Just another thought:
If the standard view of the Players list would be static (say generated once a day) wouldn't that speed it up a lot? That page should be able to load immediately.
An information refresh of once a day will meet most of our needs I'd say. For everything else - actual information, or differently sorted - a user could always click away from the standard page at the cost of a slower load.

Yeah the player list does load a bit slow as the number of players grows.
Three options...

- Purge players who sign up but never play a game. (greatest speed improvement)
- Change the player list to only show players who have played a game. (moderate speed improvement)
- Remove some of the columns from the player list. (speed improvement at the cost of some information)