Most tournaments are brutal arithmetic: lose once and you’re done, packing your bag while everyone else plays on. Big Time Squash doesn’t work like that. Here, one bad game doesn’t end your day — it just sends you down a different path. Here’s exactly how a Big Time Squash event runs, from first serve to final placement.
The format in one breath
Sixteen players. Every match best of three. Nobody goes home after a single loss. By the end of the day, all sixteen players have a final position — 1st through 16th — and every one of them earned it on court.
Nobody’s out after one loss
This is the whole point, so we’ll say it plainly: losing a match does not knock you out. In a normal single-elimination draw, half the field is eliminated after round one and spends the rest of the day watching. We think that’s a waste of a court booking and a waste of your warm-up.
Instead, every result — win or lose — moves you to your next match against someone at a similar level. You keep playing until your exact placement is decided. Win your group of matches and you’re fighting for the top spots. Drop a couple and you’re battling for mid-table pride. Either way, you play the same number of matches as the eventual champion.
How the draw flows
Think of it less as a ladder you fall off and more as a set of doors. Win, and the next door opens toward the higher placements. Lose, and you step sideways into a match against another player who also just lost — still very much in the fight, just for a different range of positions.
Round by round the field splits into tighter and tighter placement brackets, until everyone lands on a single final number. Across the day that works out to four matches each — nobody plays one and leaves. The last match you play decides your exact spot, so even the battle for 11th versus 12th means something when you’re standing on the T.
Scoring: best of three, no hiding
Each match is best of three games. Games are point-a-rally to 11, win by two — standard modern squash scoring. First to two games takes the match.
How you win matters too. A clean 2–0 says you were the better player and never let go. A 2–1 grind says you found a way when it got ugly. Both count as a win, but they don’t carry equal weight when the numbers get crunched afterwards (more on that below).
Seeding and the lottery
Placement in the opening draw comes down to organiser judgment plus a lottery thereafter. Your BIGTIME rating informs where you might land, but it doesn’t dictate the bracket — we want competitive first-round matches and a bit of chaos, not a pre-written script. Show up, get drawn, and prove it on court.
Calls, lets and the tin
Matches are largely self-refereed in the spirit of the game. Play the standard lets and strokes, call them honestly, and when in doubt, play a let and move on. The tin is the tin — clip it and the rally’s gone, no matter how pretty the swing looked. Hard, fair, and friendly is the standard we play to.
Every match feeds your rating
Nothing on the day is a dead rubber. Win or lose, every single match updates your BIGTIME rating — beating someone above you is worth more, a dominant scoreline moves the needle further, and yes, losing to someone you should have beaten stings the maths too. When the dust settles, the full draw and final placements go up on the results page.
Ready to find out where you land?
That’s the format. No early exits, no spectating after one loss, just a full day of squash that ends with everyone ranked. Check the next Playday and grab a spot before the draw fills.