Pickleball Scoring: Traditional vs Rally Scoring

I think there is a place for both types of scoring:

Traditional Pickleball Scoring

Pros

  • Provide a small variation of risk taking across first, second server and receivers: Since a serving team has two chances to hold the serve and win points, the first server can take a bit more risk if necessary

  • Games can be longer: If you are not sharing your court, a long game with teams of similar skills can be fun. My longest game that I remembered ran 28 minutes.

Cons

  • Games can be longer: in Open Rec play, particularly with a larger groups that is waiting for court time, it can be undesirable.

  • It is not easy for beginner to learn the system - I have started teaching only rally scoring in my 2 hour intro workshop: Players need some way to keep score and I find that completely new players can pick up rally scoring in minutes.

  • Need to stack

How to do traditional Pickleball scoring.

Rally Scoring

Pros

  • Games move faster. When people are waiting for court, this is a way to share the resource

  • Easier to learn!

  • No need to stack

Cons

  • Lost the uniqueness of traditional pickleball play — Even as I have only played for 1.5 years, I do enjoy a long traditionally scored Pickleball battle.

How to do Pickleball rally scoring.