Pickleheads has a direct, two-way connection with DUPR. You can require a DUPR account at signup, run your event, and send every score in with one tap. Here's exactly how it works, what it means for players who don't have a rating yet, and how to run the night so the ratings that come out of it are actually worth something.
Do this when you first create the session, not the morning of the event. The timing genuinely matters, and we'll explain why in a second.
If you turn DUPR on after people have already signed up, everyone who was already on the list has to go back to the session page and tap "I'm still in" to consent. Same goes for anyone you added manually with Reserve a Slot. Flip the toggle at creation and consent happens automatically at signup.
Using your own DUPR Club ID? This doesn't apply to you at all.
You can send scores through the Pickleheads DUPR club or through your own. They both work — one is just far more flexible.
Free to create on DUPR's side, then link it to Pickleheads and select it on the session.
Nothing to set up. Good for trying the integration before you commit to anything.
If you're running DUPR events more than once, get your own club. The manual-entry escape hatch alone is worth it — someone always walks up at 6:02 without the app installed, and with your own club you can type in their name and DUPR ID and start the round.
This is the part people ask about most, and the answer is better than most expect: a player does not need an existing DUPR rating to play in a DUPR event. They only need a DUPR account linked to Pickleheads.
On your player list, someone with a linked account but no rating shows up as NR — not rated. Their self-reported skill level still displays next to it, which is handy when you're seeding the list.
Once you submit scores, DUPR starts a rating for that player off their first match. There's no minimum number of matches required to get a number. What there is — and this is the important bit — is a long tail of accuracy. Early on, a new rating swings around a lot. It settles as more results come in.
When DUPR processes a match involving an unrated player, it has to assume something about their level. It treats them as roughly a 3.5 until real data exists. So the matches an unrated player plays first carry a lot of weight in shaping where their rating lands.
Feed those first matches good data and a new player's rating lands close to their real level fast. Feed them a 4.5 crushing a beginner 11-2, and everybody's rating takes a hit in accuracy.
Of the twelve round robin formats on Pickleheads, this is the one we recommend for DUPR nights — and it isn't close.
Up & Down the River seeds players onto courts by skill level. Each player plays one game with every other partner on their court. At the end of the round, the top player (or top two, your call) moves up a court and the bottom moves down. Then you play another round.
Aim for three rounds in two hours. If you've got a mix of four-player and five-player courts, have the courts of four play to 15 and the courts of five play to 11, win by 1. The rounds then finish at roughly the same time and nobody stands around.
Two close alternatives if Up & Down the River doesn't fit your night: Gauntlet, which reseeds off results every round and runs with any number of players or courts, and Double Header, which groups players by skill onto courts and runs every partner combination. Both are seeded, both work well for DUPR. Take the format quiz if you want a recommendation for your specific group.
You can run a technically perfect DUPR event and still send in data that makes everyone's rating worse. This is how that happens.
DUPR sizes a rating change off the gap between the two teams and the margin of the result. When a 4.5 pair beats a 3.0 pair 11-2, the algorithm learns almost nothing — that's the expected outcome, and the score confirms what it already knew. Neither side's rating moves much, and what movement there is carries very little confidence.
Now put an unrated player in that same blowout. DUPR is assuming they're a 3.5 with nothing to go on. If they're actually a 2.8 and they just got swept by two 4.5s, the system has one data point that's consistent with a dozen different explanations. It'll take that player far more matches to converge on the right number — and in the meantime, everyone who plays them is getting noisy data too.
Keep games inside roughly a 0.5 DUPR band where you can. Close, competitive scores — 11-9, 15-13 — are the ones that teach the algorithm the most. A night of tight games moves ratings toward the truth faster than a night of blowouts ever will.
On a public session, the DUPR range you list is a recommendation, not a hard gate — players outside it can still sign up or request to join. If you need a tight band, control it through invites or a private session rather than relying on the range. Stricter rating-based signup controls are on our roadmap.
When you end the event, you'll see a Submit scores to DUPR button. Pick your club, check the scores are right, and tap. They go over instantly.
That's the Pickleheads club consent check. Those players need to open the session page and tap "I'm still in." They can do it after the event — you just can't submit their matches until they do. One more reason to use your own club.
Feel free to copy this part straight into your group chat.
Everything a player does after the night ends is automatic. Match history, personal stats, leaderboards, and their DUPR rating all update on their own.
Yes. A player with a linked DUPR account and no rating gets one as soon as the first match you submit is processed. There's no minimum match count to start.
It'll be volatile for the first handful of matches and then settle. Playing a run of structured, level-appropriate games — a weekly DUPR round robin, for example — is about the fastest way to land on an accurate number.
Through the Pickleheads club: consent is per session, and it happens automatically at signup as long as DUPR was already enabled when they signed up.
Through your own DUPR Club ID: no consent step in Pickleheads at all. Linking their DUPR account is the only requirement, and that's a one-time thing.
Yes, with your own DUPR Club ID. You can add a name and a DUPR ID manually, or bulk import a whole list from a CSV, then run the round robin and submit as normal.
This isn't available through the Pickleheads club — there, players need a connected DUPR account for their scores to go through.
Score submission runs through the Pickleheads round robin tool, so your event needs to be built as a round robin. Within that, every format works — you're not limited to Up & Down the River, it's just the one we'd pick for a DUPR night.
If you'd rather run the event your own way, you can export a CSV of every player's DUPR ID and rating and upload to DUPR yourself.
It does. We pass the scoring type to DUPR alongside the scores, and DUPR treats the two differently when calculating. Pick the one you actually play on the session settings before the event.
Three rounds in about two hours is a good target for Up & Down the River. More rounds means more matches per player, which both settles ratings faster and makes your standings more meaningful.
You can stop whenever you like, though. Rounds generate one at a time, and standings are valid at any point.
Spin up a test round robin with dummy players and run a full Up & Down the River — rounds, scores, standings and all. It's free and it doesn't touch your real sessions.
Try a test round robin Take the format quiz