Pickleball open play with no waiting for the slowest game.
Nonstop Courts is a PickleMixer mode that starts each court’s next game the moment that court is free, instead of making every court wait for the slowest game of the round. The server picks the next four players, their phones buzz with “Court 3 — you’re up,” and the TV shows the call. Nobody keeps a list, and nobody stands at a full court holding a paddle.
Below: why round-based rotation leaves courts empty, how the three Nonstop modes fill them, the simulated gains and costs for real venue sizes, what a night looks like from Start to Stop, and the questions organizers ask first. Nonstop Courts is part of the Lite plan and up (Lite is $19 a year), and free during your first month.
- Up to 20% more games — 4.1 → 4.9 per player, 32 players on 8 courts
- Courts empty 16% of the night instead of 28%
- Average wait 3.5 min instead of 7.4
- Three modes — Pods, Round Ahead, Court Waves
- Phones optional — the TV shows every call
- Lite and up — free during your first month
Round-based rotation waits for the slowest game.
Almost every organized rotation — a whiteboard, a printed schedule, a rotation app — works in rounds: all the courts change at once. That is what makes it fair and easy to follow, and it has one cost nobody puts on the sign. A round lasts as long as its slowest game. A game to 11 takes anywhere from 8 to 30 minutes, so on a night with eight courts, the first court to finish stands empty for ten minutes or more while the last one plays out. In our simulation of a 32-player, 8-court social night, courts stood empty 28% of the time. That is a court and a half doing nothing all evening.
The paddle rack has the opposite problem. A rack is a queue, and a queue refills each court the moment it frees, so a rack never wastes a court. But a rack has no memory: it does not know that the next four paddles belong to four friends who have already played together three times, or that the player who just stepped away for water has sat out the most. You get the court time and lose the mixing.
Nonstop Courts is the rack’s timing with the mixer’s memory. Each court is refilled as soon as it is free, and the players sent to it are chosen the way the mixer always chooses them: fresh partners and opponents, sit-outs taken in turn, ratings balanced if you ask for that. The organizer does not call names. The server does.
Pods, Round Ahead, or Court Waves.
There are three ways the server can choose a court’s next game, and they suit different nights. The Start dialog looks at your roster and courts and opens on the one it recommends, with a line that says why. Every mode stays in the list, so the recommendation is only a default.
| Mode | What happens | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Pods | Players are split by rating into one group per court — 4 players, or 5 when there are more than 4 per court. Each pod plays its own short round robin on its own court, then it is done. A pod never waits for another court. This is the rotating-partner ladder format, also called a shootout ladder, box ladder or Up & Down the River. | Level nights: ladder leagues, skill sessions, any group that plays by rating. |
| Round Ahead | Your usual mixer settings mix the next round early, and each of its games starts as soon as its court and its four players are free. Games are called in a fair order: the four with the fewest games go first. | Fixed partners, and social nights on fewer than 6 courts. |
| Court Waves | The server waits until a few courts are free (half your courts by default, 2 to 4), then mixes everyone who is free onto them in one go. A wave fed by four finished games can take one player from each, so almost nobody lands with someone from their last game. | Social nights with changing partners on 6 or more courts. |
Whichever mode runs, the rest of the night is the same. Players who opened their score link get a buzz and a court number; the big screen and the shared TV board show every court and every call; and a game ends when a player taps Game finished (or reports a score), or when you tap Finished on your panel. Each mode’s own page in the Help Center has the full detail: Pods, Round Ahead, Court Waves.
We simulated hundreds of nights before building it.
These are the same tables the Help Center shows. Each row is 200 simulated nights of 90 minutes: games to 11 lasting about 15 minutes (8 to 30), one minute between games, players rated 3.0 to 4.55. They are for comparing the options, not a promise about your Tuesday.
