Reading the Bracket
Once an event is underway, the bracket shows where everyone stands and what's coming next.
What it shows
Matchups, results, and progression. Completed matches show their score; upcoming ones show who's playing, or wait on a result that hasn't landed yet.
Your own matches are the ones to watch — the bracket is also your schedule.
It looks different per format
Single elimination — a classic tree. Winners advance right, losers are out. Easy to read: find yourself, follow the line.
Round robin — a table, not a tree. Every team plays every other, so what matters is the standings rather than a path. You're looking at record and position.
Pool play with bracket — both. A table during the pool stage, then a tree once the top finishers advance. The transition is where people get confused: pool results stop mattering directly and only your seed carries forward.
King of the court — continuous rotation rather than a fixed bracket. Winners stay, losers go to the back.
See Tournament Formats.
Courts
When an event is hosted at a venue, courts get reserved for it. A court running an event match shows the competing teams rather than a queue, and displays a reservation banner.
That's why you can't join a court queue on a reserved court during an event window — the court is committed.
Playing your match
When your match comes up, it starts like any other game — you set up teams, and the organizer's rules are already applied. Game point, win condition, and scoring style were fixed at event creation and are the same for every match.
Everything in Playing a Game applies. Score it the same way.
After a match
The result feeds the bracket, and the next matchup is determined from it. In a round robin or league season, it feeds standings instead.
PaddleRank is awarded at the same moment as any other game — with the event or league source multiplier applied, which is the highest in the app. See Ending a Game.
Leagues
A league season shows standings that accumulate across matches rather than a single-elimination path. The table is the point: who's leading, who's played whom, what's left.
See Events & Leagues.