2017 Tennis Poker: rules, schedule, events and sign up links!
2017 TENNIS POKER RULES!
BASIC RULES
FIRST STEP: CHOOSE YOUR TEAM!
You choose the five WTA tennis players who will represent your hand of five cards: you can select any combination of five tennis players without any limitation about their ranking, but you can't pick the same set of players already chosen by another poster. The order has no influence on your result at all.
Once you've chosen your 5 WTA players and your team has been approved, you don't need to do anything else: just wait for the results and enjoy!
The WTA Tour season is divided into 8 legs. You will be allowed to change your picks before each leg starts in the "new entrants and team changes" thread, usually stuck at the top of this forum. You can find the detailed calendar with all the deadlines and sign up links in this same thread (post #5).
Tennis Poker singles, doubles and Doppio Giallo tournaments will start and finish within the same leg. Fed Cup, World Championships, Pentathlon and Champions League will last all the season with different rules and will all give out medals in the final leg.
SECOND STEP: YOUR TEAM BECOMES A POKER HAND
Each of your 5 players will get a card value thanks to her results in the WTA Tour singles tournaments, according to the following scoring system:
Draws of 128
A: Winner
K: Runner-up
Q: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual winner
J: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual runner-up
10: Quarterfinalists beaten by the eventual finalists
9: Quarterfinalists beaten by the eventual semifinalists
8: 4th round losers beaten by the eventual semifinalists
7: 4th round losers beaten by the eventual quarterfinalists
6: 3rd round losers beaten by the eventual quarterfinalists
5: 3rd round losers beaten by the eventual 4th round losers
4: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual 4th round qualifiers
3: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual 3rd round losers
2: 1st round losers
Draws of 64
A: Winner
K: Runner-up
Q: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual winner
J: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual runner-up
10: Quarterfinalists beaten by the eventual winner
9: Quarterfinalists beaten by the eventual runner-up
8: Quarterfinalist beaten by the eventual semifinalist losing to the eventual winner
7: Quarterfinalist beaten by the eventual semifinalist losing to the eventual runner-up
6: 3rd round losers beaten by the eventual semifinalists
5: 3rd round losers beaten by the eventual quarterfinalists
4: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual quarterfinalists
3: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual 3rd round losers
2: 1st round losers
Draws of 32 or less
A: Winner
K: Runner-up
Q: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual winner
J: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual runner-up
10: Quarterfinalists beaten by the eventual winner
9: Quarterfinalists beaten by the eventual runner-up
8: Quarterfinalist beaten by the eventual semifinalist losing to the eventual winner
7: Quarterfinalist beaten by the eventual semifinalist losing to the eventual runner-up
6: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual finalists
5: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual semifinalists
4: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual quarterfinalists losing to the eventual finalists
3: 2nd round losers beaten by the eventual quarterfinalists losing to the eventual semifinalists
2: 1st round losers
YEC
A: Winner
K: Runner-up
Q: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual winner
J: Semifinalist beaten by the eventual runner-up
10: 3rd place in group with the eventual winner
9: 3rd place in group without the eventual winner
8: 4th place in group with the eventual winner
7: 4th place in group without the eventual winner
In case of withdrawals and substitution by alternate players, more values to be added in the same way.
You can notice that different values are given to players losing in the same round according to the players they have lost to: being in a draw section with a player who goes further is somehow considered a better result. The original rule about seeds and draw sections has been abandoned from the 2012 season.
Example.
Azarenka / Kvitova / N.Li / Stosur / Wozniacki
In Sydney, Azarenka won the title, scoring an Ace.
N.Li was the runner-up, scoring a King.
Kvitova lost in the semis to runner-up Li, scoring a J.
Wozniacki lost in the Sydney quarterfinals to A.Radwanska, who lost in the semis to eventual winner Azarenka: Wozniacki is worth an 8.
First round loser Stosur scores 2.
Only considering Sydney, your poker combination looks like:
Azarenka / N.Li / Kvitova / Wozniacki / Stosur
A / K / J / 8 / 2
Each Tennis Poker leg lasts more than a week: if your tennis player competes in more than one tournament, just her best result will count as her definitive value.
In each singles match, the poster with the best leg combination according to traditional poker rules, wins. Hands are ranked as follows, from high to low:
1 - Five of a Kind: five cards of the same rank.
2 - Straight Flush: five cards in order, all of the same suit.
3 - Four of a Kind: four cards of the same rank.
4 - Full House: a three of a kind and a pair.
5 - Flush: a hand where all the cards are of the same suit.
6 - Straight: five cards in order.
7 - Three of a Kind: three cards of the same rank.
8 - Two Pair: two distinct pairs.
9 - Pair: two cards with the same value.
10 - High Card: if there isn’t any combination, then just the highest card is considered.
If you are not familiar with the poker card game, you can find more info here:
Poker Hand Rankings or Order | Strategy Poker
Each WTA tournament will be considered to represent one of the different card suites: in order to score a flush, all your 5 players must get their value (i.e. their best result during the leg) in the same tournament.
Your leg combination will be used to decide the winner in all the singles matches and in the Worlds Championships singles draw.
In singles, the posters will face each other in a draw, with direct entries (possibly some seeds with a first round bye), wild cards (given to the posters with the best results in the previous tournament) and qualifiers. The exact draw size has changed through the years according to the number of posters.
