The format
Deuce Ladder rules
This is the full ruleset. Every ladder on Deuce runs it. Organizers can change a short list of settings, marked throughout, and nothing else.
If you want the two-minute version, read how it works. If you want to know how scores get confirmed, read scoring.
If you need rules for a ladder that does not run on Deuce, copy the free tennis ladder rules template.
1. The short version
You sit on a numbered rung. You challenge someone up to five rungs above you. You play. Both players confirm the score.
The result pays out in Deuce Points. Points are what order the standings, so the ladder is not a swap. Beating someone above you does not simply take their rung. It pays you, and the payment is bigger when the opponent was further above you.
Points count for 365 days, then they expire. Stop playing and you lose points on a schedule. Play often and you climb, even against players who beat you head to head.
One guarantee sits on top of all of it. Challenge someone above you and win, and you finish above them. The points decide by how much.
2. The ladder
A ladder is a single ordered list of players. Rung 1 is the top.
Your rung is not something you own. It is where your Deuce Points put you, recalculated on a schedule and after every confirmed result. See section 14.
A city ladder is open to anyone in that city. A club ladder is open to that club's members. Both run these rules.
A city runs one ladder. The point of a ladder is the people already on it, and two city ladders in one city would be one group of players split into two shorter lists. A city holds as many club ladders as it has clubs, because those are separate groups rather than one group divided.
3. Joining and placement
You tell us your level when you join. We accept any of these:
NTRP, UTR, WTN, LTA rating, ITN, a national federation ranking, or a club level.
All of them are optional. If you have none, describe your level in plain words and we place you from that.
We place you at the top of the plausible range, never the middle. If we are not sure whether you are a 3.5 or a 4.0, you go in as a 4.0. A wrong placement that gives you an easy opponent is worse than one that gives you a hard match, because the easy version distorts the ladder for everyone below you.
You start with zero Deuce Points. Placement decides your opening rung. Your results decide everything after that.
Deuce can also place you on a named rung, when you join or later. Your Deuce Points are then set to hold that rung, and those points decay and expire like any others. The reason is published in your ladder's log, and you get an email saying where you landed.
New players get one unrestricted challenge, described in 5.4.
4. Your status
4.1
Every player is in exactly one of five statuses.
| Status | Meaning | Can be challenged |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Playing normally | Yes |
| Absent | You declared an absence | No |
| Decaying | No played match for 30 days or more. Losing points | Yes |
| Inactive | Repeated walkovers. Set by rule, reviewable by your organizer | Yes |
| Withdrawn | You left the ladder, or 365 days passed with no played match | No |
4.2
Decaying is not a punishment for being away. It is the automatic consequence of a ladder position that no longer reflects anything recent. You keep your place in the ladder throughout. See section 12.
4.3
Inactive is different. It is for repeated walkovers, which is a behavior problem, not an absence.
4.4
Withdrawn players are removed from the standings but not from Deuce. Rejoining takes one tap. See 12.5.
5. Who you can challenge
5.1
You may challenge any player up to five rungs above you, inclusive. If you are on rung 6, rung 1 is in range.
Five is the default. Your organizer can set a different number.
5.2
You cannot challenge down. If someone is below you, they challenge you.
5.3
Your target is locked when you send the challenge. The standings move on their own as other people play and as points expire. The player who was four rungs above you on Tuesday may be six above you on Thursday. The match still counts, and it pays out against the rung gap at the moment you sent it.
5.4
Your first challenge on a ladder can go to any rung in your level band. Not the whole ladder, your band. Use it once.
This exists so a misplaced player finds their real level in one match instead of five. It is always on. Organizers cannot switch it off.
5.5
You can have one challenge open at a time, sent or received. Play it before you send another.
6. Responding to a challenge
You have five days to respond. Accept or decline.
Silence past five days is a walkover. The challenger gets the win, you take a conduct penalty. See 17.2.
You may decline. Every player gets two free declines per 90 days. After that, a decline costs points. See 17.3.
Declining does not protect your rung from anything except that one match.
The response window is an organizer setting.
7. Playing the match
You have thirty days from acceptance to play. The challenger books the court unless you agree otherwise.
If thirty days pass with no match and no agreement, the challenge expires. Neither player gets result points. Neither takes a penalty. The match never happened.
If one player is clearly the reason it did not happen, either player can report it and the organizer decides.
The play window is an organizer setting.
8. Match formats
8.5
Six formats can be recorded.
- Best of three tiebreak sets
- Best of three, third set as a match tiebreak to 10
- One set, tiebreak at 6-6
- Eight-game pro set
- Short sets to four, tiebreak at 3-3
- FAST4
Each ladder chooses which of these formats it accepts, and sets one of them as its default. The platform default is best of three tiebreak sets.
A challenge does not name a format. Agree one of the accepted formats before you play, and size it to the court slot you booked. A one-hour slot is not best of three. Whoever reports the result records the format you played, and the score is checked against it.
No-ad scoring and a deciding point are options inside a format, not formats.
The match tiebreak guide explains the ten-point decider and how to enter its score.
8.6
A format not on that list cannot be recorded. If you played something else, the match does not count.
