One evening, one table, and no draw at all. Everybody enters on their own, partners rotate every round, and your score is the points your side won rather than a match won or lost. Highest total at the end wins the night. There is nothing to seed, nothing to bye and no play-by dates, because it is all over by half past nine.
Setting one up
A club night is an event inside a tournament, the same as a knockout is: add an event and pick a social night as its shape. From four players to 64, on up to 16 courts, over up to 20 rounds. A singles night needs only three, because two are on court and one is waiting.
Four things to answer and the screen fills in three of them:
- How many courts you have that evening. Four players fill a court, so nine people on four courts play on two of them and one sits.
- How many rounds you mean to play. You are not held to it: deal as many as the evening has time for and stop.
- What a round is played to. It offers your sport’s own number, and a singles round is set lower because two people cover a court four were covering.
- Singles or doubles, which is simply how many are on a court.
Enter everybody who has turned up, press Deal the round, and the courts go up on the screen. Play it, put the scores in, deal the next one.
Three ways to deal it
An americano gives everybody a new partner every round, so you play with everybody before you play with anybody twice. A mexicano deals each round off the table as it stands, so the evening tightens. The top four share a court, first and third against second and fourth, then the next four. The games get closer as the night goes on. Put the round’s scores in and deal the next one; the desk does both on the same screen.
Fixed pairs is the third, and it is the one where nothing rotates: partners stay together all night. Put the pairs on the entry list, or leave it and they are drawn out of the hat.
Who sits, and who turns up late
Somebody has to go home early, or turns up at round three? Take them off or put them on and deal the next round. Nothing is a walkover and nothing is retired, because there is no draw waiting on the result.
Who sits is worked out before the courts are, and deliberately: it spreads the sitting evenly rather than leaving it to whoever the pairings happened not to use. Somebody arriving at round three has partnered nobody and sat out nothing, which is the truth about them, so they go straight on a court.
Scoring a round
Put in what each side got. There is no winner to name and no walkover to record: a round can end level, and 12-12 is a real round with both sides keeping their twelve.
Correcting a score does not re-deal the night. Every round is written down as it was dealt. So a mistake you fix at ten o’clock moves the table, and leaves the courts people actually played exactly where they were.