Account & Dashboard

Group Settings reference

Group Settings help: every setting on the Ratings, Games (Launcher Settings, Game plan), Policy and Sub-Organizers tabs, with its range and effect.

Updated 2026-10-11

Open Group Settings from the dashboard sidebar to tune the active group: its rating rules, score-entry defaults, launcher settings, and public policy text. Settings save only to the active group, so switch groups first if you're not working in the right one.

There are four tabs: Ratings, Games, Policy and Sub-Organizers. Ladder groups also get a Ladder tab for promotion counts and spare rules; it stays hidden on non-ladder groups. The modal opens on the tab you last picked on this device.

Ratings tab

The sections run from how ratings are calculated, to what players see, to decay.

Rating System

Choose the group's dominant rating system. Rank by picks whether standings (and the mixer, when balancing by rating) use the Elo rating or Cumulative points. Elo keeps running in the background either way. When ranking by points, Points are counted as decides how each game adds to a player's or team's running total: Gross points scored, Net differential (points for − against), or Win tally (2 per win, 1 per loss). Ladder groups always rank by Elo, so the section is disabled there.

Rating Calculation

These controls shape the Elo engine for this group. The defaults suit most recreational groups; adjust only when you have a specific reason.

Control Range Default What it does
Default rating 0.01 – 10000 1500 Starting rating for unrated players and teams in calculations
Scale 1 – 10000 400 Spread of the Elo curve; higher = more volatile per game
Base K-Factor scales with Scale (8 – 80 at the default 400) 60 How many points move per game at most; auto-adjusted for doubles
Player placement games 1 – 20 8 Games before a player sheds the "U" (provisional) prefix
Pool placement games 10 – 100 48 Total group games before pool-wide ratings stabilize (2× K applies during this window)
Highest player responsibility 30 % – 70 % 30 % Weight toward the higher-rated player when computing team strength (50 % = fully equal)
Rating method Point margin / Win/loss Point margin Point margin: ratings move by how the score compares with what was expected, so a favorite who only just wins can lose a little. Win/loss: winners always go up and losers always go down; the margin decides by how much. See Rating method

Placement games work at two levels. Player placement tracks an individual: after that many games the "U" prefix disappears and the rating is considered established. Pool placement tracks the whole group: the first N group-wide games run at double K so ratings spread from the shared default quickly; after that, standard K takes over.

The K-Factor range scales with your Scale. K is derived from scale, so its valid bounds move with it: 8–80 at the default scale of 400, but proportionally smaller on a small scale (roughly 0.02–0.2 at scale 1). This lets a DUPR-calibrated group use its correct small K without the value being clamped back up. Click the recommended K-Factor after changing the scale and it lands in range.

Automatic DUPR calibration. You rarely need to touch these settings to run a group on DUPR-style numbers. If a brand-new group with no games yet is seeded entirely in DUPR-style ratings, PickleFriend quietly calibrates the default rating, scale, and K-Factor to match. It reverts to the standard scale if those ratings are later removed. It only does this on the untouched factory defaults: once you save any custom rating settings of your own, automatic calibration never overrides them. See Manual rating adjustments for the full picture.

Team Rating Mode

Available on all groups, but mainly relevant for fixed-partner (team) setups:

Option Effect
Individual ratings (weighted average) Mixing and standings use each player's individual Elo
Team entity ratings Mixing and standings use the team's own Elo, tracked separately

Both individual and team ratings are calculated at all times; this setting controls which drives mixing and the standings display.

Public Visibility

Toggle Enable public ratings page to give your group a shareable link where players can view the standings. Once on, a read-only URL appears beneath the toggle. Leave it off to keep ratings private to you and your sub-organizers.

Once the page has standings, Embed on your club website appears under the link: pick standings or recent results, a theme, rows and how names show, then copy the code into your club's site. See Embed on your club website.

Enable public schedule gives your group a second shareable link: the upcoming events you tick List on the public schedule on, with date, time, location and spots left (never the players), plus its own club-website embed. Turning it on lists nothing by itself: tick each event you want shown, and the embed code appears here after the first one. See Public schedule.

A second toggle appears underneath once the page is public: Show players' DUPR IDs on the public page. With it on, each player's DUPR ID is shown next to their name in game results on the public page, linked to their DUPR profile. It's off by default, and it only affects that page; the export uses the stored IDs either way.

Extra standings columns lets you add per-player stats to the public page (record, win %, point differentials, points for/against, average rating change, current streak), each available for the Session (most recent play session) and the Season (every game). The Rating, Games played and Rating Δ rows at the top switch off columns the page has always shown.

Underneath the matrix, Default sort and Then by choose the order viewers see when they open the page, with the second key breaking ties in the first. Automatic means the rating (or the first column that is still visible). Only columns you have switched on can be picked; untick a column and any sort using it resets to Automatic. Viewers can still re-sort for themselves by clicking a column header (or using the sort menus on the cards), and on a ladder the promotion/relegation markers always follow rating order, whatever you sort by.

