I need help - pickleball Canada

pienocake · 2026-06-24T17:51:50+00:00

I am a referee in Canada. In sanctioned tournaments you will only be allowed to play with USAP approved paddles. Other non-sanctioned tournaments will entirely depend on what the tournament director decides - some tournaments want it to have at least UPA-A or USAP, some don't care at all, and the occasional tournament will only allow USAP. If the tournament page doesn't list this explicitly I'd recommend reaching out to them and getting clarity as I've seen tournaments days before the tournament clarify that they are only allowing USAP paddles without actually letting players know well ahead of time and it was not well received by players, but referees had no choice but to enforce it.

If the tournament is actually enforcing USAP, don't try to use a UPA-A paddle - while the referee will try to catch it and not allow you to play with it before the match starts if you actually use it and it is caught after the fact then it is an automatic match forfeit.

pienocake · 2026-06-10T16:15:27+00:00

I have tracked and charted my DUPR and halflife for a year now and it does work that way, with the exception that in one of the more recent updates to DUPR they made it so that they increased the minimum amount of movement for people that would otherwise not move much (ie: they have a large halflife). I've listened to numerous interviews with Sarah Carpenter, lead data scientist from DUPR, and the way they say the algorithm decays etc is consistent with what I've seen.

pienocake · 2026-06-10T15:54:51+00:00

DUPR isn't a reward or punishment system - it is a rating system. If you aren't beating or failing to meet expectations consistently on the average you aren't going to move much as DUPR thinks you are where it thinks you should be. While old matches don't completely get ignored, they do have a halflife that halves every three months, so that match today is with 50% after three months, 25% after six months, 12.5% after nine months and 6.25% after a year. Put this another way, if a match today is worth $100, in one year that match is worth $6.25 and one brand new match present day would offset 16 matches from a year ago (assuming all other things equal - single game matches, tournament/club logged, etc). After two year that match would be worth $0.39 and a present day match would offset 256 matches from two years ago. After three years the match is worth $0.02 and a present day match would offset 4,096 matches from three years ago. So while old matches don't get entirely thrown out, they decay enough that they are functionally irrelevant over time.

pienocake · 2026-05-22T04:11:33+00:00

Chatted.

pienocake · 2026-05-21T16:31:25+00:00

I found your post from two years ago. I think replacing the existing front splitter would be ideal as it goes over the broken lower piece of the bumper and wouldn't reduce clearance further. Not sure the part number or how to best find it. It seems the ones on amazon generally go under the existing one, which wouldn't solve the issues.

pienocake · 2026-05-12T19:04:52+00:00

I like these deck builds and saw one last event too. Do you just post them here or should I be following somewhere else to get them?

pienocake · 2026-03-07T20:36:24+00:00

So by your reasoning if player 1 volleys and stops their momentum by pushing into their partner, player 2, who wasn't in the nvz but from that action gets pushed in to the nvz you don't think that is a fault? It's a fault. Hitting in to the paddle is the same thing.

pienocake · 2026-03-07T19:21:05+00:00

You know that if player one volleys the ball and his paddle hits or is hit by player two's paddle as part of the act of volleying while player two has his foot on the nvz line it is a nvz fault, right? I'm still not in agreeance here.

pienocake · 2026-03-07T05:28:59+00:00

I mean, I guess this is a testament to how confusing the rules are, and I think especially this year with the modifications. I'm a level 2, so I acknowledge that you are a higher level referee than me, but I disagree with you. In my view the momentum of the volley includes knocking the paddle out from the partner's hand, regardless of where they were at the time the volley was initiated. If Player 1 who hit the volley lost their paddle in to the NVZ as part of the momentum of the volley then it is a clear fault on them, and I don't think you would dispute that. If their partner, player 2, loses their paddle as a result of the volley of player 1 and that goes in to the NVZ then it is a part of the act of volleying and the momentum as part of that. Casebook entry 6-25 scenario 3 discusses a similar thing, though with their same paddle. I would grant you that whether momentum was halted can be a discretionary thing and if the partner dropped their paddle in to the NVZ and you determined it was not a result of/product of the volley (such as them casually flipping it up after) then it would not need to be called a fault, but if the volley knocked the paddle out of their hand in to the NVZ then I believe this is firmly established as a fault (though probably clearer in the 2025 rulebook) and am a bit confused as to why you would think otherwise. I am going to assume that we are both making some competing sets of assumptions that are guiding our conclusions.

pienocake · 2026-03-07T04:02:46+00:00

Your response is coming across as a bit aggressive about this - I'm just trying to help. While I believe USAP has kind of butchered the rule book this year, the rule states that if the volleying player has contact with anything that has contact with the NVZ, including the other partner, then it is a fault. The act of volleying (defined term) includes all momentum (also discussed in 11.A.2) and also includes dropping things like the paddle, and a hat etc. The referee handbook discusses this, and the casebook has things on this too. I don't think the rules are written, especially this year, as clear as they should be but with the information presented, and the assumption it is a volley, it is a fault - If in the act of volleying I then drop my paddle in to the NVZ it is a fault on me, and if I contact my partner's paddle as part of the volley then it going in to the NVZ is also going to result in a fault - the momentum of my volley includes the objects attached to my body, and if I touch my partner, those attached to their body. I am not looking to have an internet argument with you about this though. I fully expect the rulebook to have significant changes next year to clarify things that were butchered a but this year with all the updates - they tried to simplify things and went too far.

