Leaderboard (from the English leaderboard, literally "board of leaders") is a sorted list of participants in which a position is determined by a numerical indicator: a rating, points, the number of wins, completion time, or another metric. The best are at the top, the rest are below. In essence, it is a showcase on which the community sees who is currently strongest by the chosen criterion.
Where it appears
In esports and games, the word is used in several senses:
- Rating platforms. Third-party matchmaking services (services that match players into a game) show a table with the best players of a region or of the whole world, sorted by rating, for example by ELO. ELO is a system for assessing a player's strength in which the rating rises for wins and falls for losses.
- In-game tables. In games with a seasonal rating, there is a list of the best players of the season. Getting onto it is a separate goal for those who play at the highest level.
- Tournament tables. In leagues and qualifying stages, the term leaderboard refers to a points table used to determine who advances.
- Team rankings. There are lists that rank professional teams by the results of their performances.
How to read a leaderboard
The phrase "he's at the top of the leaderboard" tells you about relative standing, but does not explain the reasons for it. A position depends on how it is calculated: some tables take only rating into account, others require a minimum number of matches played, and still others reset every season. For this reason, comparing places across different tables is not valid: a rating on one platform is not equal to a rating on another.
There are also peculiarities of the competition itself. When players of roughly the same level are at the top, a difference of tens of points may be explained by a streak of lucky matches, the lineup of teammates, or the number of games played, rather than by a real gap in skill. So a leaderboard shows the overall picture well, but is poorly suited to arguments about who is stronger when the values are close.
Example of usage
"He climbed into the top 100 of the regional leaderboard" is said about a player who has entered the hundred best by rating on a platform. "The team topped the leaderboard after three rounds" refers to a team that has scored the most points in the group stage.
Origin of the word
The term comes from English-language gaming culture, where, since the days of arcade machines, it was customary to display a table of records with the names of the best players on the screen. In Russian-speaking circles, the word became established without translation, though it is sometimes replaced with "table of leaders" or "top." The word "ladder" is also found alongside it; this is what a tournament or rating ladder is called, where players move up by winning.