Score 0
Best -
First Serve

First Serve

You serve every point and you get two attempts. Put the risk on the first one, because a fault on the second hands over the point.

How to play

Every point starts with your serve, and you choose how hard to hit it from five settings. Bolder settings produce more serves the receiver cannot touch, but also more faults — the percentage on each button is how often that setting misses. A fault on the first serve costs you only the attempt and you serve again; a fault on the second serve is a double fault and gives the point away, so the two serves want completely different settings. Points run 15, 30, 40 and deuce as in tennis, and winning four points by a margin of two holds the game. Each game you hold makes the receiver stronger: they take more of the rallies and start returning serves that used to be winners. Lose a single game and the run ends, so your score is the number of games you managed to hold.

Tips & strategy

The two serves are not the same decision and should not use the same setting. On the first serve a miss costs you nothing but the attempt, so the question is only how much reward you can buy; on the second a miss costs the whole point, so the question is only how safely you can land it. Players who pick one comfortable setting and use it twice score measurably worse than players who go a step bolder first and a step safer second — that gap is the entire game.

Do not go all out on the first serve either. The most aggressive setting misses half the time, which means half your points start from a second serve, and a second serve is worse than an ordinary first serve even when it lands. Somewhere just below maximum is where the first serve pays best, and you can feel it: if you are hitting more second serves than first serves in play, you have overcooked it.

The second serve is where discipline pays, and the trap is that it feels wasteful. A safe second serve often just starts a rally you might lose, so it is tempting to hit it harder and try to end the point outright. But a double fault is worse than any rally, because a rally you at least sometimes win. Take the setting that lands, accept the rally, and let the receiver beat you rather than beating yourself.

As the receiver improves, both serves should get bolder, not safer. Late in a run, rallies are close to lost before they start, so the value of an unreturnable serve rises while the cost of a fault stays the same. That is the one time the maximum setting is worth using on the first serve — when the alternative, a rally, has stopped being an alternative at all.