Americano

The idea

In Americano you are not really playing as a pair — you are playing as an individual who happens to have a partner this round. Your partner changes every round, and every point you win is added to your own personal running total. At the end of the session, the person with the most points has won.

Because your partner keeps changing, you cannot win by being lucky with who you got teamed up with. Over a full session you play alongside most of the group and against most of the group, so the totals end up being a fair reflection of how everybody played.

How a match works

Each match is played to a fixed total of points — 24 by default, but you can set it to 16, 21 or 32 before the session starts. Every rally is a point, whoever is serving. You stop the moment the two scores add up to the total.

So a match to 24 might finish 13–11, or 24–0, or 12–12. Whatever the split, the two numbers always add up to 24.

To record it, you tap one pair and then tap how many points they got. The other pair is filled in for you automatically, because the two must add up to the total.

Both players in a pair get the full team score. If you and your partner scored 13, you get 13 points and so does your partner.

How the next round is built

This is the part that surprises people: results have absolutely no effect on who you play next. The app never looks at the scores when building an Americano round.

What it looks at instead is history. Its first priority, by a long way, is that you do not get the same partner two rounds running. Its second priority is that you partner people you have not yet partnered. Its third and softest priority is to vary your opponents too.

That means the leader of the session and the person at the bottom are just as likely to end up on the same court. Everybody circulates through the whole group.

One exception, and the app cannot avoid it: if you are exactly four players on one court, there are only three possible pairings, so partnerships have to start repeating. With eight or more players it has enough room to keep everything fresh.

How you win

The standings are ranked by total points scored. If two players have exactly the same number of points, the tiebreak is matches won, then name.

Points you conceded are shown but do not affect your position — only what you scored counts. So there is a real reason to keep pushing for points even in a match that has got away from you: every single point is banked.

A worked example

Eight players, two courts, matches to 24 points.

1. Round 1, court 1: Ana & Ben vs Carl & Dana. It finishes 13–11.
2. Ana gets 13 points. Ben gets 13. Carl gets 11. Dana gets 11.
3. Round 2 is built without looking at any of that. Ana and Ben are split up because they just partnered, and so are Carl and Dana.
4. Ana might now play with Carl against Ben & Eve — whatever keeps partnerships freshest.
5. After six rounds Ana has played alongside six different people, and her total is the sum of every match she played.
6. Highest total wins the session.

Good to know

• Court numbers carry no meaning in Americano. Being on court 1 does not mean you are winning — the app just numbers the courts as it fills them.
• A match can end level, for example 12–12 out of 24. Both pairs bank their points, and it counts as neither a win nor a loss for anybody.
• You cannot record an abandoned or shortened match. The two scores always add up to the configured total, so if you run out of time on a match, finish the points off.
• If the group does not divide by four, some people rest each round. The app rotates the rests evenly, but resting does mean one fewer match in which to bank points — the standings are raw totals and are not adjusted for that. Over a session it evens out, because rests never differ by more than one.
• Bigger point totals per match mean fewer, longer matches and fewer partner changes. 24 is a good middle ground; 16 keeps the rotation quick.