Club Rules

4 courts run 9:00–11:00am — roughly 20 players sign up, so 16 play and 4 sit out at any time. Each game runs 11 minutes (stopwatch/buzzer) followed by a 2-minute break — about 4–5 games an hour.

Sitting Out

• End of game: whoever's ahead when the buzzer sounds wins, game over. Level scores play one tie-break point.
• Sign in: write your name on the board in arrival order — that's your place in the sit-out queue.
• Board key: a number = a game you've played, an X = a game you sat out.
• Only Court Wardens update the board. To keep it accurate, please don't mark yourself in or out — let a Warden do it, so there's no confusion.
• Rotation: the most recent arrivals sit out first. Once everyone's had one turn, it starts again from the bottom. As soon as you sit out, you're back in for the very next game.
• Coming back in: the group that just sat out swaps straight back in for whichever group's turn it is to sit out next. E.g. Players 17–20 sit out Game 1; for Game 2, Player 20 takes over from Player 16, Player 19 from Player 15, Player 18 from Player 14, and Player 17 from Player 13.
• Only here for an hour? You're still expected to sit out at least once during your time on court — the same fairness rule applies whether you're here for the full 2 hours or just 1.
• Want out early? Find someone in the sit-out queue, swap places with them directly, and let a Court Warden know.

Example — all 20 players at 9am: each group of 4 sits out exactly once across 5 games.

Latecomers

Games go to 21 points; the 11-minute clock roughly matches that, so these are checkpoints within the game, not arbitrary numbers.

• Waiting for a court? Check the score on the active court nearest the board (usually Court 3 or 4). Either pair at 10+ (past halfway) → genuinely late, no X — but you're at the bottom of the queue, so you'll sit out next anyway. Both pairs under 10 → counts as sat out (X).
• Got 4 to start a court? At the buzzer, either pair at 5+ → finish your game to 11, counts as played (everyone else waits ~2–3 min for you). Both pairs under 5 → stop there, neutral — no X, no number.

Coming late never works in your favour — your name lands near the bottom of the list. But you won't be double-penalised if the timing genuinely wasn't in your control.

To balance players who come for a competitive game with players who prefer a more relaxed one, our 10–11am hour is split into two pools by ability (introduced 20 Sep 2026).

9:00–10:00am — Open Play

Unchanged. The normal Rotation and Sitting Out rules above apply, with no manual intervention from Court Wardens to balance games.

10:00–11:00am — Pool Play

For the second hour, players are split into two pools, each playing on its own pair of courts:

• One pool plays Courts 1 & 2 (slightly better lighting), the other plays Courts 3 & 4.
• Which pool gets which courts alternates every Sunday (from 27 Sep 2026), so both pools get equal time on Courts 1 & 2 over the course of a season — check /sunday-pools for that week's specific Pool A / Pool B court assignment.

Pool Play runs every Sunday during the 10–11am hour, independent of the Annual Players League season — the two pools and the alternating court assignment continue on their own schedule whether or not the League is currently in play.

Pools are formed from everyone confirmed for that Sunday's 10–11am session on Spond, split by the current Club Rankings — the top half by rank go into Pool A, the bottom half into Pool B. Anyone not yet in Club Rankings (e.g. a recently-joined player) defaults into Pool B.

Sitting Out (updated 22 Sep 2026)

Each pool now signs in on its own table on the board — write your name under Pool A or Pool B (whichever you're in) in arrival order, same as the usual 9am sign-in. Each pool then rotates its own sit-outs from its own queue, independently of the other pool — the same first-in-sit-out-first, back-in-next-round rotation as the normal 9am rules above, just run separately per pool.

• Even turnout (e.g. 20 signed up, 10 per pool): every round, 2 sit out from Pool A's queue and 2 sit out from Pool B's queue, at the same time.
• Uneven turnout (e.g. 19 signed up): the two pools alternate which one sits out that round — Pool A's queue sits out 2 one round, then Pool B's queue sits out 2 the next round, and so on.

Each Sunday's Pool A / Pool B is published in advance at /sunday-pools — check there before you arrive. Club Rankings are based on members' Top 10 votes, with Committee confirmation — see the Club Rankings page for details.