If one purely meant fairer in the sense of reward for who you have to beat / how difficult it is to earn points, I'd probably say the women's is fairer.

However, I actually prefer the men's. It gives the chance of the base that mikeyp talked about in futures that say Dan Cox and Josh Milton built, before presumably trying to time their more continual move to challengers when that base was good enough to let them have a reasonable run of challengers.

To me, to then at least reasonably hold your position longer term at challenger level you need to be getting through a couple of rounds every so often.  Jamie has shown what happens when you get stuck at the 2nd round stage ( his ranking slumped ) and how he is now progressing with breaking that barrier a few times, backed up by going back for some future points. 

I have no real problem at all with future titles and finals maybe "overrewarding" folk, as it gives that base, and longer term at least challengers will always be the aim, with long term just playing futures not really viable.   If futures didn't "overreward" it would make it more difficult to move from futures to challengers and  take longer to build back your base if you have difficulties at challenger level.  To me, you actually do want the reward vs difficulty level to be higher at the lower level to aid movement from one level to the next. 

I think it works pretty well, and again as mikeyp indicates, if you can then first get good enough to hold that challenger position then get better and win titles / reach finals of challengers, there is probably a similar conundrum that hits you as you get to the cusp of being a good challenger / aspiring ATP tour player.  You can get good challenger points, but ultimately you want that just to be your base for moving to ATP level.

I think it works pretty well on the men's side, and let's players come through the stages as their abilty improves.  Clearly the best players can and do come through the women's side too, just I see nothing wrong in "helping" this ( indeed it being a distinct positive ) by being relatively generous to lower ranking tournaments ( I must admit I've not really followed through how their points in "challengers" against tour level compares with the  men )

The women's side actually in general would be better all round if they maybe maintained their early round points, but upped the later round points. As has been discussed before, some of us think they generally have a far too linear points reward tructure within tournaments.  This has been discussed before, but by more rewarding winners / finalists, it would then also help the overlap the men have in being relatively more rewarding to good players at lower levels.

Essay over   

Steven, while I really like to see the Akhenaten rankings, and the latest ones have generally yet again confirmed my and probably others' thoughts as to who the official rankings "overrank" and "underrank" based on who they have beaten and lost to.

But I must ask would such a rankings system ( or similar ) be really practical and / or popular ?  Players would be going into tournaments, yes playing for the titles and the prizemoney,  but also having no idea how their ranking would be adjusted by their week's work, dependant as it would be on the rankings of the opponents you faced.

Think about leading into a slam entry date, you kinda know what you have to achieve in the last week or two to get to a cut-off point.  Here it would be so much up in the air, you could win a tournament but if it opened up and you mostly beat very lowly ranked players it wouldn't adjust your ranking as much as you would hope.

And it would not be a transparent easily understood system for the fans ( nor I suggest the players too ).  A couple of years ago the ATP simplified the rankings points ( arguably doing a good job of it or not ), but Akhenaten type rankings wouild just totally reverse any idea of simplificatiopn. for this fairness idealism. I suggest it would not be a popular change, people like clarity.  Fans, like on this site, would not be able to follow/ anticipate the following week's rankings as they currently do. Basically players and fans would be fairly in the dark until the computer did its work each week.

Sorry, to me you need a clear points system. One slam title awards the same as another, one 10K future the same as another, etc and the ranking reward is clear.  Yes, it doesn't work out "fair"or rather equitable most of the time from tournament to tournament in who players have to beat, and the points themselves could maybe be rejigged a bit, but I think you are seeking too ideal a fair / level playing field that asks too much.  Life is not fair, the tennis rankings are arguably not really fair in quite a nuimber of instances, but it works out pretty well in my opinion.

"Fairness" may come fom an Akhenaten type system based on the opponents you faced, but hopefully that will never come to be for official rankings, and I don't imagine it will.

Hard luck Alex 

When you look at some of Alex's results and performances there really does seem the potential to be seriously moving up te brankings.  Now that can undoubtably be said of many players, I just hope Alex is one that can move up significantly.