Popular Play Formats

With pickleball’s rise in popularity comes many different groups of players with countless types of ways to play! Rec play can present itself in countless formats including King’s Court, Rotating Partners, and Win and Switch.

One popular format that has arisen the past few years is a partial round robin or pool play followed by a single elimination bracket. This format has presented itself both in the rec play arena as well as in tournament formats, and gives many groups the best of both worlds between casual play and competitive. The format gives all teams a minimum number of games to play, while allowing the more competitive teams to play a few extra games at the end of the single elimination bracket against the other best teams. I have seen this format be very successful in my own groups, giving every team a good 2 1/2 hours of play, then the better teams rise to the top for a showdown, and players will even stick around to watch the finals!

Pickleball Manager strives to bring the best software bracket experience to all of pickleball, and one of the ways it does that is supporting this popular format! When creating an event in Pickleball Manager, users can add a second bracket, a “Qualifier” bracket. This qualifier bracket will be played first, and is usually a partial round robin, pool play, or swiss bracket. The main bracket can then be set to “Seed From Qualifier”, so when the main bracket is generated, it will automatically create seeds for each team based on the results of the qualifier bracket! Download the app today to get started in applying to be an organization, or create free Rec Events to try out Pickleball Manager’s elite bracket software!

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