Running Americanos

An Americano is one evening at your club where players sign up on their own, Rally makes the matches, partners change every match, and most points wins. You post it, you share it, you start it on the night, and Rally handles the draw, the board and the result.

This is the whole job, start to finish, for anyone running Americanos at a Rally partner club. It is worth ten minutes now and you should only need it once. Everything below happens in the Rally app on your phone.

Before you post

You post Americanos as your club, so the first step is ours: we set you up as an owner or a manager of your club on Rally. Once that is done, the option to post an Americano appears in the app next to posting a match. If you cannot see it yet, we have not finished setting you up, so send us a note and we will sort it out.

Two house rules before you open the form. Americanos need to be posted a day in advance, and each organiser can run two a week.

Then decide the shape of the evening, because everything else follows from it.

How many players.
An Americano needs 8 or 12 players. Those are the two head counts the draw can build, and there is nothing in between.

How many courts.
Every court needs four people on it at once, so eight players work on one court or two, and twelve need two or three. Anything that does not work is greyed out on the form with the reason next to it.

How long it runs.
Two hours, two and a half, or three. Rally works out how long your evening actually takes and picks the slot that holds it. Change the players or the courts and it moves the length to match, and it tells you when it has.

The entry fee.
Yours, and you collect it at the venue as you always have. Rally never takes it, holds it or touches it.

The prize is ours. Rally puts it up and the form shows you the amount, so it is one less number for you to decide.

Posting it

The form is one screen:

• A name. Keep it short. It is set in large type on the card players see, so around twenty characters reads best, and the field stops you at twenty-four.
• The venue, picked from your club's courts.
• The date and the start time.
• Who it is for. Mixed, women's or men's.
• Players, courts and how long, as above.
• The entry fee.

That is all of it. There is no format to pick, no bracket to build and no court plan to fill in, because Rally generates the matches itself: everyone plays the same number, nobody gets the same partner twice, and the schedule comes out already grouped into rounds.

One thing Rally deliberately does not do is put people on a numbered court. It tells the group which matches can go on together and leaves the wayfinding to you, because you are the one standing there.

Sharing it

As soon as it is posted you get a share sheet. It writes the message for you with the poster attached and opens WhatsApp in one tap, and there is a copy option if you would rather paste the link somewhere else.

The link is a rally.pk address and it works for anyone, whether or not they have the app. They see the event, the venue, the time and the faces of everyone who has joined so far, with no names. If they have Rally the link opens it. If they do not, the page points them at the app.

Share it while it is filling.
Once you start the evening the share option goes away, because by then the link has nothing left to offer anybody.

Every Americano also has its own chat thread, and everyone who registers is in it, you included. It is the fastest way to tell twelve people that the court has moved. The thread stays open after the evening ends.

While it fills

You get a notification each time somebody takes a seat, so you can leave it alone and watch it fill.

When it fills up.
The next person to tap join goes onto a waiting list instead. If somebody then withdraws, the first person waiting is moved straight into the free seat and told, with nothing needed from you. That holds until two hours before the start. Inside the last two hours you are at the venue and may already have somebody in front of you, so the decision moves to you: offer the seat to the waiting list, or keep it quiet and fill it yourself.

Taking somebody off.
Manage, on the event page, is where you remove a player. You can remove anyone except yourself, and Rally tells you what will happen to the seat before you confirm. Manage is only available while registration is open, so do it before you start.

Messaging a player.
On that same Manage screen, every player's row opens a WhatsApp chat with them. Only the people running the event can see those numbers. They are not on the event page, the board, the chat or the standings.

When a player leaves.
Players can withdraw on their own any time before you start. Inside the last six hours it counts as a late cancellation on their record, and not turning up at all is a no-show. After you start there is no way out, because the matches are built around exactly who is in.

Changing the evening.
The name, venue, date, time, who it is for, players, courts, length and fee can all still be edited from the event page after posting. One thing to watch: if you cut the number of players once seats are taken, somebody loses theirs, so look at the roster first.

Starting it on the night

Roll call.
When it is time, open the event and go through the roll call. Everyone is ticked to start with. Untick anybody who is not there. This is your headcount and nothing else: unticking somebody does not take them out of the draw.

The numbers have to work.
An Americano needs 8 or 12 players, and the draw needs every seat filled, because a court cannot run with three people on it. Seven is not a draw Rally can make. So if somebody has not turned up, the fix is to fill the seat rather than to start short: take them off on the Manage screen and give the seat to whoever is standing there. If the numbers do not add up, Rally will hold the start and tell you why.

Then start.
You get a short handover screen while Rally builds the matches. Everyone registered gets a notification that the evening has begun.

During the evening

The board carries the standings on top and the matches underneath. Standings rank on total points, and because everyone plays the same number of matches, the totals compare directly.

The matches come grouped into rounds. A round tells you which matches can go on at the same time. It is not a timetable: there is no clock, no countdown and nothing that closes a round or opens the next one. As a court frees up, send on the next four whose players are free.

Tap a match to start it.
The card lights up so the room can see what is on. It is one tap per match, so a two-court round is two taps.

Anyone can put a score in.
Not just you, and that is deliberate. Everyone is in one building watching one board, so a wrong number gets spotted within a minute, and you are not the bottleneck between eleven people and their standings. Every score shows who entered it, and while the evening is running a wrong one can be put right by entering it again.

When it ends

The evening ends itself. There is no End button: the moment the last match has a score, the Americano is over, the standings become final, and the result card is there for the group to share.

Take a second over the final score.
It is the one that closes the event, and once the event is closed the board cannot be changed by anyone, including us. Every other score of the night can be corrected while play is going on. That last one cannot.

An unscored match leaves it open.
If one match never gets a score the evening simply stays open. The standings are still right and nothing is broken. You just do not get the closing card.

Cancelling.
You can cancel at any point, including halfway through if the weather turns. Everyone registered is told. Cancelling sits with whoever created the event.

An Americano result does not move anybody's level. It is recorded, not applied.

What is coming

We are building out the club side of this. More of your team will be able to run a night so it does not all sit with one person, you will be able to check players in as they arrive, players will be able to pay their entry in the app, and your club will get its own page on rally.pk. We will walk you through each one as it arrives.

Getting help

Email support@rally.pk with your club's name in the subject and we will come back to you. If something goes wrong in the middle of an evening, message us there and then, and keep the padel going in the meantime. Ten people standing on a court matter more than a tidy board.