Rating Decay

Control Range / options Default
Enable rating decay toggle off
Decay rate per period 0.5 % – 10 % 2 %
Exponential growth toggle on (when decay enabled)

Decay gradually reduces a player's visible rating when they stop playing. The decay rate is the percentage dropped per period (weekly for standard groups; per-cycle for ladders, see Inactivity decay). With Exponential growth on, each consecutive inactive period doubles the rate; off, the same flat percentage applies every period.

Decay affects only the displayed rating; the underlying rating used in game calculations is untouched during the inactive stretch. Playing a game instantly restores a player's displayed rating, and turning decay off immediately restores every player's displayed rating to its true value.

Changing the rate. When decay is on and you save a changed decay rate (or flip Exponential growth), your browser's own OK/Cancel box asks how to apply it. OK applies the new rate to past decays too and recalculates ratings in the background; allow a few minutes. Cancel applies it only from now on; existing ratings are left as they are. Your settings save either way; Cancel doesn't undo the save. On a ladder the recalculation covers every division. Turning decay on or off without changing the rate doesn't prompt.

Reset ratings to defaults and Fixed Partner Preset

Two buttons sit at the bottom of the Ratings tab. Reset ratings to defaults puts Rating System, Rating Calculation, Team Rating Mode and Rating Decay back to the defaults shown above (Elo, point margin, individual ratings, decay off). It leaves Public Visibility, the group timezone and everything on the Games tab as they are. Fixed Partner Preset applies the same defaults, then switches to team ratings with 4 player / 24 pool placement games, which suits fixed-partner (doubles team) groups. Neither saves anything until you press Save Settings.

Games tab

What the mixer starts with when you launch it, what players can do from their phones, and the defaults that pre-fill new events and score entry. The sections run Launcher Settings, Live Mixer, Courts, Scoring Rules, then Time Settings.

Launcher Settings

These are the mix settings the mixer starts with when you launch it from this group's dashboard or an event page. Once launched, they become the group's saved settings, so opening the mixer directly later continues from them. Leave them off and the mixer starts with whatever settings this group used last, on any device.

Use these settings on every launch: the on/off switch. While it's off, everything below it is grayed out and nothing is applied at launch.

Starting settings: the settings for game 1. The row shows the preset's name, a label for where it came from, and a one-line description for built-in presets. Tap Change to open Choose a preset. Your own presets (My Presets) come first, then the built-in presets. One tap applies a preset and closes the list. Your own presets are the ones you saved in the mixer's Custom Presets panel. If they can't load, the built-in presets still work.

The label next to the name tells you where the values came from:

Label Meaning
Built-in One of the mixer's ready-made presets
My preset One of your own saved presets
Saved copy A preset that isn't in your account anymore, for example one you deleted or one a co-organizer saved on their own account. Its values are kept here, so the group mixes exactly as before.
From code Values you pasted from a preset code
(no label) "Custom settings" Values that don't match any preset

(edited) after a name, as in "Ladder (edited)", means the values no longer match that preset. Either you fine-tuned them, or the preset itself has been updated since you picked it. Move the values back to the preset's and the label goes away.

Fine-tune: opens the full set of mixer controls for that one step: the same sliders, switches and selects as in the mixer. Changes there apply only to that step. When a step reads "(edited)", Reset to {preset} puts the preset's values back. Tap a slider's value to type an exact number; the three rating sliders keep tenths below 1 (see Mixer settings).

Picking a preset keeps the step's current Mix Quality unless the preset sets its own (Default and Fast Mode do), the same rule as in the mixer. After you pick Bad Court, a Court list appears next to the name. Use it to choose which of your courts is the bad one. Changing it doesn't mark the step as edited.

Game plan (optional): switch to different settings at later games. For example, play open mixing first, then rating-balanced courts from game 4. Tap + Add a change, pick a preset, then set the game it starts from in the From game box. Closing the list without picking adds nothing.

  • A plan has up to 6 steps, counting game 1, so up to 5 changes.
  • Each change starts at a game from 2 to 99, and no two changes can share a game. If one breaks a rule, you'll see a short error under that row, and Save Settings won't go through until you fix it.
  • Changes are listed in game order. Each has its own Change, Fine-tune and × (remove) controls. Nothing is saved until you press Save Settings.
  • Nonstop Courts nights don't follow the Game plan, because courts there don't share game numbers.

For what the plan looks like on the night (the toasts, the PLAN label and turning it off for one session), see Presets → Launcher Settings in the mixer.

Have a preset code? Paste it: paste a code another organizer sent you (it starts with pmp:1:) to fill the starting settings. The same link at the bottom of Choose a preset fills whichever step you're choosing for. See Sharing presets.

