Portola Valley Pickleball
Intermediate Round Robin Events
What are Round Robin events? In these events, either 8 or 12 or 16 players will participate. If there are eight players, each player will play one game with each of the other seven players. This will take about 2 hours. Scores will be recorded.
If there are 12 players, switching partners after each game will be similar although each player will not be able to play with every other player. The event will take about 2 hours. No one will sit out any game.
If there are 16 players, then probably people will be randomly divided into two groups of 8 each. Then each of these groups will have their own 8-person RR event.
PROTOCOLS
• Initially, RR events will take place on Friday starting at 4:00 pm. This may change depending on turnout at this time, feedback from players, availability of courts, season, etc.
• Names of all players will be placed on the Participant List in a random order. The list will always be available. It may also be obtained from the coordinator.
• For an RR event with 8 players, the coordinator will email an invitation to next 8 people on the list. These people can hold a spot if they respond by email within 24 hrs. Invitations for each event will first be sent out by 7:00 pm five days before the event.
• Suppose only 5 people respond positively. Then the coordinator will send an invitation to the next 3 people on the list, who also have 24 hrs to respond.
• This continues until 8 people sign up.
• The next time that an RR event is organized, the first invitations will be sent to the next people on the list. Also, people who were invited for the previous event but declined (probably because their schedule didn’t allow it) will also get an invitation. Once we get to the end of the list, the list will be sorted in a new random order and invitations will start again at the beginning of the new list. This new ordering allows any player to play with different players.
For example, suppose there are 14 people who have signed up for these RR events. Each person will be randomly assigned a number from 1 to 14. For the first 8-person event, invitations will be sent out to numbers 1 through 8. Suppose numbers 5 and 7 decline but the others accept. Then invitations will be sent out to the next two numbers, which are 9 and 10. If they accept, then there are 8 participants and the event is set. In this case, for the next 8-person event, the first 8 people invited would be numbers 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, and the first two people of the newly randomized list (who have not already been invited).
• If there is sufficient interest, these events may be set up with 12 or 16 people. No more than 16 people can participate because the event will be restricted to one tennis court, which has 4 pickleball courts.
• Note that for any event, only those people invited will get bugged by emails and it will be only two emails. The first will be the invitation and the second will be the final confirmation when the event is all set up. Those that are not invited will net get bugged at all. (However, just to keep people informed, the coordinator may announce to all when an event is set up and what are the numbers to be invited first for the next event.)
• Each invitation will list the people included in that invitation and the people who may have already accepted for that particular event.