DUPR Reset - A Postmortem
It's been a month since the DUPR reset, so we have a full month of post-reset data to analyze.
I looked at each match played by the people who got the reset ("Resetters") going back to the start of 2025. Using DUPR's formula, I calculated the expected score in each match, and then I looked at their actual scores.
According to DUPR, a 1% point differential corresponds to ~0.05 DUPR (note: ~0.08 for rally scored games; I normalized everything to standard scoring for this analysis).
I'll be using terms like "overperforming" and "underrated" for when actuals are higher than expected, but keep in mind, it's just that actuals are higher than DUPR expected. An underrated player will consistently overperform, but there are other ways that can happen. It could simply be because a player practiced. I am not attempting to tease those situations apart in this analysis.
The Resetters care about their DUPR a lot, and are essentially betting money that they are underrated. In aggregate, this population is almost certainly practicing/improving more than their opponents. Even if DUPR were a perfect rating system, and none of the Resetters were underrated (i.e. they're all delusional), we should see this group beating expectations consistently from improvement alone.
The Resetters were consistently overperforming expectations by around 0.05 DUPR. On the day of the reset, their ratings increased (avg increase ~0.14), and in the month of June they're now losing more than their new ratings would predict.
Some players didn't gain much rating during the reset, and others gained a lot (as much as 1.2 -- although this player and many others who gained more than 0.5 were just cheating - They bought the reset for the "you can't lose rating" clause, and then went on generational losing streaks (like dozens of games) to the same opponents to try to boost them up. DUPR if you want to ban some people, I wrote software to identify players who wintrade like this.)
Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, looking at this by cohort. There's a cohort of players who gained almost nothing. These people underperformed during the reset window and didn't get much rating boost on reset day. Here's what their chart looks like (note this is about 40% of the Resetters):
That leaves the people who gained 0.1 or more, the top ~60% of Resetters:
The Resetters consistently beating expectations until May 2026 is easy to explain by the Resetters simply practicing/improving more than average. DUPR might be perfectly accurate; we just identified a group of tryhards. That same group of people suddenly underperforming in tens of thousands of games for a whole month is much harder to explain if the reset gave people accurate ratings.
By the way: This chart lines up with my anecdotal experience. The Resetters I know were underrated at the start. During the reset they played a bunch of ranked games, and their rating went up to match their play. Then they got another big bump on 6/1 and now they're overrated.
I have much longer analysis in the works about how the DUPR scale has changed over time and also comparing DUPR ratings across the country. I'm trying to psyche myself up to write them, but it's a lot of work.