Generate rounds in Humpty Dumpty
You generate one week at a time. The first round sets the starting courts; each round after applies the win/stay/fall rules.
Round 1 — the starting order
With no results yet, you choose how to seed the courts. The order fills Court 1 downward, four to a court.
Random suits a social league; seeding by rating puts your strongest players on the top court from the start — which in this format means putting them immediately at risk of the fall.
Generating later rounds
Make sure the current week is scored.
Open the next week.
Generate.
Winners move up a court. Middle-court losers stay. Top-court losers fall to the bottom. In the individual variant everyone is re-paired on their new court.
Score the round before generating the next one. Movement comes entirely from results.
What happens to each court
Court 1 winners stay on Court 1 — there is nowhere higher.
Court 1 losers drop to the bottom court.
Middle court winners move up one.
Middle court losers stay where they are.
Bottom court winners move up one.
Bottom court losers stay on the bottom court.
The bottom court therefore collects both its own losers and everyone who fell from the top.
Who is included
Only players opted in for that date. Opted-out players appear in Excluded in the group editor, and players who never respond are treated as opted out once the deadline passes.
When the numbers do not divide by 4
Any remainder forms a bye group and those players sit that round. Bye Mode decides who — bottom-ranked players, or everyone in turn.
A player who falls from the top court lands on the bottom court, not in the bye group, so a fall never also costs them a game. See Byes in Humpty Dumpty.
More than one round on a date
A play night can run several rounds. Add a sub-round for the date and rounds are labelled Week 1-1, Week 1-2, and so on.
Adding a sub-round does not generate its matches; open that round and generate. See Managing rounds and dates in Ladder formats.
Generating automatically
Auto-generation can build the next round as play completes. See Auto-generation in Ladder formats.
You cannot clear a round while auto-generation is running. Stop it first.
Adjusting before play
To move someone to a different court before a round is played, use the group editor. See Editing groups in Ladder formats.