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What is Padel Americano?
Padel or padel tennis, a racket sport invented in Mexico in the late 1960s, has gained huge popularity since COVID-19, and is now played all over the world.
“Americano” is a tournament format for padel that’s very similar to the round robin tournament format, but played in pairs or doubles. The idea is for each player to play with and against every other player (ideally) once, and the winner is determined by the number of total points earned during the tournament.
How to Play Padel Americano
Padel americano is a fun and social tournament format. Everyone plays with and against everyone, and every player has the same number of matches during the tournament.
For every round new teams are format so that players are paired with new team member, and play against new opponent team every time.
Number of Players
Whilst the minimum number of players is 4, tournaments are typically organised with 8, 12 or 16 players. Nonetheless, you can make it work with any number of players greater than 3. If the number of players totals a multiple of 4 (4, 8, 12, 16, etc.), all players will be involved in all rounds. If not, some players will have to sit out for some rounds and therefore might have less games than others.
For example, for 8 players, each round will consist of 2 matches, and all players will be playing. For 11 players, there will also be 2 matches in a round, but 3 players will not be playing.
Number of Courts
Although one court is enough, it’s more time-efficient to have courts equal to the number of matches per round. This way, all or most of the players will be playing during all rounds.
To calculate the optimal number of courts, divide the number of players by 4, and take the integer part. For example, 8 / 4 = 2, meaning you need 2 courts for 8 players; for 11 players, 11 / 4 = 2.75, meaning you also need 2 courts.
How Long Does It Take?
There are several factors to evaluate: Number of participants: the more players you have, the more time you need Number of courts: to be able to run matches simultaneously Points per round: the more points per round, the long each match will be
Normally, a 24-point match takes about 10 minutes to complete; with 32 points, around 12–15 minutes. Assuming that, we can have a rough estimate for the different number of players, courts and points.
Padel Americano Rules
Classic padel americano is played in teams, but players compete individually. At the end, the winner is the one with the most points.
How It Works
Every round, new teams are formed so that (ideally) each player gets to play with and against every other player once Each match is played until a certain number of points, e.g., 16, 20, 24, 32 (multiples of 4) Each team serves 4 times, then the serve goes to the opposite team When all 32 balls are played, points are distributed to players
Scoring System
The most common way to determine a padel americano tournament winner is by points: the player with the most points wins.
If there are several players with the same number of points, sometimes the number of wins of points can be taken into account.
Points per Round
As explained above, when starting an americano tournament, players agree upon the points per round – usually 16, 20, 24 or 32.
After each match is complete, players each get the amount of points their team won. For example, if team 1 (player 1 and player 2) played 12:20 against team 2 (player 3 and player 4), players 1 and 2 get 12 points each, while players 3 and 4 each get 20 points.
M+ points
For a certain number of players, there might be situations when some players play less matches than others. In such cases, players with less matches get extra M+ points.
For example, if 4 out of 6 players played 5 matches and the remaining 2 players played 4, those 2 players would be granted the average number of points scored in the match that they missed as extra M+ points.
Diff
Diff is a difference between points won and lost. For example, if player 1 won a match with 20:12 and lost a match with 8:24, the diff would be 12.
Padel Americano App
Even though the rules are simple, forming new teams every round, keeping points and making sure that people get to play with everyone evenly could cause confusion or problems.
This is where our free padel americano app can help you! With the app, you can…
- easily generate tournament schedules for any number of players
- create mixed gender teams for mixed padel americano
- automatically distribute matches across available courts
- record points per round
- automatically build a leaderboard and see rankings
Templates
The americano padel app is much easier to use in tournaments than Excel or PDF templates. But if you still prefer good old pen and paper, you can find below some templates for the most popular numbers of players.
