How partners are chosen each round
In the individual variant of Up and Down the River, you get a new partner every round. The app picks the pairing rather than leaving it to chance, and it has a clear order of priorities.
This applies to Up and Down the River only. In Up and Down the River (Set Partners) partners are fixed for the season and none of this runs.
Only three options exist
A court has exactly 4 players, so there are only three ways to split them into two pairs. Ranking that court's players 1st to 4th by standings:
Option | Pairing |
|---|---|
A | 1st + 4th vs 2nd + 3rd |
B | 1st + 3rd vs 2nd + 4th |
C | 1st + 2nd vs 3rd + 4th |
Option A is the most balanced — it puts the strongest with the weakest. Option C is the least, stacking the top two together.
How the app chooses
Priorities, in order:
1. Avoid the previous round's partnerships. Any option that repeats a pair from the previous round loses to one that doesn't.
2. Then the fewest repeats from earlier tonight. Among what's left, it picks the option with the fewest repeated partnerships from tonight's rounds. A pair together for a third time counts more than two pairs together for a second time.
3. Then the oldest repeat. If options still tie, it picks the one whose repeat happened longest ago.
4. Then the most balanced. A before B before C.
Apart from the previous round, partnerships from earlier nights don't count. So a slightly less balanced match beats putting the same two people together again tonight.
Why a match can look lopsided
Because splitting partnerships outranks balance, you will sometimes see Option B or C — the top two players together against the bottom two.
That is the algorithm preferring fresh pairings over an even match, and it is working as intended. Over a season it produces more partner variety than always optimising for balance.
Standings drive the ranking
From the second round of a session, the 1st-to-4th order within a court comes from your division's standings sort, including its tiebreakers. In the first round of a session it is the court's current ladder order. Change the standings sort and you change which pairing counts as "balanced" in those later rounds.
See How Standings Are Calculated.