Repeated partners: why it happens and how Padelato keeps draws fair
A pair repeats when a draw is made one round at a time and paints itself into a corner. A good draw plans the whole evening, so pairs only repeat when the numbers make it unavoidable. Padelato redraws the remaining rounds up to 40 times and keeps the cleanest; its tests find no avoidable repeats in thousands of test tournaments.
Why do apps repeat a pair?
The simplest draw goes one round at a time, picking pairs who have not played together yet. It works for a few rounds, then runs out of options and has to repeat a pair that a better plan from the start would have avoided.
On r/padel, an organiser asked for a rotation where everyone partners everyone without repeats, and an app developer replied that extra players and fewer courts are among the hardest cases (r/padel, August 2025).
When is a repeat unavoidable?
Sometimes no clean schedule exists. The schedules on this site, drawn by the Padelato engine:
| Players | Courts | Rounds shown | Repeated pairs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1 | 5 | none: every pair once |
| 8 | 2 | 7 | none: every pair once |
| 8 | 1 | 6 | none; at 8 rounds, 4 pairs must repeat |
| 9 | 2 | 9 | none: every pair once |
| 12 | 3 | 8 | none |
| 16 | 4 | 8 | none |
With 8 players on one court, 4 play and 4 rest each round, and nobody rests twice in a row. The same two groups of four take turns all night, and each group has only three ways to pair up, so after six rounds pairs have to repeat.
How does Padelato avoid it, and how do we know?
Padelato plans every round still to come. Each time the plan changes, it redraws those rounds up to 40 times and keeps the version with the fewest repeats, stopping as soon as one has none. Rounds already played, and the round on court, are never touched. The tests behind it:
- No avoidable repeats in 3,000 simulated tournaments each for 9, 10 and 11 players, with skill balancing on and off.
- No change to a played or in-progress round across about 110,000 random changes mid-tournament.
- More than 20,000 automatic checks on the draw, run against the exact file that goes live whenever the draw changes.
One known edge: with exactly 8 players, 7 rounds and skill balancing on, about one draw in a hundred keeps a single repeat, because there the only no-repeat draw is not balanced.
See the 8-player schedule for a draw where everyone partners everyone exactly once.
Questions people ask
Why does my Americano app pair the same people twice?
Usually because it draws one round at a time and picks the best pairs for that round only. Later rounds can then run out of new pairs. Planning the whole evening at once avoids most repeats.
When is a repeated partner unavoidable?
When the evening is longer than the number of different partners allows. With 8 players on one court, two groups of four have to alternate, so pairs repeat after six rounds.
How does Padelato avoid repeated partners?
It draws the rest of the evening up to 40 times and keeps the version with the fewest repeats, stopping early when it finds one with none. Rounds already played or on court are never changed.
How do you know the draw is fair?
More than 20,000 automatic checks cover the draw. In 3,000 simulated tournaments each for 9, 10 and 11 players it found no avoidable repeated partner.