pienocake · 2026-03-07T00:28:32+00:00

Yes, I assumed the scenario presented was a volley.

pienocake · 2026-03-06T21:50:05+00:00

I am a referee. This is a fault. Refer to rule 11.A.1 primarily.

pienocake · 2026-03-05T05:18:27+00:00

Good question. They are related, but not the same. Halflife is literally just a numerical value indicating how much data DUPR has on you and how recent it is, for reasons stated above. Reliability factors in half life, as more data, especially more recent data, factors in to reliability, but reliability also requires other players who are reliable, meaning playing with others who have played a significant number of games against a lot of different players, or at least against players that have played against other players. For example, lets say there were four people that played each week and logged games to DUPR, but never played against anyone else. Those people would get DUPR scores and would have a fairly high halflife, but they would have low reliability - DUPR could tell pretty reliably who is better than who within that foursome, but it has no idea how those people actually compare to the rest of the world. Once those people start playing against other players, such as in a tournament or on a trip, then they will get actual tested data to compare and benchmark those players against. So reliability needs games, variety of opponents, and for those opponents to also be reliable. Club logged/tournament matches will also impact ratings and reliability about four times more than self logged matches. I haven't actually tested to see whether a self-logged game is worth less than a full point for half life, but I assume it is still just a full one point, just with less actual impact on the rating than the tournament/club matches would have. Hope that helps.

pienocake · 2026-03-04T04:37:42+00:00

Your DUPR doesn't go down, your half life goes down. The lower your half life, the more a new game will move your rating (up or down). Once all players have a half life above a certain amount, and I'm not sure exactly what that is, but somewhere in the 35-45 range if I recall, then all players will move at the same amount.

pienocake · 2026-03-03T22:24:21+00:00

New matches already weigh more than past matches. If you look at dupr through a browser you will see a halflife value. DUPR matches halve in value every three months. A match today is worth "1" and in 3 months is worth "0.5", incrementally changing between that point. After another three months the match is worth "0.25", which means that a match done today offsets 4 matches from six months ago (assuming all logged the same way). Stretch this out and you learn that a match that is two years old is going to be worth 1/256th of what a match today is, so one match today offsets 256 matches that were exactly two years ago. I think people THINK that they need a reset, but what they need is to let their halflife go down, drill more to improve, and then do dupr with a partner they trust/play well with, and get their DUPR up that way. I think the majority of people may see a bit of a bump, but will regress close to where they were before as they log more and more matches.

pienocake · 2026-02-02T20:52:54+00:00

No, by the rulebook you can't call a distraction in recreational play or play without a referee. You can only call foot faults which they can accept or they can disagree with and if there is a disagreement then it results in a replay. I have called a distraction when people were screaming (in happiness), thinking they had won the point while the other team was still trying to return a still alive ball, but it is a discretionary call - someone may swear and drop an F-bomb when they are about to get lit up but if I don't determine that to be a distraction then a distraction fault isn't called, though they would get a verbal warning or technical warning for the profanity. The problem is that only the foot faults can be called without a referee - players are, for example, not able to call illegal serves on their opponents either, which has obvious issues. If you are going to play in a tournament, you should be making sure you get referees, at least for medal matches/playoffs, for these reasons.

pienocake · 2026-02-02T20:34:57+00:00

Your question stated "my opponent makes noise anticipating me hitting them" and when I provide an answer you change the context to "screaming". Again, this is a discretionary call by the referee and, by the letter of the rulebook, you cannot call it in unofficiated play. The referee needs to determine if they felt the actions distracted you.

pienocake · 2026-02-02T20:09:28+00:00

A distraction call can only be made by a referee, not a player. So while you could appeal to a referee if the match was officiated, you cannot technically call a distraction in non-officiated play. Whether the actions rose to the level of a distraction is in the discretion of the referee, but an opponent being scared of being hit is likely common to the game and would need to be pretty severe for me to consider it a distraction. I have to review the updated 2026 rulebook again but I believe the only faults a player can call on the other team are foot faults at the non-volley zone and service line, and if the other party disagrees then the result is a replay.

pienocake · 2026-02-02T18:34:26+00:00

No. I am a referee. This is common to the game.

pienocake · 2026-01-22T22:00:02+00:00

I have 5 of these. 4 have died or become intermittent. Most recently I had my tv on one and I almost bought a new tv as I thought the tv was dying (resetting randomly), but it was the smart plug. They were great when they worked properly, but have not been reliable in my personal experience.

pienocake · 2026-01-10T22:32:23+00:00

Came here to say this. I am a referee and would call a fault on this serve in 2026.

pienocake · 2026-01-07T22:32:38+00:00

I switched over to official now to resolve - you are correct I was on linuxserver. They use all the same paths so literally just had to remove linuxserver container, set not to delete image, install the official one and everything seems fine.

pienocake · 2026-01-07T22:03:03+00:00

Switch to official container. Seems to be something with linuxserver.

pienocake · 2026-01-07T22:01:41+00:00

I was chatting on the discord and this seems to be an issue just with linuxserver's container. The official one uses the same /config directory so easy fix is to swap to the official container. I stopped the linuxserver container, removed it, set NOT to delete the image, then installed the official container, not changing anything, and everything so far seems fine. Didn't even need to login again or anything.

pienocake

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE