Sportsmanship & the Best Sportsman award
After every confirmed game you can rate your opponent from one to five stars. It's a single judgement of the experience of sharing the table — fair play, a good attitude, turning up on time — not how good they are at the game or whether you won.
Ratings are private. The score you give an opponent is never shown to them, and no player ever sees a rating they received — not from any single opponent, not even their own average. Only the organizer can read the scores. The one time they surface is the Best Sportsman award at the end of the season, which reveals a single winner.
The star scale
Most games are a three or better — a fair, pleasant game is the norm, not something to mark down. Only reach for one or two stars when something actually went wrong.
The opponent you'd cross town for. Welcoming, fair, and fun win or lose — they made the evening better.
Relaxed and easy to play. Good chat, generous with the rules, no friction.
A normal, fair game. Turned up on time, played it straight, no complaints. This is the everyday game.
Something dragged it down — showed up late, checked out halfway, or a tense, grudging table.
A genuinely bad experience: rules-lawyering, a bad attitude, or a no-show. Reach for this sparingly.
Rating is optional and you can change your mind — tap the stars again to raise or lower it, or tap your current rating a second time to clear it entirely.
How the award is worked out
Best Sportsman is decided automatically — nobody votes. Each player's rating is their average across every game they were rated in, and the highest average wins. When two players tie on average, the one with more ratings behind that average edges ahead, since a score built from more games is the surer signal.
The organizer settles it at the end of the season by finalizing the award, which reveals the winner as an engraved relic on the Awards page. Up to that moment the standings never hint at it.
See Awards for how the other season honours work.