Byes in ladder formats (Up and Down the River, Humpty Dumpty, Pecking Order)
In Up and Down the River, Humpty Dumpty and Pecking Order, players who don't fit on a court sit out the round, and Bye Mode decides who. Choose By Position to sit out the players at the bottom (in Humpty Dumpty, the top-court losers), or Rotation to share sitting out evenly. Ladder League, Crazy 8's and Cream of the Crop don't use Bye Mode.
When someone sits out
Courts in these formats hold exactly four players, so a bye group forms whenever the players in the round don't divide by 4.
Up and Down the River and Humpty Dumpty: 18 opted-in players make four courts of 4 and a bye group of 2. In the Set Partners variants, courts take two pairs, so an odd pair sits out.
Pecking Order: the field is also capped by your court count. 20 players on 3 courts means 12 play and 8 sit out.
Where you set Bye Mode
Bye Mode has no settings tile. You choose it when you generate a round, and it is saved to the division for later rounds.
Generate dialog: in Start Games - Select Method, the Bye Mode section appears when the player count doesn't fill every court exactly. The options are By Position and Rotation.
Auto-generation settings: the same choice, labelled By Position and By Rotation, applies to every round auto-generation creates.
The default is By Position for Up and Down the River and Humpty Dumpty, and Rotation for Pecking Order. You can change it before any round.
By Position
By Position makes sitting out a consequence of results. What that means differs by format.
Up and Down the River
Bottom-court losers go into the bye group, and the players coming off the bye join the bottom court in their place.
With one player on bye, one bottom-court loser (picked at random) sits out and the other stays on the bottom court.
With three on bye, two come back onto the bottom court and one sits out again.
Humpty Dumpty
Top-court losers go into the bye group and sit out the next round, instead of falling to the bottom court. The players coming off the bye join the bottom court. Bottom-court losers stay on the bottom court as usual.
With one player on bye, one of the two top-court losers sits out (picked at random) and the other falls to the bottom court.
With three on bye, both top-court losers sit out, two bye players come back and one sits out again.
Pecking Order
The players at the bottom of the current ranking sit out. On a night with far more players than courts, that is the same people every round.
In Up and Down the River and Humpty Dumpty, when the number of courts changes from the last round (because players joined or dropped out), the app re-sorts everyone instead. In By Position, the lowest-ranked players sit out that round.
Rotation
Rotation sits out whoever has sat out the fewest rounds so far, so everyone takes turns regardless of results. Nobody who sat out the last round sits out again while someone else is available. Ties are broken at random, so regenerating a round can pick different players.
Up and Down the River: only rounds a player was present for but didn't play count as byes. A late joiner's earlier absences don't count, so they aren't shielded from future byes. Players coming back take the court positions of the players going out.
Humpty Dumpty: every round a player has no match in counts toward their total, including rounds they were absent for. Players coming back take the court positions of the players going out.
Pecking Order: whoever sat out the previous round goes to the back of the queue, so nobody sits out twice running while someone equally rested is available. A round sat out never lowers a player's win percentage.
Choosing a mode
You want | Use |
|---|---|
Sitting out to follow results (a competitive ladder) | By Position |
Everyone to sit out about equally (a social league) | Rotation |
The strongest games kept on court in Pecking Order | By Position |