How Humpty Dumpty works
Climb the courts by winning, and hold your place when you lose, until you reach the top. Lose there and you fall all the way to the bottom.
That great fall is the whole point of the format, and it is where the name comes from.
The three rules
Where you are | Result | What happens |
|---|---|---|
Any court | Win | Move up one court |
Middle courts | Lose | Stay on your court |
Top court | Lose | Fall to the bottom court (or sit out the next round, when there is a bye group and Bye Mode is By Position) |
Bottom court | Lose | Stay on the bottom court |
Losing does not normally cost you anything except the chance to climb. The risk is concentrated entirely at the top.
Two variants
Humpty Dumpty (Individual) | Humpty Dumpty (Set Partners) | |
|---|---|---|
Partners | New partner every round | Same partner all season |
Who moves | Individual players | The pair, together |
The movement rules are identical in both.
Why it plays differently
Because a loss in the middle costs you nothing, players tend to gather near the top over a season: you can only go up until you get there. That creates a queue of strong players on the upper courts and makes the top court genuinely tense, because it is the only place where a loss is expensive.
The fall is what stops the ladder getting stuck. Without it, whoever reached Court 1 would stay there indefinitely.
Not the same as Up and Down the River
These two get confused constantly. They share a shape and differ on the rule that matters most:
Up and Down the River | Humpty Dumpty | |
|---|---|---|
Win | Up one court | Up one court |
Lose (middle) | Down one court | Stay put |
Lose (top court) | Down one court | Fall to the bottom |
If you have run one and are setting up the other, that middle row is the difference your players will feel every week.
See Getting started with Up and Down the River.
Courts and byes
Courts hold four players (two pairs in Set Partners) and play one match a round. When the players don't divide evenly into courts, the remainder forms a bye group, and Bye Mode decides who sits out next:
By Position (the default): the top-court losers go into the bye group instead of falling to the bottom court, and the players coming off the bye join the bottom court. In Humpty Dumpty (Individual), with one player on bye, only one of the two top-court losers sits out (picked at random) and the other drops to the bottom court. With three on bye, two come back and one sits out again.
Rotation: whoever has sat out the fewest rounds sits out next.
Humpty Dumpty has no format settings tile. You choose Bye Mode when you generate a round. See Byes in ladder formats.