How the league works: placement, divisions and LP

One global league, one number

Everyone on League of Keyboards climbs the same ladder. There are no regional ladders and no separate ladders per language: your place is a single number, your LP (League Points), and it moves only when you play ranked 1v1 matches.

Ranked matches always use English text and always last 30 seconds. That is a deliberate choice. If every language had its own queue, players would be split into small pools and wait longer for opponents, and LP earned on different texts could not be compared fairly. Every other language stays open in the solo warm-up test on the home page, which gives no LP.

Battle Royale lobbies are for fun and give no LP either. The league is the 1v1 queue.

Placement: your first 10 games

A new account has no league. Placement takes 10 games, and while it runs you neither gain nor lose LP. The goal is to measure your level, not to reward whoever plays the most.

The first three games are a calibration phase where your hidden skill estimate moves quickly, because a single match played before you have warmed up should not define you. The remaining games refine that estimate. League matches count toward placement, and warm-up tests in English help tune it as well, although they never give LP.

When placement ends, you are given a starting LP based on the measured level, set slightly below what that level would justify. The gap is intentional: it leaves room to climb in your first weeks instead of placing you at your ceiling on day one.

Nine leagues, four divisions each

The ladder has nine leagues. League names are the same in every language. The first seven are 400 LP wide and split into four divisions of 100 LP, numbered from IV at the bottom up to I at the top. The entry thresholds are:

• Initiate: 0 LP
• Scribe: 400 LP
• Striker: 800 LP
• Operator: 1200 LP
• Accelerator: 1600 LP
• Vanguard: 2000 LP
• Keymaster: 2400 LP
• Apex: 2800 LP, plus a top 1000 position
• Legend: 3200 LP, plus a top 500 position

How LP is won and lost

The winner of a match is whoever has the higher match score, a single whole number built from net speed, accuracy, consistency and your longest correct streak. Equal scores are a draw, and a draw changes nobody's LP.

How much LP is at stake depends on the opponent. Before the match, the system estimates each side's chance of winning from their match ratings. Beating someone you were expected to lose to pays more; beating someone you were expected to beat pays less, and losing to them costs more. In an even match against a person, with your LP sitting where your hidden level says it should be, a win is worth 12 LP and a loss costs 12. A match against a ghost runs at half weight, so the same even match moves 6.

Your rating behind the scenes moves with results, not with how far ahead you finished. Winning by one point and winning by a hundred count the same, so slowing down on purpose to keep your rating low does nothing for you.

If you leave a match you are already in, or never send your run, that is a forfeit and costs the full amount, more than an ordinary loss. If your opponent is the one who disappears, you win, at half the normal gain.

Who you play against

The queue looks for a real opponent near your rating. The search starts with a narrow window and widens the longer you wait. If no live opponent shows up within about four seconds, you race a ghost: a recorded run at a level close to yours. Ghosts and bots are always labelled as such on screen, together with the date of the run, and are never presented as live players.

A few fairness rules apply to ranked matches between people. Both accounts must be established, meaning at least 7 days old with 30 clean runs spread over at least 3 different days, or linked to a Google or email account. The same two players can only play a rated match against each other once every 7 days. Against ghosts, any given ghost counts for LP only once. When a rule blocks the rating, the match is still played and shown, and the screen tells you why it was unrated.

Shields, the daily cap and pull toward your level

When you land in a league, either at the end of placement or by promotion, you get three rank shields. A shield absorbs a drop into the league below: you stay at the league floor and spend one shield. Shields do not stop you from falling a division inside the same league.

LP you can gain is capped at 200 per UTC day, roughly two divisions. Losses are not capped. The cap exists so that the ladder measures skill rather than hours spent in the queue.

LP is also pulled toward the level your hidden rating points to. If your LP has drifted above that point, wins pay less and losses cost more; a full league above it, wins stop paying at all. If you are below it, wins pay more. Over time this keeps your league honest in both directions.

Apex and Legend

The top two leagues have limited seats. Reaching 2800 LP is required for Apex but not enough: you also have to be in the top 1000 of the ladder. Legend needs 3200 LP and a top 500 position.

If you cross the threshold while the seats are full, you stay shown as Keymaster I until a seat opens. Your position is simply the number of players with more LP than you, plus one, so players with equal LP share a position.

The league page

The league page shows the ladder: the top 100 placed players by LP, with their league, division and win and loss record, plus your own row even if you are further down. It also shows how many players are in each league, the current season and the days left in it, and your result from last season.

Only placed players with a chosen username appear there. Accounts still in placement have no league yet, so they are not listed until their 10 games are done.

One last distinction: the leaderboard ranks fastest solo runs, while the league page ranks LP. The first asks who is fastest, the second asks who is winning matches.