Live Mixer

Player self-service (QR check-in & sit-out requests): off by default. With it on, players scan a QR on the mixer's big screen to check themselves in, add their own name, sit out a round, or check out when they leave, and each mix is shared to their phones automatically. Requests apply at the next mix, never to the round being played. See Player self-service for the full picture.

This is a per-group setting with two synced controls: this checkbox and the mixer's Games Settings → Display checkbox change the same thing, and the last change wins. Because it's saved to the group, it applies on every device and for every sub-organizer; each group keeps its own choice.

Courts

Default courts is the court allocation this group normally plays on. Enter the court names or numbers (1, 3, 5), or just how many you have (4).

It saves you re-typing the same thing in two places:

  • Scheduling an event pre-fills the Courts field with it (still editable per event).
  • The Mixer uses it to set the court count and court names the first time you open the mixer for this group on a device that hasn't chosen its own. It never overrides a court count you've already set on that device, so changing it here won't disturb anyone mid-session.

Leave it blank if your court allocation changes every week.

Scoring Rules

These values pre-populate whenever a score is entered for this group: on the organizer's score modal, on player phones via the remote score link, and in headless mode. Players can change them per-game; this just sets the starting point.

Setting Default Effect
Rally scoring off Every serve scores a point (not just the server's)
Win by two off A game must be won by at least 2 points
Target score 1 – 25, default 11 Score a team must reach to win. Timed-play groups can set this to a typical winning score (e.g. 5 for 8-minute games) so expected scores read on a familiar scale

Time Settings

Timezone sets the timezone used for date display and session boundaries across this group's events and schedule, and it's the zone a new event for this group starts with. The selector covers US & Canada, Europe, Asia & Pacific, and UTC. Choose the timezone where your games actually take place; a mismatch shifts session-boundary displays by the UTC offset of the event's location. (It used to sit on the Ratings tab.)

Typical game duration (10 – 60 min, default 25 min) is how long a close competitive game to 11 points takes your group; beginners might be near 10 minutes, advanced players 25 or more. Always answer for a game to 11, even if your group plays to a different target score or with a time limit; the rating math scales it automatically. It feeds schedule estimates and, more importantly, sets the rating weight of every timed game: a game time (the Time you set for timed games, without any walk-on time) shorter than this value makes those games count proportionally less toward ratings, so a 15-minute clock against a 25-minute typical counts each game 60%. Time a few games before you set it. It does not cap how long a game can actually run.

Policy tab

A free-text field (up to 200,000 characters) for anything you want every player to see: code of conduct, payment terms, weather-cancellation rules, or a full league handbook. Line breaks are preserved as typed; plain text only (HTML is escaped).

Save a policy and two surfaces show it automatically: a Policy tab on the group's public ratings page, and a League Policy button on each event page. Leave the field blank to hide both.

For ladders, the policy is shared across every division; saving it from any division's settings updates the same value for the whole ladder.

Ladder tab

These settings shape how competition and movement work across divisions. The tab is hidden on non-ladder groups.

Ladder Configuration

Setting Range Default What it does
Mode Individual / Team Set at creation, cannot change Whether standings track players or fixed-partner teams
Promote / Relegate N 1 – 20 2 Top N move up, bottom N move down each cycle
Min Games for Eligibility 0+ 3 A player must have at least this many games in the current cycle to be eligible for promotion or relegation

Mode is locked after the ladder is created.

Auto-Invite Scope

Controls which divisions receive automatic invites when a ladder event is published. Auto-invite to lower divisions simultaneously sends invites to a player's official division and all lower divisions at once; Auto-invite to higher divisions simultaneously does the same for all higher divisions. See Auto-invite for how windows and scopes work in practice.

Spare-Up Promotion

What happens to a spare player who plays in a higher division:

Option Effect
Never (default) Sparing never changes official division; only standard cycle promotion moves anyone up
Defer A spare who plays well in a higher division is promoted when the next cycle runs (one division per cycle)

Never is the default for new ladders. Defer stops a single casual spare game from flipping someone's division: promotion only happens once the cycle confirms the spare earned it. (An older third option, Instant, which promoted on the very first higher-division game, was retired on 2026-07-31; ladders that used it now behave as Defer.)

Spare-Down Demotion

What happens to a player who spares (plays as a fill-in) in a division below their official home:

Option Effect
Protected (default) A last-place finish while sparing down cannot demote the player below where they are sparing
Relegate at cycle A bottom-of-the-table finish while sparing down can drop the player one division at cycle time

Sub-Organizers tab

Sub-organizers share management access to this group: they can manage players, run mixers, enter scores, and manage events. Only the group owner can add or remove sub-organizers from the list.

To add one, enter their email address and press Add. The account must already exist. Remove a sub-organizer using the remove action next to their name.

What's next

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