9. Reporting the score
The winner enters the score. The loser confirms it.
If the loser says nothing before the auto-confirm timer runs out, the score stands. Silence confirms a score. Silence never blocks one.
Only real scorelines are accepted. A score that could not have happened in the agreed format is rejected at entry.
Full detail, including the penalty for faking a score, is on scoring.
10. Deuce Points
10.1 What they are
Deuce Points are what order the standings. They are earned per match. They are never taken from your opponent and never transferred.
Every point you hold is attached to a dated entry. You can open your points ledger and see which match paid you what, and when it expires.
Points belong to one ladder. They do not move to another ladder or another city.
10.2 Default point schedule
| What happened | Points |
|---|---|
| You played a match and the score was confirmed | +2 |
| It was your first match against that opponent in the last 365 days | +1 |
| You won | +10 |
| You won, per rung the opponent was above you | +2 each, up to +10 |
| You won by walkover | +6, and no +2 for playing |
| You lost in a deciding set or a match tiebreak | +2 |
| You lost any other way | 0 |
| You missed the response deadline, or you did not show | −5 |
| You declined past your allowance | −2 |
These are the platform defaults. Your ladder's organizer can change every reward and penalty in this table, including the points per rung above and its maximum. Your ladder page shows the values that apply to your matches. A saved change applies when a result or penalty is settled.
Worked examples, using the default values on a five-rung ladder range:
- You beat the player five rungs above you. 2 + 1 + 10 + 10 = 23.
- You beat the player directly above you. 2 + 1 + 10 + 2 = 15.
- You defended your rung against a challenger below. 2 + 1 + 10 = 13.
- You lost 7-6 in the third going five rungs up. 2 + 1 + 2 = 5.
- You lost 6-0 6-0. 2 + 1 = 3.
Losing a close match to a strong player pays. That is deliberate. Challenging up should not be something you are punished for trying.
10.3 The activity cap
The +2 for playing and the +1 for a new opponent are capped at 12 points per 30 days. Result points are not capped.
So volume pays, but only if you are also winning. A player who plays fifteen matches a month and loses all of them cannot pass a player who plays four and wins three.
10.4 Expiry
Every point expires 365 days after the match that earned it.
The standings are a rolling twelve months, always. There is no season reset and no all-time table. Nobody builds a lead you cannot catch, because nobody holds anything older than a year.
Tenure is worth exactly zero. Nobody accumulates. Your total converges on what you earned in the last twelve months and stops there. A player who joined five years ago and a player who joined last year hold identical totals if their recent form is identical. A long-standing player cannot sit on a lead, because the points that built it expire on schedule whether or not they keep playing.
Your ledger shows what is about to expire. So does your email.
10.5 What points are not
Deuce Points are not a rating. They do not measure how good you are. They measure what you have done on this ladder in the last twelve months.
We do not publish a Deuce rating of any kind. See section 20.
11. Absence
11.1
Two kinds. Both stop challenges reaching you and both stop the decay clock.
| Standard absence | Extended absence | |
|---|---|---|
| How long | Up to 21 days | Up to 6 months, renewable every 90 days |
| Reason needed | No | Yes, in writing |
| Approval | Immediate, self-serve | Your organizer |
| Your rung | Held | Held |
| Decay | Paused | Paused |
| Point expiry | Runs normally | Paused |
11.2
Extended absence stops the expiry clock. Every point you hold when the absence starts has its 365 days pushed back by the length of the absence.
Without that, a player back from a six-month injury would return to an empty ledger and a rung they can no longer defend. Pausing decay alone would be theater.
11.3
Your organizer reviews extended absence requests. If nobody responds in seven days, it is approved automatically. An injured player is never left waiting on an inbox.
11.4
Standard absences run up to 21 days each. There is no limit on how many you can take, because a standard absence costs you the same 21 days of not playing that anyone else would pay.
11.5
Three rules stop absence being used as a shield.
- You cannot start an absence while a challenge is pending or accepted and unplayed.
- An absence that starts within 48 hours of a challenge reaching you does not cancel that challenge. Answer it first.
- Playing a match ends your absence.
12. Inactivity decay
12.1
The ladder measures the last twelve months. A player who stops playing stops being a measurement.
Every 30 days without a played match, a share of your points is removed. It escalates.
| Days since your last played match | You keep |
|---|---|
| 30 | 85% |
| 60 | 75% of what remained |
| 90 | 60% |
| 120 | 50% |
| 150 | 50% |
| 180 | 35%, and your rung is released |
| 210 through 330 | 35% at each step |
| 365 | You are withdrawn |
Starting from 100 points, that leaves you 85, then 64, then 38, then 19, then 10, then 3.
12.2
Decay is a percentage, so it costs the leader more than it costs the player on rung 30. That is the point. A strong player who stops playing should fall faster than a weak one, because they had further to fall.
12.3
At 180 days your rung is released. You go to the foot of the ladder and everyone above you moves up one. By then your points are near zero, so this is the standings catching up with your ledger rather than a second punishment.
12.4
We warn you before every step, not after. Emails go out at day 23, 53, 83, 173 and 335. The last one names the date you will be withdrawn.
