Deuce
Deuce Ladder terms of service
This is the agreement between you and {{COMPANY_LEGAL_NAME}} for using Deuce Ladder. It covers what we provide, what we do not promise, who is responsible for what, and what happens when something goes wrong.
It is written in the same plain language as the rest of this site. Where a clause is unusual, we say why it is there rather than leaving you to work it out.
Version {{TERMS_VERSION}}, effective {{TERMS_EFFECTIVE_DATE}}. {{COMPANY_LEGAL_NAME}}, {{COMPANY_ADDRESS}}. Questions go to hello@deuceladder.com.
This document has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer.
Deuce Ladder is pre-launch and nobody has paid for anything yet. The commitments below are the ones we intend to be held to. The legal drafting is unfinished, and the jurisdiction-specific parts of sections 12 and 13 are placeholders naming obligations rather than final text.
If you are a club evaluating Deuce and you need reviewed terms and a data processing agreement before you commit, ask us where that work stands. We will tell you straight.
Jump to
- 1. The agreement
- 2. Who may use Deuce
- 3. What Deuce provides
- 4. What Deuce does not guarantee
- 5. If your ladder does not fill
- 6. Organizer responsibilities
- 7. Player responsibilities
- 8. Conduct, and the score falsification penalty
- 9. Payments, seasons, and refunds
- 10. Suspension and termination
- 11. Physical risk in sport
- 12. Liability
- 13. Disputes and governing law
- 14. Content and intellectual property
- 15. Changes to these terms
1. The agreement
1.1 By creating an account, joining a ladder, or running one, you agree to these terms.
1.2 The privacy policy is part of this agreement and governs your data.
1.3 The ruleset governs play. It is numbered, public, and cited by number throughout this document. Where a ladder's organizer has configured a value differently, the ladder's own resolved ruleset governs that ladder and is published at its own URL.
1.4 The scoring rules govern how results are recorded, verified, and weighted.
1.5 Where this document and the ruleset conflict on a point of play, the ruleset governs. Where they conflict on a point of contract, this document governs.
1.6 You can read all four documents before you give us anything. Nothing here is behind a signup.
2. Who may use Deuce
2.1 You need an account to join a ladder or run one. Browsing, standings, ladder pages, city pages, and court pages need no account and never will.
2.2 One account per person, under rule 1.6. Playing under someone else's account is a conduct breach under rule 1.7.
2.3 You must be at least {{MIN_AGE}} to hold an account.
2.4 A player under 18 may join only where the organizer has enabled minors for that ladder, which is off by default. Where enabled, a guardian email is required at signup under rule 1.5, and the guardian accepts these terms on the player's behalf.
2.5 Contact between a minor and an opponent is limited to the in-app message thread. There is no setting that reveals a phone number, on either side.
2.6 An organizer who enables minors is responsible for any safeguarding requirement that applies at their club, in their country, or under their association's rules. We provide the setting. We do not provide a safeguarding policy for your club.
2.7 A ladder may restrict entry to a defined group under rule 1.4: club members, employees, residents, an age range, or a level band. The restriction is published on the ladder page before you join, never after.
3. What Deuce provides
3.1 Software that runs a tennis ladder. Challenges with enforced deadlines, standings that update when a result is confirmed, absence handling, inactivity decay, and rematch cooldowns. Score confirmation by both players, and a public standings page with a permanent URL.
3.2 The Deuce Rating, a measurement of playing standard published with a confidence figure.
3.3 A published ruleset, resolved to your ladder's real values at your ladder's own rules URL, in a form you can copy into a club email.
3.4 Human help launching your first ladder. Organizers apply and a person builds the ladder with them. The application is 11 questions and takes about five minutes.
3.5 Support at hello@deuceladder.com, with response times published on the contact page.
3.6 What we provide is software and a ruleset. We are not a party to your match, we do not sanction your ladder, and we do not organize your tennis.
4. What Deuce does not guarantee
Stating these plainly is cheaper for both of us than a disappointed reading of a vague promise.
