How many courts do I need for 12 players?

Three. Four players to a court in any doubles racket sport, so twelve divides exactly and nobody sits out.

How many rounds fit in two hours?

Seven, with rounds of 24 points. Thirteen minutes of play plus two minutes of changeover is fifteen, and ten minutes go at the start on arrivals and the draw.

How long does one Americano round take?

About thirteen minutes for a pool of 24, about nine for a pool of 16, about ten for a pickleball pool of 15. Add two minutes of changeover to any of them.

Can everyone play with everyone?

Only with eight players or fewer. Eight needs seven rounds and a two hour booking gives seven. Twelve would need eleven rounds, which no normal booking provides.

What do I do with 10 players and 2 courts?

Play with two sitting each round, and use a shorter pool so they are back on court sooner. Or invite two more and fill three courts.

How many courts do I need, and how long will it take?

Both questions get asked in the same message, usually to a club receptionist who needs an answer now. Courts is arithmetic and takes a second. Time is where organisers get it wrong, and they get it wrong in the same direction every time: they book for the rounds they planned, not the rounds they will get.

Courts: divide by four

Every doubles racket sport puts four players on a court, so twelve players need three courts, sixteen need four, twenty need five. Padel, pickleball, tennis and badminton behave identically here.

If the number does not divide by four, you book the floor and somebody sits each round. Ten players is two courts with two sitting, not two and a half courts.

The temptation is to book one more court and spread out. It does not work: a court needs four players or it stands empty, and the four who go on it are four fewer in the rotation.

Time: a two hour booking is seven rounds

Here is the arithmetic nobody does. A round of 24 points takes about thirteen minutes of play. Two hours divided by thirteen is nine, so people plan nine rounds.

Then reality takes its cut. Ten minutes at the start while people arrive, change shoes and the draw gets read out. Two minutes between every round while eight to twenty people walk to different courts and work out who they are with.

A hundred and twenty minutes, minus ten at the start, divided by fifteen, is seven. Seven rounds, not nine. A ninety minute booking is five.

This is the single most useful number on the page. Plan seven rounds for two hours and the game ends on time with everyone satisfied. Plan nine and you will be cutting rounds short from the fifth one on, which is exactly when the standings start to matter.

What you can actually expect to get

Rounds are not the thing players care about. What they notice is how many different people they played with.

In Americano you get one new partner per round, so seven rounds means seven partners. Whether that covers the group depends entirely on how big the group is.

Players	Courts	Sitting each round	Rounds in 2 h	Partners you get
8	2	nobody	7	all 7
10	2	2	7	7 of 9
12	3	nobody	7	7 of 11
16	4	nobody	7	7 of 15
20	5	nobody	7	7 of 19
24	6	nobody	7	7 of 23

Eight is the only number that finishes the job

Look down that last column. With eight players and two courts, seven rounds is exactly enough to play with every other person in the group once. The format completes.

At twelve you meet two thirds of the group. At sixteen, under half. At twenty four you play with seven people out of twenty three and go home having met less than a third of the players you came to play with.

That is not an argument against big groups, it is an argument for saying what the game is. A group of eight is a game where everyone meets everyone. A group of twenty four is a busy social session where you meet some people, and it should be sold as that.

Shorter rounds are the lever

If the group is large and you want people to meet more of each other, the lever is the pool, not the booking.

Drop from 24 points to 16 and a round goes from thirteen minutes to about nine. Two hours then gives ten rounds instead of seven, which at sixteen players takes you from seven partners to ten.

The cost is that each round is a smaller sample, so the standings are noisier and one unlucky round weighs more. For a competitive group keep 24. For a social one, 16 is usually the better game.

What to tell the club when you book

Book the courts for fifteen minutes longer than you intend to play. Not to play longer, but so that the last round is not being hurried off the court while the next group stands at the door.

Ask for the courts next to each other. Rotation across two blocks separated by other courts adds a minute to every changeover, which over seven rounds is most of a round.

And ask whether the booking is per court or per person. It changes the cost split, and it is the question organisers forget until the money comes up at the end.

Put in the numbers, get the rounds

MyPadel takes the group size and the courts, draws every round, keeps the score and hands you a picture of the result for the group chat. Free for organisers, and players need no account.

Set up a game

FAQ

How many courts do I need for 12 players?: Three. Four players to a court in any doubles racket sport, so twelve divides exactly and nobody sits out.
How many rounds fit in two hours?: Seven, with rounds of 24 points. Thirteen minutes of play plus two minutes of changeover is fifteen, and ten minutes go at the start on arrivals and the draw.
How long does one Americano round take?: About thirteen minutes for a pool of 24, about nine for a pool of 16, about ten for a pickleball pool of 15. Add two minutes of changeover to any of them.
Can everyone play with everyone?: Only with eight players or fewer. Eight needs seven rounds and a two hour booking gives seven. Twelve would need eleven rounds, which no normal booking provides.
What do I do with 10 players and 2 courts?: Play with two sitting each round, and use a shorter pool so they are back on court sooner. Or invite two more and fill three courts.