Points and hurdle

Two functions decide how far a win carries. The points P follow from the LK gap d between winner and loser (your own LK minus the opponent's; positive when you beat someone better). The hurdle H is the number of points a whole step takes at your own LK.

The points curve since Q4 2025

For the 2025/26 winter season the DTB changed the curve. Across the range of comparable LKs the points now rise linearly: 15 points per LK step, 50 points for a win against the same LK. The ceiling no longer sits at 110 but at 125 points for a win against someone six steps better.

Two readings: wins against clearly weaker opponents have lost value (two steps below: 20 points instead of 30). And the big result pays better, because the curve now ends only at a gap of six steps.

The hurdle

From LK 10 upwards the hurdle is simply 10 · (30 − LK). Below that a term is added which grows steeply and comes to exactly 1000 at LK 1.5. That is why the LK feels so stubborn to good players: the same win that brings a whole class at LK 25 moves 0.18 at LK 5.

“Hurdle 200 at LK 13” is wrong

The sentence stands in countless club PDFs and articles. It comes from the DTB's explainer of 2020, which at that point works through a “simplified example” and says in as many words that it assumes 200 points there. That document published no hurdle function at all. Under the function published today the hurdle at LK 13 is 170, at LK 10 it is 200, and the 1000 belongs to LK 1.5, not to LK 1. Whether the function has stood unchanged since 2020 cannot be settled from the public documents; what is certain is that “200 at LK 13” does not hold today.

Older still is the ladder of 150 / 100 / 50 / 30 / 15 / 10 / 5 points. That was the system up to September 2020, with an annual rating. Where a page names 150 points for a win, the rest of it is usually just as out of date.

Source: appendices A.1 and A.2 of the DTB's implementing rules (tennis.de), the announcement of the reform (tennis.de, 29 September 2025).