Padel Warrior

Every week the app pairs everyone up automatically, trying to give you someone you haven't partnered with yet. Over the season it works through all 15 possible partners for each of you. It also tries to keep both sides of a match evenly matched by rating, and avoids sticking the two highest-rated players together as partners until it's genuinely unavoidable near the end.

Update your own rating anytime from the Admin tab, no password needed for that part. It's what the app uses to balance matches fairly, so a stale rating means worse matchups for everyone.

Away for a week, a weekend, whatever? Add your own dates in Admin under Availability, no password needed there either. The app automatically leaves you out of that week's matches and slots you back in once you're back. If the numbers left over don't divide evenly into groups of four, whoever's furthest ahead on partnerships already is the one who sits out that week.

If something comes up on the day, tap Can't play? next to your name on the match card. The app looks for someone else who's free and slots them in as your replacement. If nobody's free, the whole match falls away for the week — no points either way, it just doesn't count.

Sometimes the four of you just can't land on a time. Any one of you can tap Can't schedule? on the match card and it's cancelled immediately — no need for the other three to confirm it. All four of you are freed up for the week, nobody's on the hook for it.

Already got a match this week but keen for another one? Tick Up for a 2nd game? on your match card. If someone else's match falls through and there aren't enough genuinely free players to cover it, the app can pull you in for a second one. Just know that means two separate results and two lots of points that week — not extra points bolted onto your first match.

Any of the four players in a match can enter the result. Put in the actual games per set, like 6-2, not just who won the set. Third set is optional, only fill it in if you actually played one.

Scores need to be in by Sunday at 10pm. If a match still has no result by then, it's automatically marked as not played — no points for anyone in it, same as if it never happened. So if you played, get the score in before Sunday night.

Whoever's tagged Captain on a match card is on the hook for starting a separate 4-person WhatsApp group with just that match's players, to sort out the actual time and court. Keeps the main group chat from filling up with scheduling back-and-forth every week.

Win a match (2 sets to 0 or 1) and you both get 3 points.

Split it 1-1 and stop there (ran out of time, didn't finish a third) and all four of you get 1 point each.

Lose and you get nothing.

If your team is rated lower than the other side and you win anyway, you get bonus points on top of the usual 3, based on how big the gap was.

Example: gap between the two sides was 1.07, you'd get 3 + 1.07 = 4.07 points each.

The biggest possible mismatch caps the bonus at 3 extra points, so 6 total is the max for the biggest upset going. Win as the favourite like everyone expected, and it's just the normal 3, no bonus.

The main prize. Most points at the end of the season wins it.

A completely separate award. It tracks, on average, how many games you give away per match across everything you've played this season, win or lose.

Example: play 10 matches and give away 45 games total across them, your average is 4.5. Lowest average at the end of the year takes this one.

To actually be in the running you need to have played at least 75% of the weeks so far, so nobody can win it off one flukey week and then vanish.

Whoever's ahead on The Iron Wall log wins the tie, but only if they actually qualify for that award (see the 75% rule above). If neither guy qualifies, it comes down to rating, then alphabetically.