How the PvP ladder works in Polandball Go

Most Polandball Go battles are fought on the PvP ladder, and every win rate on this site comes from it. This guide goes through the two leagues, the tiers and divisions, how a battle gets decided, what a win pays, and what that means when you're reading the stats.

Two leagues

There are two separate competitions, the Open League and the Rarity League, and each has its own standings. Every battle belongs to exactly one of them.

The tier names are the same in both, but the players aren't. Crystal in Open and Crystal in Rarity are different groups of people. That's why the league switch is the first control on every page that has one.

Rarity brackets

The Rarity League plays one rarity a day: Common on Sunday, Uncommon on Monday, Rare on Tuesday and Epic on Wednesday. Each day starts at the game's reset, 00:00 UTC, which is 8 PM US Eastern in summer and 7 PM in winter. The ladder closes Thursday at the reset and the new week starts Sunday at the reset.

On this site you can look at one bracket on its own or all of them together. All together is useful for questions about the league as a whole, but it compares balls that never meet. A Rarity battle with a legendary or mythical ball in it has no bracket. It counts toward the Rarity League overall and toward none of the four.

Seven tiers, four divisions each

There are seven tiers. From the bottom: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Crystal, Aurora and Ethereal. Each one has four divisions, from division IV at the bottom to division I at the top.

The ladder settles every week. Division I of each tier goes up to the tier above, and division IV drops to the tier below. A player's rank history keeps every settled week: tier, division, rank and points, and whether they went up, held or went down. The game also tracks each player's career best in each league.

It's a very bottom-heavy ladder. Most players are in Bronze and only a small number make it to Ethereal, so the higher the tier, the fewer battles get fought there.

How a battle is won

Since October 1, a ladder battle is a round-based duel. Each side brings 5 balls, and the first side to KO 3 wins. If neither side gets there after 24 rounds, whoever has more HP left wins. The PvP Duels guide has the moves and the round order.

The attacker picks an opponent, and the defending side is played by the game's bot. Attackers win a lot more often than defenders, and ladder points move with the result.

Since late September 2026 the game records each ball's level, CP, orb upgrades, skin and item exactly as they were in the battle. Older battles use the owner's roster as it stood when we read it.

Ladder points

A win pays more when your opponent has more points than you, and less when they have fewer.

Wins in a row add a bonus on top. Every win also moves you up, so an opponent who was level with you is soon below you and pays less.

Reading ladder stats

Everything on this site is split by league and tier, and a ball counts at the tier of the side it fought for. If someone in Ethereal attacks you, your defending balls count at your tier, not theirs.

• Attacking and defending are counted separately, then averaged with equal weight. Pool them together and the number mostly tells you how often something attacks.
• High elo means Crystal and up: Crystal, Aurora and Ethereal. A strict top 5% would land somewhere inside Diamond, and splitting a tier in half doesn't hold up when division I goes up and division IV goes down every week.
• A win rate is the record of the teams a ball was on, since the feed only reports which side won. That pulls every win rate toward 50%, and the average across everything is always exactly 50%.
• A row gets ranked once its win rate is known to within ten points either way. Anything thinner is grayed out below the rest, and tiers with very few battles are flagged as thin.
• Tier list letters compare against the rest of that list. They aren't a fixed score. An S is well above that pool's average, whatever the average happens to be.

Where to look next

• The leaderboard shows the PvP ladder. Each player's profile has their rank history and battles.
• Tiers compared shows how many players are in each tier and what each one plays.
• Recent battles lists the latest ladder battles: who attacked who, who won and how many points moved.
• The tier list and stats pages can be set to any league, bracket and tier.
• The type matchups guide explains how types raise or lower damage in a duel.