King of the Court padel: winners up, losers down

King of the Court is an individual format for four or more players. The first round is drawn at random or seeded from your list. From then on, the result of your match decides where you play next: win and you move up a court, lose and you move down. Winners on court 1 stay on court 1, and losers on the bottom court stay at the bottom. A drawn match keeps both pairs on the same court.

Pairs are split every round, so two players who move up together don’t stay together: each gets a new partner on the new court. Your ranking is about your own results, not your partner’s.

It suits energetic sessions and groups who enjoy a bit of hierarchy and banter: club evenings, training groups and events where you want constant movement between courts. Every match matters, since a single win moves you up straight away.

It works best with at least two courts, ideally three or more. On a single court nobody can move, so the format becomes a plain rotation of partners.

Matches are usually short. You can play to a fixed number of points (16 is popular) or play timed rounds with free scoring and enter the score that was reached at the buzzer.

By default the standings rank players by wins: a win counts as one, a draw as half. Ties are broken by point difference and then by total points. You can switch to ranking by points if you prefer.

Players who rest keep their place on the ladder and come back on roughly the same court. Late arrivals join at the bottom.

Eight players, two courts, matches to 16 points. Round 1 is drawn at random:

• Court 1: Anna & Ben beat Carla & David 10–6
• Court 2: Emma & Filip beat Gina & Hugo 9–7

Anna and Ben won on the top court, so they stay. Carla and David lost and drop to court 2. Emma and Filip won on court 2 and move up to court 1. Gina and Hugo lost on the bottom court, so they stay there.

In round 2, court 1 has Anna, Ben, Emma and Filip, and court 2 has Carla, David, Gina and Hugo. The pairs that played together are split: on court 1 Anna plays with Filip against Ben and Emma, and on court 2 Carla plays with Hugo against David and Gina.

Seven rounds to 16 points take a little under 1 h 20 min, and the player with the most wins is crowned King or Queen of the Court.

The app suggests seven rounds; you can choose any number or keep drawing rounds until you decide to stop. Because the next round depends on every result, all matches in a round need a score before the next one can be drawn.

Short matches keep the ladder moving. To 16 points a round takes about 11 minutes including changing courts, to 24 about 15. With timed rounds of 10 minutes, plan 12 minutes per round.

How to get the most out of the ladder:

• Make the ladder visible: tell everyone which court is court 1, and give it a sign, a crown or a name. Courts can be renamed in the app.
• Use short matches or a round timer. The format is at its best when rounds are quick and the movement is constant.
• Seed the first round if you want the strongest players to start at the top, or draw at random for a more chaotic start.
• With uneven numbers, resting players keep their place on the ladder, so sitting out doesn’t cost a hard-earned spot on court 1.

Ways to change the game:

• Rank by points instead of wins, if big wins should count.
• Timed rounds with free scoring.
• Mexicano, where courts are redrawn from the overall standings rather than from the last match only.
• More courts: with four or five courts, the climb from the bottom to the top becomes the story of the evening.