What is a Round Robin in Pickleball?
A Pickleball Round Robin is a tournament or social play format where players rotate partners and opponents in a structured manner, ensuring everyone plays multiple games against different competitors. It’s popular for casual and competitive play since it provides a fair and balanced way for all participants to compete.
What you need to get started
Below you will see that there are numbers, everyone needs one to get started. You can do this two ways. The easiest is to use a deck of cards and pull out the Ace, and then numbers 2-8 or 2-Queen where the Jack would be 11 and Q would be #12. Everyone pulls a card and writes down their name next to the # they pulled. You could write numbers on pickleball printables papers to pull or just write them down randomly to get started.
How a Pickleball Round Robin Works
- Players: Typically works best with 4, 6, 8, or more players.
- Games: Each player or team plays a set number of matches.
- Rotations: Players switch partners and opponents based on a predetermined schedule.
- Scoring: Games can be played to 11 or 15 points (win by 2), depending on the format. Same as if you used our Free Pickleball Bracket Sheet but this is usually more for fun vs. competitions.
Common Round Robin Formats
- Single Round Robin – Each player/team plays against every other player/team once.
- Double Round Robin – Each player/team plays every other player/team twice.
- Timed Round Robin – Instead of a set number of points, matches last a specific time (e.g., 12-15 minutes), or you could use rally scoring in pickleball
For Singles (1v1)
- Each player competes against every other player once.
- Example for 6 players:
- Round 1: A vs B, C vs D, E vs F
- Round 2: A vs C, B vs D, E vs F
- Continue until all matchups are played.
For Doubles (2v2)
- Players rotate partners every match, so everyone partners with different players.
- Example for 6 players:
- Round 1: Player 1 & 2 vs Player 3 & 4
- Round 2: Player 1 & 3 vs Player 5 & 6
- Continue until all matchups are played.
How to Win
You can grab our printable pickleball rules sheet too which is nice to display especially if you have newer players so they can refer to this;
- Total Wins: The player/team with the most wins is the champion.
- Point Differential: If there’s a tie, use total points scored minus points allowed.
- Head-to-Head Record: If still tied, check who won the match between the tied players.
Free PDF Pickleball Round Robin Sheets
- You can print round robin sheets here for 8 players.
- If you have a larger group you will need our 12 player round robin printable here instead.
You will want a minimum of 8 people which is 2 courts full of players. This is typically done with doubles, all men or women, and is best with somewhat similar playing levels too if possible. You could do this with 12 players as well, or if you had 4 courts you could go further with 16!
Typically games will last 12 minutes and then you would rotate to another partner, player. You will want to base it off a flat time period vs. “until the game ends” because each court will take a different amount of time to reach 11 points and the the other players would have to wait.
The only real cemented rule in this type of game play would be that you would only play with the same partner once, rotating every 10-12 minutes so you play multiple games with a different set of competitors. Everyone is designated a number so you can keep track, but beyond that your group could tweak from there.
