[Brian Swartz]

Sounds like good progress! FYI he can still enter tournaments up until the end of the calendar year in which he turns 18, not just until the birthdate. In other words, if he turns 18 in the spring, he can still participate until the end of the year. Whether it's a good idea for him to do that or not is another matter and will depend on the player.

In considering my players the last few days, I've come to a decision which I'll mention now partly because it provides a good opportunity to mention some research that goes along with it, as it may be useful to the others who have decided to join other game worlds.

Current ages of my players, as I type this:

Anil Manohar -- 35 years, 45 weeks
Anil Mehul -- 22 years, 30 weeks
Amrik Chittoor -- 21 years, 35 weeks
Girish Girsh -- 19 years, 24 weeks

Obviously Mehul-Chittoor-Girsh are bunched very closely together. In about three years game time, Mehul+Girsh will be a very potent combo, but what of the next generation? There is one other quality young player, which another manager snatched up before I could get to them -- Shreya Ujjaval, presently 15 years old. I can't depend on him for a number of reasons -- the manager may keep them out of the WTC(though this is unwise, more on this in a moment) and they are presently being poorly managed, entered in tournaments Ujjaval isn't ready for yet. Should still probably become a Top 100 player but not much more. Ujjaval has a bit above-average mental toughness, good but not great athlete similar to Mehul, and excellent but not elite in terms of durability. Definitely has an elite feel for the game, a little better than even any of my current players. So I wish I'd have been able to grab him, but it didn't happen.

In terms of getting a next-generation player myself, the question is timing. At the end of this year a newcomer would be 5 years, maybe a bit more, younger than Girsh. I don't really want to go any more than that, otherwhise it's too big of a gap to have two players close to their prime. Also, with Manohar having about four years left before he becomes a trainer, that's nearly a perfect window for having the new player be ready for a trainer about the time he's ready to start doing that job, and then there would be another decent gap there with that same four years back to another youngster -- it just seems like the right time. It will hurt Sri Lanka a bit in the WTC since I won't be able to control Chittoor's readiness or training anymore at that point, though he'll still be playing for us until he is surpassed by Girsh in the rankings. That's one reason why I want to wait until the end of the year, so that I can have some control over what happens in the WTC Promotion Playoff.

All of that leads into me really wanting to pool all the knowledge I've acquired about how to train players well, since with the next youngster getting training assistance I'll be able to get them closer to their maximum potential. I took a look at the experience my players were getting from different kinds of matches, and came up with some numbers.

** Doubled tire out a player less, but give less experience as well, ending up at the same basic ratios so doubles/singles is not a consideration.

** Having close matches is important. In all categories, any match in which both players win at least 40% of the points gives the full amount of experience. If there is a greater split than that(i.e. 70-30 or whatever) a sliding scale diminishes the amount a player learns from it.

Practice Tournaments -- I used these as the baseline. They certainly are and should be the most common for players coming up. So I gave this baseline a 100% score. 250-level events train at the same rate. Experience is given based on points played in all cases.

Friendly Matches -- The court of last resort as I've mentioned previously when practice/regular tournaments don't use up all of a player's energy for a week. These only tire a player out at two-thirds the standard rate, but unfortunately they only provide one-third of the experience for a 50% overall training efficiency. Worse, once a player reaches about the Top 50 as Mehul has, it becomes more difficult to find a quality opponent for these. Lower-level friendly match partners are often drawn, resulting in even worse efficiency as they are often blowout matches. This underlines the importance of ...

Training Sessions -- These are not matches per se, all that you get is experience gained and fatigue used. I'm still checking on these by looking at high-level players in my game world, but from what I'm seeing so far as a rough guideline, a good(4.0) trainer gives about 65% of a good practice match on average, with an elite(5.0) trainer at about 80-85%. I don't think it is possible to have a trainer over 5.0, as I've seen several at that level but none above it. I've spotted trainers as low as 3.1, but this is rare. After all even a career journeyman-at-best like Manohar now sits at what would be a 3.9, and I'm still working on him.

Amateurs/Low Juniors(JG1-JG5) -- These are strange, and present a mystery. Most are just below a practice match at a 93% score, but some of them gave less experience at 81% and I couldn't figure out why. There didn't seem to be a pattern between them, my only guess is that the lower-yield ones had really high levels of double faults. Regardless, in terms of gaining experience and getting better, a junior player will do better in practice tournaments than actual junior events. So unless they are a junior-focused players playing in the big tournaments, they should only be playing enough to keep form decent.

Futures/Challengers/500s/Qualifying/WTF Round Robin -- Don't ask me why the 500s were lumped in here, it's probably an unresolved bug. Anyway, any matches from these events all came in at the 93% rate. The round-robin matches from the elite World Tour Finals is even more of a head-scratcher, but it seems the game treats them as qualifying. All qualifying(Grand Slam on all the way down) is treated the same in terms of efficiency of training from the experience.

Masters Series/WTF SF and F/JGA -- Here's where it starts getting better. Once a player can compete at this level they gain 140% of the experience an identical practice tournament match would produce.

Grand Slam/WTC/JTC/JGS -- The world team events, professional and junior, and the slams at both levels are as one would expect them to be the pinnacle here. These produce 185% of the per-point experience, and when you add in the fact that at the pro level they are best-of-5 not best-of-3 sets, putting in competitive matches in these prestigious tournaments can really rack up the experience. In a situation such as my game world is in with a number of top players and a lot of late-round Slam matches going the distance, the top competitors are essentially constantly pushing each other to get just that little bit better.

At this point I think I've learned about 95% of what I can learn in terms of training players up better, and I'm ready to hit the ground running with the next stud. I hope.