Pickleball Open Play Rotation

Open Play runs the pickleball rotation at the court, on one phone. It decides who plays next, shows the draw on a board the whole group can read, and proves at the end that the session was fair.

Paddle stacking starts the same argument at every pickleball session: who sat twice in a row, who keeps drawing the same partner, where the player who turned up at ten o'clock fits in. Open Play answers out loud. Every round prints the reason it looks the way it does — "Sitting out: Carlos, Beth — fewest sit-outs so far" — so the draw is something you point at instead of defend.

Built for the court
• Works with no signal. No account, no sign-in, nothing in the cloud — outdoor pickleball courts rarely have a usable bar of service.
• The host runs it alone on a phone or a tablet. Nobody else installs anything.
• Big board view turns the tablet sideways and prints the round in letters you can read from the fence.
• Late arrivals and early leavers are handled mid-session. Someone who shows up at round four joins the queue where the group already is, so they neither jump the line nor sit all night.
• Five to twenty-four players, one to six courts.

Four ways to run the court
• Open play — equal sit-outs first, then fresh partners and fresh opponents.
• Winners stay — winners hold the court, challengers rotate in.
• King of the court — winners move up a court, losers move down, and the bottom court is the door so nobody on the bench is locked out.
• Social round robin — everyone partners everyone before anyone repeats.

Skill balancing is optional: give each player a 1 to 7 rating and the draw spreads the levels across the courts instead of stacking one strong court.

The fairness report
At the end of the session every player gets a line: games played, rounds sat out, games won, and each partner they drew. The numbers add up in public, which is the whole point. It is the report, not the promise, that ends the argument.

Made for pickleball open play at rec centres, clubs, churches, retirement communities and neighbourhood courts — anywhere a host has to seat a doubles rotation fairly and quickly. The same draw works for other round-robin doubles: padel, badminton, tennis social nights.

No account. No subscription. Nothing leaves the phone.