross most of a small ladder in two results and the order stops meaning anything. Two or three keeps movement real without making the standings noise.
Choosing swap because it sounds fairer, without checking what the club wants: Swap punishes only the loser; shift demotes everyone the winner jumped. Shift is the traditional rule and makes the middle of the ladder much more mobile. Decide it before the season, not after the first disputed result.
Retyping the ladder from memory each week: Tick Remember, or paste last week's printed ladder and choose to keep the entered order. Retyping is how a player quietly disappears from a ladder.
Letting the bottom of the ladder go unplayed for weeks: Generate a full round rather than waiting for challenges to be issued. If the bottom half still never plays, the ladder has outgrown the format and a box league will serve them better.

Practical tips

Print the round rather than the ladder — players need to know who they are playing, and the ladder they can check afterwards.
Run a fixed challenge round each week instead of leaving challenges to be issued; it is the single biggest thing that stops a club ladder going stale.
Once you are past about twenty-five players, look at a box league. A ladder that long leaves the bottom third without a meaningful game.

Troubleshooting

A player is missing from the ladder: They were probably a duplicate name that got numbered, or lost when the list was retyped. Paste the full list again and keep the entered order — the tool checks that every player appears exactly once.
The saved ladder did not come back: Saved ladders live in one browser on one device, and private browsing or clearing site data removes them. A stored ladder from an older version of the tool is discarded rather than half-read, because a season that comes back subtly wrong is worse than one that has to be retyped.
The same two players keep being drawn together: At reach 1 there is often only one legal opponent, so this is the rules rather than the draw. Widen the reach to two or three and the pairings vary.

Privacy and your data

Your players' names stay in this browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing goes into the page address, and the site has no endpoint that could receive them. Ticking Remember stores the ladder in this browser's own storage and nowhere else — it is off unless you turn it on, and the Forget button removes it completely. Analytics sees that the tool was used and how many players were on the ladder, never a name.

Frequently asked questions

Should a winner swap rungs or should everyone in between move down?: Both are real rules. Swapping exchanges the two players and affects nobody else. Shifting — the traditional squash ladder rule — gives the winner the rung they challenged and pushes the loser and everyone between down one. Shifting makes the ladder much more mobile, because a single win past four rungs demotes four people. Pick one, write it in the club rules, and do not change it mid-season.
How far should players be allowed to challenge?: Three rungs is the common club setting. One rung makes the ladder very stable and very slow, which frustrates a strong newcomer stuck at the bottom. Five lets somebody cross a small ladder in a couple of weeks and leaves the top players defending constantly.
Does the ladder survive closing the tab?: Only if you tick Remember, and then only in that browser on that device. Nothing is stored on a server. The Forget button deletes it, and so does clearing your site data.
What happens if someone refuses a challenge?: That is a club rules question and the tool deliberately does not decide it. Most ladders treat a refusal as a loss for the player who refused; record the result that way and the ladder moves accordingly.
Can I use this for chess or darts?: Yes — nothing here is specific to a racket sport. Any club where players of mixed standard want a rolling order works the same way. Chess clubs in particular often run a ladder alongside rated play.
What is the difference between this and a box league?: A ladder is one long order and you challenge upwards. A box league splits everyone into groups of four or five who all play each other, then promotes and relegates between the groups. The ladder is simpler; the box league guarantees everybody a full card of matches, which is why big clubs use it.