Features
How scoring, ranking, and tournament formats work in PadelScore.
Scoring — always to 21
Every match is played to 21 total points, split between the two teams (e.g. 11–10, 8–13, 21–0). Whatever your team scores in a match is added to each teammate's point total for the tournament — so points, wins, and losses all accumulate per round. This is the Mexicano scoring convention, and it applies no matter which pairing format you choose.
Standings are ranked by total points first, with total wins as a tiebreaker. If two players finish with identical points and wins, they share the same place — e.g. two players tied for 1st means the next player is 3rd, not 2nd.
ELO ranking
Alongside tournament points, every registered player has a global ELO rating, starting at 1000. After each match, both teams' ratings are updated based on the two teams' average rating and the result: beating a higher-rated team gains you more points than beating a lower-rated one, and losing to a weaker team costs you more than losing to a stronger one.
This is why ELO matters more than a simple win count: two players can have the same number of wins, but the one who's been beating tougher opponents will have climbed higher. It's the fairest single number for "how good is this player right now", which is why it's the default sort on your Ranking page. You can still switch that view to sort by total wins or total points instead.
Your Ranking page
Ranking isn't a global leaderboard of every registered user — it's personal to you. It shows you alongside every registered player you've ever shared a match with, whether as your partner or your opponent, so the comparison is always against people you've actually played.
Pairing formats
Americano
A fixed schedule computed up front so that every player partners with every other player exactly once (or twice, your choice) over the course of the tournament — the classic social/round-robin format. The total number of rounds is shown before you start.
Mexicano
Considered the "fairest" format: after the first (random) round, every later round is rebuilt from the live standings so that players of a similar level end up sharing a court, and it stays that way even as the gaps between players grow. Requires at least 8 players so there are at least two courts to work with.
Each round, players are ranked by total points (see scoring & ranking) and split into groups of four in rank order — 1st–4th share a court, 5th–8th share the next, and so on. Within each group, 1st partners 4th against 2nd and 3rd: pairing the strongest with the weakest of the four balances each team's combined rank as evenly as four distinct standings allow, rather than stacking the two best players together.
If the player count isn't a multiple of 4, who sits out is decided by fairness, not rank — whoever has sat out the fewest rounds so far sits this one out, regardless of where they stand on the leaderboard. A struggling player is never parked on the bench for the rest of the tournament just for being ranked last.
Random
Each round shuffles the field into new random pairs and matchups. The simplest option, good for casual sessions where you just want variety round to round.
Manual
You assign every court's pairing yourself, round by round, with full control over who sits out. Nothing is auto-generated — ideal when you need specific matchups, like a seeded bracket or a friendly arrangement.
Any group size
Add as many players as you like, registered or guests. Every four players fills another court so multiple matches run simultaneously each round. When the player count isn't a multiple of four, the app rotates who sits out each round (an optional "fair waiting" rule guarantees no one sits out twice in a row in Random tournaments; Americano and Mexicano handle sit-out rotation automatically as part of their schedules).
Live updates
The leaderboard and round status update live for everyone watching a tournament — no refreshing needed when someone else enters a score.
PDF scorecards & player history
Download a PDF scorecard of any tournament's rounds and final standings. Registered players also get a personal profile with career stats, match history, and head-to-head records against every opponent they've faced.
Admin tools
Tournament organisers get admin controls to manage all tournaments, correct scores after the fact, and manage user accounts.