Spares and cross-division play

Real leagues need spares: someone's short a player, so you pull in a body from another division for the night. PickleFriend handles this so a fill-in game doesn't distort the standings of a division the player doesn't really belong to.

Sparing down (helping a lower division)

A higher-division player who fills in for a lower division does not change divisions. They stay officially in their home division. The fill-in game is recorded with a temporary standing in the lower division (starting at that division's default rating), but their home standing is untouched.

This is the safe, common case: a Div A player helps out Div B for a night and goes right back to being a Div A player.

Sparing up (playing in a higher division)

Filling in for a higher division is treated as earning your way up. By default, the first time a score is recorded for you in a higher division, you're auto-promoted:

• Your home (lower) division standing freezes — it's preserved, not deleted.
• Your higher-division standing becomes your active one, and from then on you appear in that division's standings.

The idea: if you're competing and scoring in a higher division, that's where you now belong. Your old standing is kept frozen and snaps back if a future cycle or spare event sends you back down.

Turning auto-promotion off

If you'd rather let players spare up without changing their official division, there's a per-ladder setting to disable spare-up auto-promotion. The fill-in game is still recorded; only the automatic division change is skipped. Use this when you want to allow cross-division invites freely without committing people to a higher tier after one night.

Inviting spares

Inviting a player to an event in another division doesn't create a standing for them there — that only happens when they actually play and a score is recorded. So an invite they decline, or a no-show, never leaves a stray entry in a division they didn't play in.

Next

See Running a cycle to put it all together as an organizer.