Fair entries for a padel tournament

When a tournament has more interested players than places, the question comes up on its own: who signed up first? If entries come through messages, phone calls or a sheet at reception, there’s no answer everyone will accept.

Entries are fair when the rules are known before they open and the order doesn’t depend on anyone at the club. Here are the pieces you need. Where we mention screens in PadelVER, we give their names in Spanish, as they appear in the app.

One opening time for everyone

Set when entries open and close, and announce it in advance. Before opening, the tournament’s page shows a countdown and the button activates on its own, at the same moment for everyone.

One thing to remember: entering takes a player account with a complete profile. It’s worth telling players a few days before, so nobody is creating one with the tournament already open.

The server sets the order

The time of each entry is set by the server when it records it, down to the millisecond. For example, “14:01:38,323” is 38 seconds and 323 milliseconds. Two things follow:

It doesn’t depend on anyone’s phone clock. It makes no difference if a player’s phone runs fast.
What counts is when the entry arrives and is recorded, not when the button was pressed.

With several people entering in the same second, the milliseconds decide. The club sees the list in order of arrival under the “Lista” tab, and can print it.

Show the list, or don’t

Publishing the list builds trust, but not every club wants to show it. So it’s an option for each tournament, off by default:

With the list on the site, players see each entrant’s nickname, level, position and time, never their name or phone number.
Without it, the page only says how many entries each category has. Each player sees their own entry and position.

What happens when it fills up

Decide before opening whether you’ll take reserve players, and how many per category. Once the places are full, the next people become reserves and move up automatically, in order, if someone drops out. Without reserves, a full category says “Completo”.

Pairs, without splitting them up

Pairs are what complicates the order most, so it helps to be clear on the rule. A pair entered together gets in together or goes on the reserve list together: they aren’t split for lack of places. They move up when there’s room for both, and in the meantime a single reserve who arrived later may get in.

On the site, players type their partner’s nickname, and the partner needs an account with a confirmed email. If the partner doesn’t have an account yet, they can hold the place with an invitation:

A held place counts from that moment, so it can leave others as reserves.
It lasts for the period you choose in the club’s settings (from 12 hours to 7 days, and never past the closing date), and you can turn it off.
If the partner doesn’t confirm in time, the invitation expires, the place is released and the person who sent it stays entered, alone.

If you allow long periods on a heavily subscribed tournament, you’ll have places held and unconfirmed. A shorter period is fairer to those waiting.

The rules worth publishing

Before opening, put these in the tournament’s information:

When entries open and close.
The level and type of each category.
How many places and reserves there are.
How and when to pay: entries are paid for at the club, not online.
Until when someone can give up their place without losing the money, if you collect it beforehand.

The site enforces the rules on places, level and order, and also stops anyone entering who already has another commitment at that time, at any club. But anything that isn’t written down will still get argued about.

After entries close

With the list closed, you set up the draws in the panel: groups of four, arranged by level, with pairs entered together playing together. PadelVER doesn’t handle results or knockout rounds: its job ends when each player knows who they’re playing with, where and at what time.