32 players, 8 courts, changing partners (social mix)
| Rounds | Round Ahead | Court Waves (waits for 4 courts) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games per player | 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.9 |
| Courts standing empty | 28% | 24% | 16% |
| Average / longest wait between games | 7.4 / 17 min | 5.6 / 19 min | 3.5 / 11 min |
| Nights where everyone finishes within one game of each other | 100% | 100% | 29% |
| Pairs in a game who were also together in their last game (of 6) | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.29 |
16 fixed-partner teams, 8 courts
| Rounds | Round Ahead | Court Waves (waits for 4 courts) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games per team | 4.1 | 4.9 | 4.9 |
| Average rating gap between opponents | 0.23 | 0.26 | 0.30 |
| Rematches per night | 0 | 0 | 1.8 |
| Average / longest wait between games | 7.5 / 17 min | 3.5 / 20 min | 3.5 / 11 min |
Every mode adds games for the same reason: a court no longer sits empty while one slow game finishes. What differs is the cost. Round Ahead costs almost nothing — everyone stays within one game of each other and repeats are as rare as in rounds — but it gains the least on a social night, because it still mixes whole rounds. Court Waves gains the most and pays for it in evenness: on a busy night some players finish two games ahead of others, and about one pair in three games has just come off the same court. For fixed partners, Round Ahead gets the same extra games as Court Waves with closer matchups and no rematches, which is why it is the recommendation there. Pods trade variety for level: you play only the three or four people in your pod, and every game is against your own standard. The Pods page has that comparison.
Games per player, venue by venue.
The right mode depends on your courts more than on your players. Court Waves needs enough courts to wait for three or four of them; on a small venue it can only gain games by waiting for two, and then players keep meeting the people they just played. This is what the Start dialog is looking at when it recommends:
| Your night | The dialog recommends |
|---|---|
| Fixed partners (linked partners, or a team group) | Round Ahead |
| Changing partners, grouped by level (a rating-based preset such as Ladder) | Pods |
| Changing partners, social mix, 6 or more courts | Court Waves |
| Changing partners, social mix, fewer than 6 courts | Round Ahead |
Social nights: games per player in 90 minutes
| Players, courts | Rounds | Round Ahead | Court Waves (waits for) | Court Waves: pairs from the same last game, per game |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 players, 3 courts | 4.8 | 4.8 | 4.8 (2) | 1.6 |
| 16 players, 4 courts | 4.6 | 4.6 | 5.3 (2) | 1.7 |
| 20 players, 4 courts | 3.7 | 3.8 | 4.2 (2) | 1.3 |
| 20 players, 5 courts | 4.4 | 4.6 | 5.3 (2) | 1.7 |
| 24 players, 5 courts | 3.7 | 3.9 | 4.4 (2) | 1.4 |
| 24 players, 6 courts | 4.3 | 4.6 | 5.0 (3) | 0.8 |
| 28 players, 7 courts | 4.2 | 4.5 | 5.1 (3) | 0.9 |
| 32 players, 8 courts | 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.9 (4) | 0.3 |
| 40 players, 8 courts | 3.3 | 3.9 | 4.0 (4) | 0.3 |
Two things stand out. When every player is on court at once (12 on 3, 16 on 4), Round Ahead gains nothing, because there is nobody waiting to fill a free court — the gain comes from spare players. And with many spare players (40 on 8), Round Ahead and Court Waves play about the same number of games; Round Ahead keeps everyone within one game of each other, Court Waves does that on about two nights in three. If you run a large club night on 6 or more courts, Court Waves waiting for 3 or 4 is the sweet spot: most of the extra games, and the mixing barely suffers.
Six steps, then the server runs it.
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i.
Check in your players
Mark tonight's players active on the Mixer as usual, or let them scan the QR code on the big screen and check themselves in. Nonstop Courts needs at least 4 players. You do not need to mix a round first.
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ii.
Open Start Nonstop Courts
Open the TV menu on the Mixer and choose Start Nonstop Courts, or open Games Settings and tap Nonstop Courts. The dialog shows how many players and courts you have and opens on the mode it recommends, with a line that says why.