4.1 We do not guarantee that your ladder fills. Software does not recruit players. Ten nameable players is the floor for launching, twelve is where a ladder becomes self-sustaining, and getting to those numbers is work only you can do. Section 5 says what happens if you do not get there.
4.2 We do not guarantee that anyone will be playing near you. We publish live counts per city, including the zeros, and we count a player as active only if they have played in the last 30 days. See how we count. If your city is empty, the page will say so.
4.3 We do not guarantee that your opponent shows up. We guarantee that a deadline has a consequence attached. An unanswered challenge produces a walkover under rule 6.6 without anyone adjudicating it. That is a different promise and it is the one we can keep.
4.4 We do not guarantee any specific number of matches. A ladder is a format where you choose your opponent, which means nobody assigns you a fixture. If a guaranteed match count is what you want, a box league or a flex league is a better fit than a ladder, and we would rather tell you that here.
4.5 We do not guarantee uninterrupted service. We aim for the site to be up and we do not offer a service level commitment at launch. When we do, it will be published rather than negotiated.
4.6 The Deuce Rating is not a qualification. It does not certify you at a level, does not enter you into anything, and is not recognized by any governing body. If your league needs an NTRP, you still need an NTRP.
4.7 The mapping between the Deuce Rating and NTRP, UTR, or WTN is our published estimate. It is unofficial, it is not endorsed by the USTA, UTR, or the ITF, and it is not equivalence.
4.8 We do not guarantee court availability. Players arrange their own venue under rule 8.1. We do not book courts and we do not require our own booking system.
5. If your ladder does not fill
5.1 Before you launch, we tell you if we think your group is too small. That conversation happens during setup, and it is the whole reason a person builds your first ladder with you instead of a wizard.
5.2 If you apply with fewer than ten nameable players, we will say so and offer to help you recruit rather than launching a ladder that dies with your name on it.
5.3 If a paid season launches and does not reach {{REFUND_MATCH_THRESHOLD}} played matches within {{REFUND_WINDOW}} of the season start, the season is refunded automatically. You do not have to ask and you do not have to argue.
5.4 Refunded means refunded to the payer. Where an organizer paid, the organizer is refunded. Where players paid individually, the players are.
5.5 Your standings page, your roster, and your match history stay live and exported whether the season is refunded or not. A refund is not a deletion.
5.6 The refund threshold and window will be published on the pricing page before the first invoice goes out. Until they are, the tokens in 5.3 are unresolved on purpose. We are not going to describe a refund rule in vague words and settle the specifics after taking money.
6. Organizer responsibilities
6.1 You are responsible for your ladder: its eligibility rules, its level bands, its configured values, and the people in it.
6.2 You confirm you have the right to run a ladder for the group you are recruiting. If it is a club ladder, you have the club's permission.
6.3 You are responsible for court access, court fees, and any booking your ladder depends on.
6.4 You resolve score disputes under section 18 of the ruleset, in public, with the rule cited.
6.5 Every adjustment, removal, and dispute resolution you make is written to your ladder's public activity log with your name and your stated reason, under rules 2.5, 15.5, and 18.4. You cannot switch that off. It is the price of having the power.
6.6 You may not use member data from your ladder for anything other than running it. Exporting your roster to sell equipment to your members is a breach of this agreement.
6.7 You may not charge your players for entry to a ladder and then not run it. If you collect entry fees yourself, that is between you and them, and we are not the escrow.
6.8 You may not change a published rule mid-season in a way that alters a result already recorded. Configuration changes apply forward.
6.9 If you stop running your ladder, tell your players and tell us. A ladder abandoned in silence is the failure this whole product exists to prevent.
7. Player responsibilities
7.1 Give an honest level at signup. Placement reads the top of your plausible range precisely because we cannot verify what you type, and your first challenge is unrestricted under rule 5.4 so a wrong placement costs you one match.
7.2 Respond to challenges inside the 48-hour window. Silence produces a walkover against you under rule 6.6, automatically.
