How Challenge Ladder works
A Challenge Ladder is a season-long ladder where a round is a window of days, not a game night. Each round every entrant is given one opponent near their ladder position, and they have the whole window to arrange the match and play it wherever they like. On top of that they can call out a couple of nearby entrants for extra matches.
Two variants:
Challenge Ladder — each entrant is one player
Challenge Ladder (Set Partners) — each entrant is a fixed pair who stay together all season
Rounds are windows
You set each round's start date. The round then runs for the number of days in Days to play each round, and the last day of that span is the play-by date shown on every match card.
Because there is no fixed game night, nobody is assigned a court in advance. The two sides agree a time and a place between themselves, play, and one of them enters the score.
Who plays whom
Pairing each round is by ladder position: neighbours play neighbours. A round with an odd number of entrants gives one of them a bye, and the bye rotates so the same entrant does not sit out twice running.
The first round seeds the starting order from DUPR, highest first. Entrants with no rating start at the bottom.
Both sides earn points
Every result pays the winner and the loser. Points come from the scoreline and the gap between the two ladder positions, so a close loss to someone above you is still worth playing for.
Points are worked out from each side's share of the rallies, so the length of the match does not change what it is worth. Playing to 11, 15 or 21 — or best of three against best of five — pays the same for the same performance. For the full model, see How scoring works in Challenge Ladder.
Positions come from season points
A ladder position is the entrant's accumulated season points, re-sorted after every result. It is a single order across the whole division.
The positions a match is scored against are the ones captured when the pairing was made, not today's. Positions move as results come in, and freezing them is what stops an old result being re-scored later against a ladder that has moved on.
Challenges and requests
Two separate things, and they follow different rules.
A challenge creates an extra match that counts for points. It reaches only entrants within the challenge range, is capped per round, and is available only while the round is open.
A request creates nothing. It tells someone you would like to play and hands each of you the other's contact details. It reaches the whole ladder and is not capped.
Both are covered in Play your Challenge Ladder season.
Finishing the season
When the rounds are done you can run knockout brackets off the final ladder, in groups of the size you set. The first group is the entrants at the top of the ladder, the next group the ones below them, and so on.
Running one
Start with Set up a Challenge Ladder event.