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iii.
Keep the mode, or pick another
Pods for a level night, Round Ahead for fixed partners or a small venue, Court Waves for a social night on 6 or more courts. Each mode has one setting: how the pods of 5 are placed, how many rounds to plan ahead, or how many courts a wave waits for. The defaults are the ones the simulations favored.
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iv.
Set when new games stop
No new games after is in minutes from now; the default is 100, and you can set 15 to 600. Games already on court finish, nothing new starts. For Pods the field reads Aim to finish all games within, and the dialog estimates whether every pod fits.
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v.
Choose who enters scores
Not recorded (the default): players tap Game finished and nothing is kept. I enter them on this panel: each finished game waits for you to type its score. Players enter them on their phones: the first team to report frees the court, and the other team confirms before its next game.
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vi.
Press Start
The server calls the first game on every court. Players who opened their score link get a buzz with their court; the big screen and the TV board show every call. From here you watch the panel, tap Finished on a court nobody reported, and settle any disputed score. Last call stops new games early; Stop ends the night at once and hands the Mixer back to normal rounds.
Players do not need an app or an account. Their own page opens from a personal link or a QR code on your screen, and it shows their court, buzzes when they are called, and takes their score if players enter scores tonight. A player with no phone follows the TV, exactly as in rounds. Players arriving late, sitting a game out or leaving early do it from that page as on any night; Round Ahead and Court Waves apply the change at the next game, and in Pods the organizer confirms it, because leaving changes the pod’s remaining games.
The first report frees the court. The other team confirms.
On a rounds night, scores are collected at the end of the round and the next round is mixed from them. Nonstop nights have no round to wait for, so scoring works court by court. When players enter their own scores, the first team to report a game’s score frees that court, and the next game is called at once. The other team is not skipped: it is held off its next game until it confirms or disputes the score, and gets one “confirm your score” buzz. One of the two confirming is enough. When the teams disagree, the game lands under Scores to settle on your panel, both teams keep playing, and you type the right score when you have a minute.
If you would rather keep the scoring at the desk, choose I enter them on this panel: players tap Game finished, each finished game waits for you under Scores to settle, and a score kiosk link on a tablet lets anyone at the desk enter them. Each game is saved and rated on its own, as soon as its score is settled, so Elo ratings and standings keep moving through the night rather than at the end of it. And if tonight is not about scores at all, leave the default: Not recorded. Players tap Game finished and nothing else is asked of them.
A paid plan or your first month, and at least four players.
Nonstop Courts runs on the server — it has to, because it calls games while your phone is in your pocket — so it is part of the paid plans: Lite ($19 a year) and up, and free during your first month with an account. The plan that counts is the group owner’s, so a co-organizer can run a night on a club’s plan. Players never pay and never create an account. Everything else about the mixer stays free: rounds, presets, the big screen and printing work as they always have, with or without a plan.
You need a phone or laptop with a connection for your own panel, and a TV or the players’ phones to carry the calls — either is enough on its own. Pods need a rating next to each player, because that is what forms them; Round Ahead and Court Waves work with or without ratings. Nonstop Courts cannot start while the server auto-mix timer is running, and Pods are not offered while Mixed Doubles is on, because a pod changes partners every game.
Nonstop Courts — asked & answered.
Q.01 What is Nonstop Courts, and how is it different from rounds?
Q.02 Do players need an app or an account?
Q.03 Which mode should I choose?
Q.04 How much more play do players actually get?
Q.05 What does Nonstop Courts cost?
Q.06 Can I run it without recording scores?
Q.07 What happens with late arrivals and people who leave early?
Q.08 Does it work with fixed partners and mixed doubles?
Q.09 How is this different from a paddle rack or a queue app?
Q.10 Can I stop it in the middle of a night?
Level nights, social nights, and the paper version.
Fill every court all night.
Open the Mixer, check your players in, and choose Start Nonstop Courts from the TV menu. Part of Lite and up, and free during your first month.