7.3 Offer real time slots inside the ten-day play window, in the match thread, under rule 7.3. The thread is the record and it is what decides a walkover if the match does not happen.
7.4 Declare an absence before it starts, not after a challenge has expired, under rule 11.3. A single absence may run up to 21 days.
7.5 Submit or confirm scores honestly. Only valid scorelines are accepted, and an invalid one is rejected at entry rather than flagged later.
7.6 Call your own lines honestly. Matches are self-officiated under rule 8.7 and there is no appeal on a line call.
7.7 Show up. On time, at the court you agreed.
8. Conduct, and the score falsification penalty
8.1 Section 17 of the ruleset is the code of conduct and it forms part of this agreement. It is not a summary of this section. It is the operative text.
8.2 Abuse, harassment, and discriminatory language are grounds for immediate removal under rule 15.5, by the organizer or by us.
8.3 Do not submit a score for a match that was not played, do not submit a score both players know to be wrong, and do not arrange a result in advance. Rule 17.4.
8.4 The penalty for falsifying a score is published and it applies as written in rule 17.5. A first confirmed case voids the result, returns both players to their pre-match rungs, and places a permanent marker on the match record visible to that ladder's players. A second confirmed case removes the player from the ladder for the remainder of the season and forfeits playoff eligibility.
8.5 Confirmed means an organizer resolved a dispute against the submitting player, or both players subsequently agreed the record was wrong. It does not mean accused. How results are established and weighted.
8.6 We publish a penalty rather than handling this privately because a rule with no stated consequence is a suggestion. That reasoning is on the scoring page and it is a positioning commitment, not a legal flourish.
8.7 Sending challenges you do not intend to play, in order to appear active, is a breach under rule 17.6.
8.8 A conduct problem goes to your organizer first. If the problem is the organizer, it comes to us at hello@deuceladder.com.
8.9 We do not adjudicate tennis. We review whether the process in the ruleset was followed: whether the stated reason matches the rule cited, and whether the player was told. Rule 18.6.
9. Payments, seasons, and refunds
9.1 Pricing is not set. Deuce is pre-launch and every figure in this section is a token that resolves from one source, which is the pricing page. No price appears anywhere on this site until it is real.
9.2 The billing unit is a ladder and its season, not a head count. Season lengths are 6, 8, 10, or 12 weeks.
9.3 Where a player pays to enter a season, the price is {{PRICE_PLAYER_SEASON}}. Where an organizer pays to run one, the price is {{PRICE_CAPTAIN_SEASON}}, {{PRICE_CLUB_SEASON}}, {{PRICE_CLUB_ANNUAL}}, or {{PRICE_OPERATOR_ANNUAL}} depending on the tier.
9.4 You see the price before you are asked for anything. There is no demo call between you and it. That is a commitment on the pricing page and it survives edits to this document.
9.5 A fee will never appear between you and a ladder you have already joined.
9.6 Payments are taken by our payment processor. Card data never reaches us. See section 3 of the privacy policy.
9.7 The automatic refund in section 5.3 applies to {{REFUND_SCOPE}} and is calculated as {{REFUND_CALCULATION}}. It is paid within {{REFUND_SLA}} of the trigger.
9.8 Outside the automatic case, {{REFUND_DISCRETIONARY_POLICY}} applies. The standing commitment is simpler than the policy: if the product did not do what this site says it does, write to us and we refund it.
9.9 Renewal is not automatic at launch. A season ends, the standings freeze, the page stays live, and nobody bills you for the gap. If automatic renewal is ever introduced, it will be opt-in and announced before it applies.
9.10 Taxes are added where they apply, at {{TAX_HANDLING}}.
10. Suspension and termination
10.1 You may close your account at any time. You may withdraw from a ladder at any time under rule 15.1, and withdrawing with a challenge open awards a walkover to the other player.
10.2 An organizer may remove a player for a conduct breach under section 17, for failing an eligibility restriction under rule 1.4, or at the player's own request. Every removal is logged publicly with a stated reason.