12.5
At 365 days with no played match, you are withdrawn. Your points are gone and you leave the standings.
You are not deleted. Rejoining takes one tap, and you come back placed by your level, like any new player. Decay never removes anyone. Twelve months of silence does, and only after five warnings.
12.6
A walkover win does not restart your clock. Only a played match does. Otherwise the way to dodge decay would be to challenge someone you know will not reply.
12.7
Organizers running outdoor clubs in cold climates can set a dormancy window, a fixed run of months each year when decay does not run. Set once, published on the ladder page, the same for everyone.
13. Rematches and repeat opponents
13.1
You can play the same opponent as often as you like. The ladder does not stop you.
13.2
But the +1 for a new opponent only pays once per opponent per 365 days. Playing the whole ladder pays more than playing one friend twenty times.
13.3
A rematch has a cooldown, counted in days. The default is 14. Playing somebody else does not shorten it.
It is a day count on purpose. A "play someone else first" rule can be gamed by two friends who each play a third person once and then trade wins forever.
The cooldown is an organizer setting.
14. How the standings are ordered
14.1
Highest Deuce Points is rung 1.
14.2
One rule overrides the points. If you challenge a player above you and win, you finish above them. If the points would not have moved you past them, you move past them anyway by the smallest margin that does it.
You beat them. You go above them. That does not need an explanation in a table.
14.3
The standings recalculate when a score is confirmed, and on a fixed schedule your organizer sets: daily, every three days, or weekly. The schedule is published on your ladder page.
14.4
Rungs move when nobody plays. Points expire every day, so the order can shift overnight with no match involved. That is the rolling window doing its job. Your challenge target is locked when you send it, so nothing in flight breaks.
15. Ties
Every tiebreak reads the same twelve-month window as the points.
- Deuce Points
- Head to head between the tied players
- Sets won minus sets lost
- Games won minus games lost
- Oldest live points entry, earlier first
The fifth one settles everything else, so no tie ever reaches an organizer's judgment. Leaving the last tiebreak to a person is how disputes start.
16. Mixed standings and filters
16.1
A city ladder is mixed. One ladder, one set of rungs, everyone in it.
16.2
You can filter the standings to show men only or women only. It changes what you see. It changes nothing else.
16.3
Your challenge range is always counted on the full mixed ladder. If you are rung 14 overall and 3rd among women, your five rungs up means rungs 9 through 13, not the two women above you.
A filter that changed who you could challenge would create two rulesets and one argument nobody can win.
16.4
Telling us your gender is optional. If you do not, you appear in the mixed standings and in neither filter.
16.5
A club that wants a separate women's competition creates it as its own ladder, with its own rungs. City ladders stay mixed.
17. Conduct and penalties
17.1
Falsifying a score removes the match, removes its points, and is grounds for removal from the ladder. Detail on scoring.
17.2
Missing the response deadline is a walkover, and costs you 5 points. So does not showing up to a match you accepted.
Three walkovers in 90 days sets your status to inactive. Your organizer can review it.
17.3
You get two free declines per 90 days. Beyond that, each decline costs 2 points. Declining is allowed. Declining as a strategy is not.
17.4
No penalty can take you below zero points.
18. Playoffs and qualification
Some ladders finish with a playoff. Where they do:
Qualification is gated on matches played, not on rung alone. The minimum is set by your organizer and published before the ladder opens.
A player who reaches rung 1 in four matches has not proven what a ladder is supposed to prove.
19. When things update
| Event | When |
|---|---|
| A confirmed score | Standings recalculate immediately |
| Point expiry | Every recalculation run |
| Decay steps | Every recalculation run, applied at 30-day marks |
| Decay warnings | Day 23, 53, 83, 173 and 335 |
| Withdrawal | Day 365 |
Your organizer sets the run frequency: daily, every three days, or weekly. Whichever it is, it is on your ladder page.
20. What Deuce does not do
We do not publish our own rating.
Tennis has enough of them, and the ones that matter are the ones a federation or an established system stands behind. Inventing a Deuce number would add a seventh rating to a sport that already ignores the sixth.
So we use yours. Bring NTRP, UTR, WTN, LTA, ITN, a federation ranking or a club level, and we place you with it. See rating.
Deuce Points measure your season. They are not a claim about your ceiling.
21. What your organizer can change
Everything else in this document is fixed.
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Challenge range | 5 rungs |
| Response window | 5 days |
| Play window | 30 days |
| Accepted match formats | Best of three tiebreak sets only |
| Default match format | Best of three tiebreak sets |
| Rematch cooldown | 14 days |
| Recalculation frequency | Daily |
| Auto-confirm timer | Set per ladder |
| Playoff match minimum | Set per ladder |
| Dormancy window | Off |
| Point values | The defaults in section 10.2 |
Not configurable, and worth saying out loud: the unrestricted first challenge, the activity cap, 365-day expiry, the decay schedule, the overtake floor, the tiebreak order, and mixed city standings.
Playing in Vancouver? The Vancouver tennis ladder guide covers public courts, indoor bookings and local competition.
Playing in Ottawa? The Ottawa tennis ladder guide covers public courts, club competition and winter indoor costs.