How Rotating Partner Round Robin works
Rotating partner formats are for events where players change partners each round instead of staying with one teammate for the full division.
How rotating partners works
Players register as individuals, not fixed teams. Each round, the system creates new partner pairings automatically. You do not need to assign partners by hand.
The schedule works through fresh partnerships before it repeats any, and balances who faces whom, so players meet as many different people as the round count allows.
How it differs from standard Round Robin
Standard Round Robin | Rotating Partners | |
|---|---|---|
Registration | Players enter as a pair | Players enter as individuals |
Partners | Same partner throughout | New partner every round |
Groups contain | Teams | Individual players |
Group editing | You move partner pairs together | You move individual players |
Standings rank | Teams | Individual players |
Because partners change every round, the pairings you see in the schedule exist only for the round they were created in. There is no lasting team, which is why standings and final placements are per player.
Key rules
Doubles only. Every round is built from two-player partnerships. The Division Type dropdown lists Singles, but this format has no singles schedule.
Groups are self-contained. Players partner and compete only within their own group; rotating partner formats have no cross-group option. Splitting a large field into groups gives everyone a smaller pool, so the rotation gets through more of the possible partnerships in the same number of rounds, and lets you seed by ability. To change who someone faces, move them to another group and regenerate.
Byes come from your player count and your courts. A match seats four people, so anyone left over sits that round: a group whose size divides by 4 has no byes, otherwise 1, 2 or 3 players sit. If you limit play to your configured courts and there are fewer courts than matches, the extra players sit out too. Byes do not count as a loss.
One standings table for the whole event. Leagues included: a league does not keep separate standings per play date. Every round a player has played feeds the same running record.
No bracket stage. This format runs as Matches and Standings only. There is no knockout phase after the round robin.
Mixed Gender Rotating Partners
Mixed Gender Rotating Partners follows the same workflow, but each partnership is built as one male player and one female player. Players must have the correct gender in their profile for mixed pairings to work as expected, and the male and female counts need to match or the surplus players are paired with each other.
For roster requirements and setup, see Set up Mixed Gender Rotating Partners.
Round Robin with Pros
Round Robin with Pros follows the same workflow, built around one or more designated Pro players. Every player partners with a Pro once and plays against a Pro once before the schedule optimizes anything else. This is guaranteed with 1 or 2 Pros; with more, Pros are spread as evenly as possible. Pros never take a bye and are kept from partnering each other. They appear in standings with a PRO badge but are left out of final placements.
Round Robin with Pros runs as a single group. Generating with more than one group is refused, so keep everyone in one group.
For setup, Pro designation, and the staff coverage view, see Set up Round Robin with Pros.
Substitutions
Substitutions are handled at the player level because players do not have fixed partners. There are two tools:
The pencil icon on a match card replaces one player in one match.
A registered substitute on the Players tab covers a player for specific dates or rounds.
See Substitutes and player swaps in Rotating Partner Round Robin.