Padel with an odd number of players: who sits out and when
The group chat said twelve. Eleven confirmed. Nine people are standing on the court at ten past seven. This is the normal state of social padel, and the question is always the same: two courts hold eight players, so what happens to the ninth.
The arithmetic, in one line
A padel court holds four players. So the number that decides your game is not odd or even, it is what is left over when you divide the group by four.
Nine players: two courts, eight on court, one sitting. Eleven players: two courts, eight on court, three sitting. Both are odd numbers, and they are two completely different games.
That leftover is the only thing you have to manage all session.
Which group sizes actually hurt
Here is the part most organisers have backwards. Nine players is one of the easiest groups there is, and seven is one of the hardest.
With nine, one person sits per round, so each player misses about one round in nine: eleven percent of the game. With seven on a single court, three people sit every round, and each player spends over forty percent of the session watching.
So before you cancel because the numbers came out odd, look at the share, not at the parity.
| Players | Courts | On court | Sitting | Share of the game spent sitting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 20% |
| 6 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 33% |
| 7 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 43% |
| 9 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 11% |
| 10 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 20% |
| 11 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 27% |
| 13 | 3 | 12 | 1 | 8% |
| 14 | 3 | 12 | 2 | 14% |
| 15 | 3 | 12 | 3 | 20% |
The only rotation rule that matters
Nobody sits out twice before everybody has sat out once.
That is the whole rule, and it is not about fairness in the abstract. Break it and the game quietly sorts itself into regulars and spares, and the spares do not come back next week.
In practice it means keeping an order and actually following it. That is easy with nine players, where one name moves per round. With eleven it means tracking three names a round while the courts are running late and somebody is asking you what the score was.
Give the player who sits a job
Sitting out is dead time only if you leave it empty.
The person sitting keeps the score for the nearest court, or runs the clock for all of them, or takes the first serve in the next round.
And say one thing out loud before the first round: whoever sits out first plays every round after it. People accept sitting much more easily once they know when it ends.
Five, six and seven on one court
On a single court these are the hardest numbers on the page, and the usual answer, run it as a normal Americano, is the wrong one.
Play shorter rounds instead. A pool of 16 points rather than 24 turns a fifteen minute round into eight or nine minutes, so the people sitting are back on court twice as often. The total playing time is the same, the waiting feels half as long.
With seven, consider making a phone call. Of every number on this page, seven is the one where a single extra player changes the whole game: it takes the share sitting from forty three percent to nothing.
Somebody leaves halfway through
Twelve became eleven after round three. The standings are already running, and this is where a paper draw falls apart.
The points already scored stay. From the next round you are simply an eleven player game, with three sitting instead of nobody, and the rotation order restarts from whoever has sat out least.
The part that goes wrong is the final table. If people played a different number of rounds, comparing total points punishes whoever sat out most, through no fault of their own.
Nine, eleven, thirteen: the draw is the same work
MyPadel takes the names, draws every round, tracks who has already sat out and keeps the score. Free for organisers, and players need no account.
Set up a gameFAQ
- Can you play padel Americano with an odd number of players?
- Yes, and it is completely normal. Players take turns sitting out. The only rule that matters is that nobody sits twice before everybody has sat once.
- Is nine players a bad number for padel?
- No, it is one of the best. Nine means one person sits per round, about eleven percent of the game. Seven and eleven are the numbers that actually cause trouble.
- What do you do with the extra player?
- Give them the round off with a job: scoring the nearest court, running the clock, or going first next round. Then make sure they are back on court for every remaining round.
- How do you rank players who played a different number of rounds?
- On points per round rather than total points. Otherwise the player who sat out most is punished twice, once by the rotation and once by the standings.
- What is the minimum number of players for Americano?
- Five. With four the partners cannot change, so you are playing normal padel. Five is the smallest group where the format does what it is for.