Rankings System for Sports

[Anon]

I am trying to set up a fairly simple PHP/mySQL app that basically takes player names, and their associated points from a mySQL table and lists them as "ranked" based on how many points they have. Where I need help in is the actual rankings. I can certainly list the names from the one with most to least points, but how do I add a "rank" field that ranks the player from #1 down based on the number of points they have (which will change as they earn more points) ... and this rank field must also handle when there are players with the same amount of points by ranking them at the same rank number, yet skipping ahead for the next rank number. .... confusing?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[rrijnders]

Why don't you just rank them as you output the results of your db query? Straight forward programming:

$rank = 0;
$last_points='';
while ($data=get_row_from_db):
&nbsp;&nbsp;if($data->points<>$last_points) {
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$rank++;
&nbsp;&nbsp;}
&nbsp;&nbsp;// output your data with rank
endwhile:

-- Rich