The rotating-partner ladder league: your level, your court, all night.
A rotating-partner ladder league groups four or five individually ranked pickleball players on each court; they partner with everyone in their group through a short round robin, record their own results, and move up or down for the next round or session. The same format goes by individual round-robin ladder, shootout ladder, box ladder and Up & Down the River. In PickleMixer it is called Pods, a Nonstop Courts mode: the roster is sorted by rating and cut into one pod per court, the top pod on court 1, and each pod plays through its games without waiting for any other court.
A pod of 4 plays 3 games, each player partnering each of the other three once. A pod of 5 plays 5 games; each player plays 4, sits 1, and partners everyone once. Below: what people call this format and how Pods maps onto each name, how the pods are formed and how long they run, the simulated comparison with rounds, how to run one, and how pods fit with ratings and ladder leagues. Nonstop Courts is part of Lite ($19 a year) and up, and free during your first month.
- 4 players, 3 games — everyone partners everyone once
- 5 players, 5 games — play 4, sit 1
- Ranked courts — cut from the rating order, top pod on court 1
- Movement between rounds — the courts re-sort by rating
- Also called shootout ladder, box ladder, Up & Down the River
- Lite and up — free during your first month
One format, five names.
Clubs describe this format from different angles, and several of the names are right at once: round robin says what happens inside a court, ladder says the ranking persists, box or pod names the group, rotating partner says how teams form, and shootout or Up & Down the River names the movement afterwards. Here is each name, what it usually means, and how Pods matches it.
| Name | What it usually means | How Pods matches it |
|---|---|---|
| Rotating-partner ladder league | Players enter on their own, not as a fixed pair. Each session they are grouped by ranking onto a court of four or five, rotate partners within the group, and move on their own results. | Exact. Every pod is a rotating-partner round robin, and each player carries their own rating. |
| Individual round-robin ladder (shootout ladder) | Pools of four or five play a round robin; the pool is ranked by wins and point differential, the top players move up a step and the bottom players down. | Exact: the pool is a pod. Between rounds the courts re-sort by rating rather than by a fixed two-up, two-down. |
| Box ladder, box league | The ranking is cut into adjacent boxes of four or five; each box plays a mini round robin and swaps its top and bottom with the neighboring boxes. In tennis and badminton a box takes weeks; in pickleball it fits one session. | Pods are the boxes, cut from the rating order at Start, and each box finishes its round robin in one sitting. |
| Up & Down the River | Four or five per court play once with each partner; then the top players move up a court, the bottom players move down, and another round starts. | Exact. A round is a pod’s round robin; when every pod is done, start Pods again and the courts re-form from the updated ratings. |
| King of the Court, Royal Court, waterfall | Related, not the same: a team moves up or down after every single game, and partners split. | Not what Pods do. Nobody moves mid-pod; the sorting waits for the round robin to finish. |
| Americano, Mexicano | Related: rotating partners and individual points, but one fixed rotation across the whole event (Americano) or re-pairing from the live leaderboard (Mexicano), with no ranked boxes. | A pod is an Americano in miniature, played inside a ranked court. |
| Challenge ladder | The other kind of ladder: you challenge someone a few rungs above you and swap places if you win. | Not this. Pods are a scheduled, session ladder; there is nothing to challenge or dodge. |
A word on round, because it carries the whole distinction. In these formats a round is a court’s complete mini round robin — the three or five games in which everyone partners everyone — and movement happens between rounds, never in the middle of one. Pods work the same way. Within a round nobody changes court; when every pod is done, start Pods again and the courts re-form for the next round. What differs is how the movers are chosen: not tonight’s two best and two worst on each court, but the ratings. When scores are recorded, each game adjusts the players’ Elo ratings the moment its score is settled, so a player who won their pod sorts higher and may open the next round on a stronger court, and one who struggled drifts down a court. The same re-sort carries into next week, so the second round of tonight and the first round of next session are decided the same way, by the whole record. King of the Court moves a team after every single game; that is a different thing, and Pods do not do it.
Level play without sorting people in front of the room.
Every organizer with a wide skill spread faces the same choice: keep one pool and balance each court, or group players by level. Balancing keeps everyone together and makes each team even, but it leaves the strongest player on a court carrying the weakest, and the best two players in the room may never face each other. Grouping by level makes every game a real contest — and it usually means someone standing at a whiteboard assigning people to the 3.0 court and the 4.0 court while the room watches.
