Tanya, You don't say just what you mean by 'matching' for the various levels -- do you mean a genetic distance of zero, or is it allowing a small genetic distance? My Y-DNA test done in 2009 at FTDNA has a number of perfect matches at the 12 marker level, which I regard as entirely insignificant. At the 25 marker level I have a few, but all at a genetic distance of 2; at the 37 marker level I have exactly 1 'match' but at a genetic distance of 4 (not sure if that is the maximum allowed at this level by FTDNA for it to be considered a match). I have not run across the statement you mention that such a small number of matches (or none at all) is 'quite rare'. John (7338) On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 05:53:39PM +0000, Tanya Kimber wrote: > Hi all > > I’ve just got the Y-DNA results back from FTDNA for my first Ridgeon participant. I know that I now need to do a lot of reading and research myself but wanted to put a question ‘out there’ for comment as I am a bit concerned! > > My participant has been allocated a Haplogroup and has a lot of matches at the 12 marker level, but only 1 at the 25 marker level and none at all at the 37 marker level, which I understand is quite rare. My concern is what this means! I am worried that perhaps this means that the sample wasn’t very good and it has been possible to extract only limited information from it. > > I would be really grateful for any views/knowledge/ideas/comments on this outcome as I guess this may affect where I go next with my study. > > Many thanks. > > Tanya (6296) > > ridgeon@one-name.org