10.3 A removed player may appeal to us at hello@deuceladder.com. We review process, not tennis.
10.4 We may suspend or close an account for a serious conduct breach, for a second confirmed score falsification under rule 17.5, for fraud, or for a legal obligation.
10.5 Where we suspend an account, we tell the person why, in writing, citing the rule.
10.6 We may remove a ladder that is being used for something other than running a tennis ladder.
10.7 If we close your account, results already played stand and remain in the record. Your name is handled under section 10 of the privacy policy.
10.8 If we discontinue Deuce, we will give notice, keep exports available for a stated period, and say so in public. We will not take a paid season offline mid-season.
11. Physical risk in sport
11.1 Tennis is physical exercise and it carries a risk of injury. You accept that risk when you play.
11.2 Deuce does not organize your matches, does not inspect courts, does not supervise play, and provides no officials. Matches are self-officiated under rule 8.7.
11.3 You are responsible for deciding whether you are fit to play a given match. Nobody at Deuce sees a medical form and rule 11.1 lets you declare an absence without stating a reason.
11.4 You are responsible for the condition of the court you agree to play on, together with your opponent, and for your own equipment.
11.5 Where a venue has its own conditions of entry, insurance requirement, or waiver, those apply at that venue and are between you and the venue.
11.6 You are responsible for your own insurance. Deuce does not provide accident, liability, or travel cover, and does not arrange it.
11.7 {{ASSUMPTION_OF_RISK_CLAUSE}}.
12. Liability
12.1 We provide the software as it is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or free of defects.
12.2 We are not liable for the conduct of an organizer, of a player, or of a venue. We are not liable for a match that did not happen, a court that was not booked, or a season that did not fill.
12.3 We are not liable for a decision an organizer makes inside their own ladder. Our review is limited to process under rule 18.6.
12.4 {{LIABILITY_CAP_CLAUSE}}.
12.5 {{EXCLUSIONS_CLAUSE}}.
12.6 Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else a governing law reserves.
13. Disputes and governing law
13.1 A dispute about a match goes to your organizer under section 18 of the ruleset. Cite the rule number. That is why they are numbered.
13.2 A dispute about the process goes to us at hello@deuceladder.com or through the contact page.
13.3 A dispute about this agreement: talk to us first, at the same address. We would rather fix something than argue about it.
13.4 {{GOVERNING_LAW_CLAUSE}}.
13.5 {{VENUE_AND_FORUM_CLAUSE}}.
13.6 {{CONSUMER_RIGHTS_CARVE_OUT}}. Where you are a consumer, any mandatory right you have under the law of the country you live in is unaffected by this agreement.
14. Content and intellectual property
14.1 Deuce owns the software, the site, the brand, and the Deuce Rating methodology. You get a right to use the service, not a right to the software.
14.2 You own what you write: your match thread messages, your ladder's name and description if you are an organizer, and anything you upload. You give us the right to display it where the service requires, for example a ladder name on a public standings page.
14.3 Match results are facts, and facts are not owned. Your results are yours, your ladder's are its own, and both are exported freely.
14.4 The published ruleset may be copied into a club email, a noticeboard, or a member handbook, with or without attribution. That permission is deliberate and it is stated on the rules page.
14.5 Do not scrape the site at a volume that degrades it, do not resell our data as a product, and do not represent an unofficial ladder as a Deuce ladder.
14.6 Do not use the Deuce name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse your club, your coaching business, or your event. Ask us and we will usually say yes.
15. Changes to these terms
15.1 When these terms change materially, we email every account holder before the change takes effect, and the page says what changed in one sentence at the top.
15.2 Every version is numbered and dated, and previous versions stay available.
15.3 A change never applies retroactively to a season already paid for or a result already recorded.
15.4 If you do not accept a change, you may close your account, and section 5 governs any refund.
Related
The privacy policy covers your data. The ruleset governs play and is cited throughout this document. The scoring rules cover verification and the falsification penalty. The pricing page is the single source for every price and refund figure. What we will never do is a shorter and less formal version of some of the promises above. Common questions. Contact us.
Ready to use any of this? Join a ladder or start one.