THIRD STEP: YOUR POKER HAND BECOMES A SCORE
You’ll be given a certain amount of points based on how good your combination is (the performance score) and how far you go in the singles tournaments.
For each match you win in the singles main draw, you collect 50 pts. If you beat any opponent who is ranked higher than you, you are given a bonus of other 50 pts. Posters will also receive a bonus of 25 pts for each win in the qualifying round; qualies have been abandoned in the past few years though.
The performance score is calculated summing up the values of the five cards and multiplicating for a factor according to the poker combination you’ve scored.
Card values
Ace - 14, King - 13, Queen - 12, Jack - 11, 10 - 10, 9 - 9 and so on...
Combination factors
50 - Five of a Kind
30 - Straight Flush
15 - Four of a Kind
10 - Full House
7 - Flush
5 - Straight
4 - Three of a Kind
3 - Two Pairs
2 - Pair
1 - No combination
Examples.
No combination: A / K / 10 / 8 / 5 becomes (14 + 13 + 10 + 8 + 5) x 1 = 50
Pair: Q / Q / 4 / 3 / 2 becomes (12 + 12 + 4 + 3 + 2) x 2 = 66
Two pairs: 10 / 10 / 5 / 5 / 2 becomes (10 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 2) x 3 = 96
Three of a kind: A / A / A / 10 / 8 becomes (14 + 14 + 14 + 10 + 8) x 4 = 240
Straight flush: A / K / Q / J / 10 becomes (14 + 13 + 12 + 11 + 10) x 30 = 1800
Your leg score is considered to decide the winner in all the doubles matches (including Doppio Giallo and World Championships doubles), in Fed Cup rubbers (singles and doubles) and in the World Championship team event (calculating the national team average).
Your leg score is also the points you gain after each leg for the singles ranking, which is based on your yearly performances with a rolling system considering all your 8 scores in the previous 12 months, dropping the previous year's score once a new leg is completed.
ADDITIONAL RULES
THE SPARE CARDS
Injuries and withdrawals have deeply affected the tour. Though each leg lasts at least four weeks, it has become more and more frequent for the players to be out of the game for a month or more. So, I think it was a good idea to have a couple of players sitting on the bench and ready to enter play if they are needed.
The spare cards (chosen randomly among the higher ranked and not selected players) are assigned to posters completely by chance in order to replace a scoreless tennis player with another one in all the hands which included her, so that all the posters who picked a certain player will get the same value as a replacement.
THE JOKER
The joker rule has been abandoned in the past few years.
The poster who loses in the first round of a Tennis Poker singles tournament to the eventual winner, in the following leg, will be able to substitute the card with the lowest value with the joker, a card which can be given any value and may help to score better combinations.
If the winner is a seed with a first round bye, the joker is given to the second round opponent.
If the winner is a qualifier, the same rules are applied to the qualies draw.
DOUBLES
In the Tennis Poker doubles tour the performance of each pair will be measured by the
geometric mean of the leg points earned by the two posters in the Tennis Poker singles tournaments.
Pairs will face each other round by round and, of course, the winner will be the doubles pair who collected more points. The draw size will depend on how many pairs join the game.
Doubles ranking points are assigned considering how far each pair goes in the draw (50 pts per round + 50 bonus pts for a win against higher-ranked pair) and how good the combinations are (geometric mean of the singles ranking points).
If an old partnership ends, each player will bring to the new pair a half of the points earned in the previous season with the old partner.
FED CUP
Two nations will face each other in 4 singles and 1 doubles and the team with at least 3 wins out of these 5 matches will go through. The number of entries will decide the exact schedule of the matches; we'll start with a round robin in order to let more people enjoy the game for a longer time without any early elimination.
Each team must include at least 2 posters, but no more than 6, in order to let everyone play at least once per leg (4 in the singles and 2 in the doubles).
The tie draw follows strict rules. Team members always play an even number of matches: in teams of 2, 3 rubbers for each member; in teams of 3, 2 rubbers; in teams of 6, 1 rubber. In teams of 5, the highest-ranked poster plays a second time, while in teams of 4 it's the top 2 to play twice. The 2 lower-ranked team members always play the doubles rubber. The team captains always face each other in the final rubber. Considering a rubber can’t be played twice and a poster can’t play twice in the same day, if more than one combination of matches is still possible, the higher-ranked player will always face the higher-ranked player.
The outcome of all the matches will be decided comparing the ranking points earned in the Tennis Poker singles tournaments: the plain value for the 4 singles and the geometric mean of the points scored by the two posters who play as a pair in the doubles. That's why
all the posters who sign up for the team event must have a valid set of five players for the singles. Overall total score by the whole team will be used to break ties.
Each team will represent a country; a real or even a fantasy one: besides USA, Belgium, Poland, France, Russia, Canada and even the European Union, through the years we had ROSA, The You Knows, The Newbies, Geriatrica, Hogwarts and the proud team of the AdMeans.
A font color will represent your team as well. Please, be sure you choose a color which can be read easily with this board's backgrounds.
National teams have been divided into 2 World Groups. In the past few seasons, a preliminary Round Robin stage has decided the main draw and play-off series compositions.
While this thread is still a work in progress, you can check the original rules thread here:
Tennis Poker Rules - TennisForum.com
Thank you!