Pods do the grouping from ratings, and they do it once, at Start. The Start dialog shows every pod before anything happens: you can drag one player onto another to swap them, or move a player from a pod of 5 into a pod of 4, and what you see is what starts. Then each pod has its court and its games, and the night runs itself. Nobody is moved up or down mid-evening, nobody waits for a court that a different pod is using, and nobody is asked to explain in public why they are on court 6.
Two neighbors are worth telling apart, and the table above has the detail. Up-and-down-the-river in its everyday form moves players after every round on tonight’s results, so a strong player who starts on the bottom court spends half the night climbing, and every changeover moves the whole room. A ladder league goes the other way: it keeps the sorting across weeks, with fixed divisions and promotion and relegation between them. Pods are the middle: a one-night sorting by rating, with the scores from the night feeding the ratings for the next one — and, on a ladder night, the natural way to fill a division’s courts.
Three games for four, five games for five.
A pod of 4 plays the complete doubles round robin for four players: 3 games, each player with each of the other three as a partner once, everyone on court for every game. A pod of 5 plays 5 games; each player plays 4 and sits out 1, and again everyone partners everyone once. The order of a pod’s games is drawn when you press Start and does not change, so a player can see all of their pod’s games on their phone from the first minute.
Because a pod of 4 plays fewer games than a pod of 5, each size has its own game length, chosen so that both finish close together and every player gets about the same number of points:
| Traditional scoring | Rally scoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Pod of 4 (3 games) | to 15 | to 21 |
| Pod of 5 (each plays 4) | to 11 | to 15 |
For Pods, the dialog’s time field reads Aim to finish all games within. The dialog estimates how long each pod will take from an exact model of side-out and rally scoring — about 25 seconds a rally at a normal pace, with relaxed and fast settings for slower and quicker groups — and warns you when a pod’s last game would start after time is up. Fit my time picks the longest games that still let a whole pod, breaks included, finish inside your window. A pod running a little late still plays its last game; only a pod a whole game behind skips it.
| Pod | Each game, typical (long) | The whole pod, typical (long) |
|---|---|---|
| Pod of 4, traditional to 15 | 22 min (28) | 76 min (94) |
| Pod of 5, traditional to 11 | 16 min (21) | 98 min (124) |
| Pod of 4, rally to 21 | — | 57 min |
| Pod of 5, rally to 15 | — | 75 min |
Sorted by rating, cut into courts.
The active roster is sorted by rating and cut into consecutive pods, highest first, so court 1 holds the strongest four or five in the room and the last court the newest. Pods hold 4 players, or 5 when there are more players than 4 per court — and never more than 5, so a roster with more than 5 players per court cannot start: add a court or sit some players out. A roster that would leave players with no pod (6, 7 or 11 players) cannot start either.
When some pods must be 5, Best fit (the recommended placement) puts the pods of 5 where the ratings are most crowded, so each pod stays as close in level as possible. In 200 simulated clubs of 37 players on 8 courts, the widest pod spanned 0.47 rating points with Best fit, against about 0.51 with the pods of 5 forced to the top or the bottom. You can also put them at the top, at the bottom, or at random.
Then you check the dialog’s own work. Drag a player onto a player in another pod to swap them, or from a pod of 5 onto a pod of 4 to move them; on a phone, tap one player and then the other. Each change asks first, so a slip of the finger changes nothing, and Undo all my changes puts every pod back the way it was shown. The pods you see are the pods that start.
More play, no waiting, less variety.
A pod night gives players about as much play as rounds, or more, with no waiting for another court, and every game against their own level. What it costs is variety: you play the three or four people in your pod and nobody else. Two hundred simulated 90-minute nights, one minute between games; rounds use games to 11 of about 15 minutes.
32 players on 8 courts (8 pods of 4)
| Rounds (to 11) | Pods, default rules | Pods, Fit my time (to 18) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games per player | 4.2 | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| Minutes of play per player | 66 | 67 | 82 |
| Different people you play with or against | 10.8 | 3 | 3 |
| Average / longest wait between games | 7.4 / 17 min | none | none |
| Courts standing empty before the 90-minute mark | 28% | 22% | 9% |
| The last game ends at about | 101 min | 88 min | 106 min |
40 players on 8 courts (8 pods of 5)
| Rounds (to 11) | Pods, default rules | Pods, Fit my time (to 9) | Pods of 5 to 15 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Games per player | 3.3 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.5 |
| Minutes of play per player | 53 | 64 | 51 | 78 |
| Different people you play with or against | 8.8 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Average / longest wait between games | 11.7 / 39 min | 3.4 / 27 min | 2.8 / 22 min | 4.3 / 36 min |
| Pods that finish all their games | — | 99% | 100% | 41% |
| The last game ends at about | 101 min | 99 min | 81 min | 115 min |
With four per court, the default games to 15 finish early — pods are done at about 88 minutes and courts sit empty at the end — so Fit my time, which stretches the games to 18, is the better night: about 24% more play than rounds and every pod finishes. With five per court, the defaults beat rounds on every count except variety: more games, more play, waits a third as long. They run about ten minutes past 90, and Fit my time (games to 9) brings that back inside the window with about the same play as rounds and much shorter waits. The one thing not to do is stretch a pod of 5 past its time: at games to 15, most pods could not start their last game before the cutoff. Fit my time prevents exactly that.
