Rally Rules

• Beating a stronger player moves your number up more. The score doesn’t matter — a win is a win.
• New players start at 1500 and move fast. Players with a history start near their usual level and move in smaller steps.
• Every game updates your number right away. Sitting out changes nothing.
• Same number? We use today’s head-to-head first, then your starting number. Never a coin flip.
• Losing on purpose never helps. It drops your Strength for good, and at best drops you into a lower bracket that pays less. Playing your best is always the better move.

• Round 1: a random draw, so everyone starts even.
• Round 2 on: you play the player nearest you in the standings — best plays next-best — so every game counts.
• No rematches while a fresh matchup is still possible. A repeat only happens in a small field that has run out of new opponents, and then it’s the fewest possible.
• Odd number of players? One person sits out each round, taking turns. Nobody sits twice. A sit-out adds nothing and takes nothing away.
• About scoring: sorting games usually use rally scoring (a point can be won on any serve) to keep the rounds moving — it’s recommended, not required. Bracket games usually use standard scoring. Either way, only the win counts.

• Bracket sizes are set from the field — by Strength levels in singles, by the number of teams in doubles (any field from 4 to 64, up to four brackets). Who goes in each bracket follows today’s record — the best records fill Bracket 1, the next fill Bracket 2, and so on.
• Same record? The tie goes to today’s Strength (within 5 points counts as a tie), then today’s head-to-head, then most improved today. Never a coin flip.
• Playing better can only help. A great sorting run can raise your seed, but it can never drop where you’re guaranteed to finish — and it can never bump you down a bracket.
• Inside your bracket, the best record today gets the #1 seat — and the bye, if the bracket has one. Then it’s a normal knockout: the top seed plays the lowest, and the two best seeds can’t meet until the final.
• Every bracket is a knockout down to 1st and 2nd — a full one runs Round of 16 → quarterfinals → semifinals → final. Each match starts fresh at 0–0, and a bye never lowers where you finish.

• It starts with all the entry fees that were paid.
• 8 or fewer paid players → no operator fee and no charity percentage. The whole gate, less any venue bill and gear receipts, is the players’ pot — apart from whatever the prize chart can’t pay out in clean prizes, which goes to charity. (Eight players at $30 fund a $240 pool, the chart schedules $220, and the last $20 goes to charity.)
• More than 8 → three things come off, in this order: the venue bill if there is one; a $2-per-player operator fee (capped at $60) that keeps the platform running; and the event’s gear receipts — balls and eyewear the director has confirmed as paid back, at their actual cost. Nothing is set aside for supplies in advance; receipts come off at any event size.
• Then a share of what’s left after those goes to the event’s grassroots recipient (for KFR Houston, the Texas Jr Racquetball Team). The director sets that share before the start — it’s 20% by default, and can be anything from 0% up to 100% for a fully-charitable event. It’s fixed at the start and never changes.
• Prizes come from a set chart, and the chart depends on the format. There are three places — 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, which the two beaten semifinalists tie for (both read 3rd - Tie, and both win the same). In singles, a small bracket pays its top two; once a bracket reaches 8 players it pays four prizes — 1st, 2nd, and both tied semifinalists. In doubles and blind doubles, every bracket pays four prizes and the two beaten semifinalists tie for 3rd. Every prize is a clean multiple of $10, paid in $100, $50, $20, and $10 bills — and in singles the smallest prize rises with the buy-in: half the entry fee, rounded down to a whole $10 (never less than $10).
• 2nd place in a higher bracket always beats 1st place in the one below. So dropping down never pays more — there’s no reward for losing on purpose.
• The pool is rounded down to a clean $20 so it can be paid out in bills, and the few odd dollars go to charity. Anything the prize chart can’t schedule into clean prizes goes to charity too — that’s a separate remainder, and it happens on ordinary events, not just tiny ones. On a field of more than 8, charity gets at least $20 so long as there’s that much left after the costs above.
• If the money can’t cover the costs, the charity floor and a real prize chart, the event can’t start until the director fixes it — it never quietly turns into a no-prize event. The one exception is an event the director sets up as a no-prize charity event: after the costs, everything goes to charity. Standings and titles still count.

• Strength counts who you beat, not just how many — so you can’t pump it up by beating easy players. Everyone starts at 1500, and it climbs faster when you beat strong players. This is the number that seeds every event.
• Skill Score rewards winning — how often and how well you win. It’s what ranks the season leaderboard and sorts its divisions — GOAT, Pro, Open, Elite, then A, B, and C.
• Both are kept for each format. Your singles, doubles, and blind-doubles numbers are separate — a singles star isn’t automatically a doubles star.
• They don’t change each other. Strength decides how you’re seeded; Skill Score decides where you stand.
• In doubles you win and lose as a team, so both numbers reflect your team’s day.

See them live on the Player Board →, or on any player’s profile — one set for every format they play.