Jeremy "Case" Rusnak's multiplayer game ranking system, Case's Ladder, announced that 75,000 "active game players" are using the system.

　　Rusnak started the ladder back in 1996 as a way to rank players across the various online gaming services that were then cropping up. The field has only become more crowded with such services in the past few years, and it's even easier to see the value of such a ranking system - one that allows players from different game services to gather and challenge one another, then ranks them according to the result of that match.

　　When players join the ladder, they start at the bottom. By challenging other players on the ladder, playing them over a service supported by Case's system, and defeating them, players move up the ladder half the distance between their own position and the player they challenged.

　　An active player, as far as Case's Ladder is concerned, is one that has logged into the service and reported a match at least once within the past three weeks. That prevents people from "camping" at the top of the list.

　　According to Case's Ladder's CEO, Frank Westall, it was the addition of classic games - checkers, chess, and card games - that has propelled the service to the 75,000-user level. "Six months ago, we had only 10,000 members," he said. "We decided to add the classic games such as chess, spades, checkers, and hearts. We found... players on the Internet playing with services such as Microsoft's IGZ and Yahoo!Games that were looking for ways to test their mettle."

　　Case's Ladder currently hosts more than 160 "Ladder leagues" and supports games played over the Internet Gaming Zone, Mplayer, TEN, Kali, and Yahoo!Games. The service, which is free to use and is supported by publisher and hardware company sponsorship, plans to add an additional 200 challenge ladders and support for additional gaming services by the end of the year.