Six steps to a pod night.
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i.
Give every player a rating
Pods are formed from ratings, so each player needs one. Type a number next to each player on your Players page, or record scores for a few nights and let Elo ratings build from the results. A ladder league keeps per-division ratings for you.
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ii.
Check in tonight's players
Mark the players who are here as active, or let them scan the QR code on the big screen. Pods hold 4 or 5, so the roster has to fit: at most 5 players per court, and not 6, 7 or 11 players in total.
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iii.
Start Nonstop Courts and choose Pods
Open the TV menu on the Mixer, choose Start Nonstop Courts, and pick Pods if the dialog has not already opened on it. It does when your preset groups players by rating, such as the Ladder preset.
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iv.
Check the pods
The dialog shows every pod with its court. Leave the pods of 5 on Best fit, or place them at the top or the bottom. Drag a player onto another to swap them, or from a pod of 5 onto a pod of 4 to move them. Undo all my changes puts everything back.
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v.
Set the time and the game length
Aim to finish all games within is your window in minutes. The defaults are games to 15 for a pod of 4 and to 11 for a pod of 5 (21 and 15 with rally scoring); Fit my time picks the longest games that still let every pod finish inside the window.
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vi.
Choose who enters scores, and press Start
Not recorded, I enter them on this panel, or Players enter them on their phones. Then press Start: every court gets its first game, players who opened their link are buzzed, and each pod plays through. When a pod finishes, its results card shows wins, losses, points and, if your ratings are public, each player's rating change.
During the night the pods are the only thing that changes hands. A player’s own sit-out or leave waits for you rather than applying at once, because it changes the pod’s remaining games; tap the player in the pod list and choose Remove, and a pod of 5 becomes a pod of 4 and re-draws its games. A pod of 4 left with three stops and the panel names who could fill in — late arrivals first, then a sitting player from the nearest pod of 5. Four late arrivals and a free court form a new pod. If you would rather players left on their own, turn on Players can check themselves out before you start. The night ends by itself when every pod is done.
The scores from tonight shape next week’s pods.
Pods only work as well as the ratings behind them, and they feed those ratings back. When scores are recorded, each game is saved and rated as soon as its score is settled, so a player who wins their pod moves up the sort and may land a pod higher next week, and one who struggled drifts down a court. Over a few nights the pods settle into genuine levels without anyone deciding them. The rating is PickleFriend’s own Elo, built from margins as well as wins, and it stays inside your group — players need no DUPR account and no login.
On a ladder league night, pods are the natural way to fill a division’s courts: everyone in a division is already close in rating, so the pods come out tight, and the night’s results feed the division’s standings and the next cycle’s promotions and relegations. Ladder leagues are part of the Pro plan. If you are not ready for divisions, a regular group with ratings gets you most of the way: the Rating Isolation preset gives a soft court ladder in rounds for free, and Pods give the same players a level court each with no waiting.
Pods — asked & answered.
Q.01 What is a rotating-partner ladder league?
Q.02 What is a pod in pickleball?
Q.03 How many games does a pod play?
Q.04 How are the pods chosen?
Q.05 Do I need ratings to use pods?
Q.06 Is a pod night the same as a ladder league?
Q.07 Is this the same as Up & Down the River?
Q.08 Is this a shootout ladder or a box ladder?
Q.09 How is it different from a challenge ladder?
Q.10 What happens if someone has to leave in the middle of a pod?
Q.11 Can players sit out a game on their own in a pod?
Q.12 How long does a pod night take?
Q.13 What does it cost?
The other modes, and the season version.
Every court at its own level.
Give your players ratings, open the Mixer, and choose Pods under Start Nonstop Courts. A rotating-partner ladder night, part of Lite and up, free during your first month.