Battles, Ranks and the weekly leagues

This guide explains battles, your rating, Ranks and the weekly leagues. After it, you can start a battle, know what counts and earn league points on purpose. Prices are live; the money is paper cash, practice money with no real value.

What is a battle?

A battle is a timed paper trading match against one rival. In the app's words: "Same market, same paper stake. Best return wins."

Both sides get the same pot of paper money, the stake. The app picks it: $1,000 to $10,000 on memecoins, $10,000 to $100,000 on other markets. Your own paper account is not used.

Memecoin battles trade memecoins, crypto coins tied to a meme or theme, on the Solana network. Crypto, Stocks and Forex battles trade perps, short for perpetual contracts: contracts that follow a price with no end date. A long gains if the price rises; a short gains if it falls. What a long holds and what a short owes, in section 6 of the Crypto road, explains both. It opens once your road gets there.

Battles take market orders only: orders that fill at once at the going price. Perps in a battle use isolated margin: each position risks only its margin, the cash you put behind it. Paper trading perps: leverage, margin and funding goes deeper.

During a battle, trade from the ticket on the right of the battle screen, or tap Trade in battle on a phone. On a computer, coin and perp orders go to the battle until it ends. Until then, you cannot close your own coin and perp positions. Stocks and Forex tab trades stay in your account.

How to start a battle

1. Open Battles: in the sidebar on a computer, or in the dock on a phone, the tab row at the bottom.
2. Pick Rated or Casual. Rated games move your battle rating, a score explained below; casual ones never do.
3. Pick the market (Memecoins, Crypto, Stocks or Forex) and the length (10m, 30m, 1h, 4h or 24h). Casual adds a win condition: Most PnL (profit and loss), First to $1k or First to $5k.
4. Press Play Trencher to play the Trencher, the lessons' teacher, as an AI at your rating. Rated also offers Find a player, a person near your rating, and Invite a friend: press Copy link and send it.

For a rated game, the setup's Win and Lose show how many rating points a win adds or a loss takes.

On a phone, pick Trencher, Friend or Anyone under Play against, then tap the button under the cards, such as Play Trencher. For the Trencher or Anyone, set the Market and Duration on the next screen; Game type, Rated or Casual, is under More options. Then tap Start.

When Find a player makes a match, you both press Ready within 12 seconds. If nobody near your rating answers in 45 seconds, the Trencher steps in.

What counts, and who wins?

At the bell, when time runs out, the side with more P&L (PnL on the button) wins. In a First to game, the first side to make $1,000 or $5,000 of paper profit wins.

In a rated game, keep about 5 percent of the stake in trades through the whole game, or the first hour of a longer one. The Qualifying bar under Battle balance tracks it (the activity bar on a phone).

Say your stake is $10,000 in a 30 minute battle. Five percent is $500, so keep about $500 in open positions for the 30 minutes. For a perp, its margin is what counts. Opening and closing at once may not count: the hold is measured over time.

If only one side holds enough, that side wins. If neither does, nothing is rated. Leaving the screen does not stop the clock. If your phone or computer does not send the result in time, a rated game counts as a loss.

The result shows who won, by how much and your rating change. Its key moments show your trades on the chart. The review grade, a letter from A to D, rates how you traded, not who won. Under it:

• Rematch plays the Trencher again on the same market and length. Against a person, it reads Play again.
• Full review is a step by step report. Free accounts see the summary and the first highlight; Elite, the paid membership, sees them all.

Winning does not prove you traded well, and losing does not prove you traded badly.

Finished battles go to Recent on the Battles page, or Match history on a phone.

How your rating and class move

Your battle rating starts at 500 and tops out at 2,800. It moves like a chess rating: beat a stronger rival and you gain more; lose to a weaker one and you drop more.

Length counts too. Say you are new and beat the Trencher, who plays at your rating, in a 1 hour rated battle. That adds about 16 rating points. A 10 minute battle counts a sixth as much (about 3), and a 24 hour one twice as much.

Closed paper trades outside battles can move your rating too, at most 10 rating points up or down a day.

Daily limits reset at 00:00 UTC, the world's standard clock:

• Battles add at most 40 rating points a day and take at most 40.
• 3 rated Trencher results a day count. After that, Play Trencher says Not rated today.
• 10m and 30m games, the sprints, share 3 rated results a day. After that, a rated game needs 1h or longer.

You are Unranked until your first rated battle where you trade enough. Then your class shows, your named step on the ladder. Each starts at the rating shown: Rookie 500, Scout 650, Trencher 800, Grinder 1,200, Sniper 1,400, Shark 1,600, Operator 1,900, Whale 2,200 and Legend 2,500. Trencher here is a class, not your AI rival.

Ranks: where you stand

On a computer, Ranks in the sidebar has four views: Leaderboard, Ladder, Leagues and Cups.

• Leaderboard has three boards: Profits, Battles and Streak. Profits ranks paper P&L over 1D, 1W or 1M, by Total, Realized (closed trades) or Unrealized (open positions). Battles ranks battle ratings, and Streak current day streaks: days in a row with a finished level or review.
• Ladder shows your class, rating and the points to the next class, then all nine classes.

On a phone, Ranks in the dock opens Coach, Leaderboard and Cups. Coach is Toro, the AI coach. The Leaderboard has the same boards, your own place pinned. Your class and rating sit at the top of the Battles screen.

How do the weekly leagues work?

A league is a weekly points table, from Monday 00:00 UTC to the next Monday. Find it under Ranks: Leagues on a computer, or Cups, then Weekly League on a phone.

The eight leagues are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Jade, Ruby, Topaz, Diamond and Emerald, and everyone starts in Bronze. Your first points of the week seat you in a group of up to 30 real players from your league.

When the week closes, the top 7 of a full group move up with at least 50 points. The bottom 5 move down, and smaller groups move fewer.

League points:

• 20 for each new level on the road, the Academy's path of lessons, up to 25 levels a day
• 20 for each new lesson in the Library, the app's books
• 15 for each daily quest (a small daily task) and 40 for the weekly quest, Learning week, when you claim its chest
• 8 for a paper trade closed in profit, minus 3 for a close at a loss
• minus 10 for a liquidation: a position closed because its losses used up its margin

Trades add at most 50 points a day and take at most 20. A $10 trade scores the same as a $10,000 one, and your week never drops below zero.

To earn points on purpose, learn first. Say you finish 3 new road levels and claim 2 daily quest chests. That is 60 plus 30, or 90 points, past the 50 that moving up needs. Your place in the group decides the rest.

Easy to mix up: your class and your league. Your class comes from your battle rating. Your league comes from weekly points, which never change your rating.

The Pro Cup, under Cups, is the weekly race for Elite members.