Player Duel Rules

What a duel is

A duel is a statistical comparison of two performances. It is not a full judgement of a player's ability, health or potential, or of everything they did on the court.

Duels have no prizes of any kind. Players do not stake credits against each other, and a duel's result moves no credit to anyone.

Who can take part

• A player with an active Scouting4U player app - Rookie, Pro or Lineup - once Scouting4U has switched Duels on for them. Duels open by season, league, team or player; when they are on for you, Duels appears on your profile.
• Only the player, or a parent, guardian or representative acting for them, takes part. The account's role is recorded - from the face check, or asked once in the app. A coach, scout or fan who follows a player does not act for them.
• A player under 18 takes part only through a parent or guardian, and is invited only by another player under 18.
• An account cannot make two players it acts for duel each other, and linked accounts must not be used to arrange results.
• An admin approves every account's access to a player. That approval is a review, not an absolute guarantee against impersonation - report anything wrong.

Invitations

• Invitations are off until you turn them on in your duel settings. You can take invitations from any league, or only from players in the leagues you choose - the league the inviting player's game is scored in.
• Turning invitations off, or narrowing them, withdraws the invitations waiting for you that no longer fit, and their senders get their credit back. Duels already accepted keep their agreed terms.
• An invitation lasts 7 days. Before it is accepted, the sender can withdraw it and you can decline it, with no result and no penalty. A declined player cannot invite you again for 14 days.
• Two players can have one invitation or open duel between them at a time.
• You can block a player: neither of you can invite the other, and they are not told. Invitations are only possible while Duels are on for both players, and sending them is rate-limited.

Duel credits

• Sending an invitation holds 1 duel credit. Accepting is free. The credit is used when the result is final - a win, a loss or a draw - and comes back if the duel is declined, withdrawn, not answered in time or void.
• A verified player receives 50 welcome credits, once.
• Each game of the player's that is ordered and then tagged adds 20 credits - once the tagging is delivered, not when it is paid for, and once per player and game. If an order is refunded, the unused credits it added are removed; that never creates a debt or another charge.
• Credits are not sold at the moment. They cannot be transferred, sold, staked, won or exchanged for money. Scouting4U can add credits to a player's balance or correct it.

Which games count

• When a duel is accepted, each player's competition and team are fixed - those of their most recent official game - and shown in the app.
• Each player's counting game is their team's first official game in that competition dated after the day of acceptance, in the competition's own time zone. The day of acceptance itself never counts, so nobody accepts a duel after seeing their own game. A later game never replaces it.
• Both counting games must be played within 30 days of acceptance. The two games can be the same game or different games. A duel between two competitions compares two performances; it says nothing about which league is stronger.

Minutes, appearances and safety

• A counting game qualifies from 10:00 of officially recorded playing time (600 seconds), overtime included. 9:59 does not qualify.
• Under 10:00 in the counting game, or no appearance, and the whole duel is void: no result, and the credit comes back. There is no search for a later game. The duel shows only "No qualifying appearance" - never a reason such as an injury or a coach's decision.
• A missing or incomplete box score is not taken to mean a player did not play. Each game's official box score has 72 hours after the end of the game's day, in the competition's time zone, to arrive complete; if it does not, the duel is void.
• No one has to play, look for extra minutes, go against their coach, or keep playing when they should stop. A non-qualifying appearance is never a defeat.

After a duel is accepted

An accepted duel cannot be cancelled, and no one can choose a different game or remove a result because it went badly. Health, safety, harassment, an account used without permission, and data failures can always be reported from the duel itself: Scouting4U reviews every report privately, and no one is asked to publish evidence.

VPM - Value Per Minute

VPM is Scouting4U's own time-adjusted performance score. It is not the competition's PIR divided by minutes. It is built from these official box-score categories:

• Scoring, valued by efficiency: points against the shooting possessions they used
• Playmaking: assists
• Rebounding: offensive and defensive
• Defense: steals and blocks
• Fouls drawn
• Turnovers, fouls committed and shots blocked, which count against

How it treats them:

• Scoring counts through its efficiency: points against the shooting possessions they used. A made shot counts once and a missed one costs once. A game with no shot attempts has no shooting part at all - never 0%.
• The total is divided by the official playing time, overtime included, and shown per 100 minutes. Across games it is the total value over the total minutes, so a short appearance never weighs as much as a full game.
• Both players in a duel are scored the same way, under the same version. Payment, plan, credits, video tagging, how an account was verified, popularity and sponsorship are never inputs.
• Missing data never becomes zero. An impossible box-score line - more shots made than taken, points that do not add up - is held for correction and never scored as it stands.
• VPM is kept to three decimals and shown as a whole number, rounded half away from zero. The whole number shown decides: the higher VPM wins, and the same VPM is a draw. There are no hidden decimals and no random tie-breaks. VPM can be negative; the higher number still wins.

Scouting4U does not publish VPM's numerical weights. The current version is vpm-2026-09-26. Each version is tested on a full year of official games before it is used, and approved by Scouting4U. Any change to a weight, a category or the rounding is a new version, and a duel keeps the version it was accepted under. VPM reads the box score only: what a box score does not record - screens, off-ball defense, spacing - it cannot see.

Results and corrections

• Each side of a duel updates as its counting game's box score arrives. Nothing is decided until both are in.
• With both games in and checked, the result is provisional for 72 hours, open to corrections of the official box score. It is then final, and the credit is used.
• A box-score correction is scored under the duel's own VPM version and recorded - even after the result is final, for 30 days. A correction that makes a final result no longer valid goes to a private review instead. A final result that is voided gives the credit back, once; a changed result never uses a second credit.
• Data that cannot be confirmed leads to a void duel - never an assumed score or an arbitrary winner.

Standings

Two separate tables rank the players:

• VPM performance standings - each player's VPM over every official game of 10:00 or more since they joined Duels, in their current competition. Every eligible game counts, not only the ones a duel used, and each game counts once however many duels it settled. A player is ranked from 5 games and 50 minutes; below that, the row is marked provisional.
• Duel record - wins, draws and losses from final results. It grows with how many duels a player takes part in, so it is a record of activity, not a ranking of ability.

Only adult players who chose to appear are listed. A player under 18, or without a date of birth on their profile, never appears, and nothing a player did before turning 18 is published. An adult's duels with a younger player never name them.

See both on the Player Duels page.

Fair play and reports

• Impersonation, duplicate identities, arranged results, falsified statistics, pressure on another player and getting round a block are not allowed.
• Report a wrong game, statistic, result or player from the duel itself. An accepted duel, or a final result from the last 30 days, is held while an admin reviews it, then resumed or voided - using the recorded inputs and the duel's own rules. Scouting4U may pause a player's invitations while it looks into something.
• Nothing you buy changes a duel's result or a standing.

Versions and changes

The rules version and the VPM version are recorded when an invitation is sent and shown before it is accepted. If either changes in between, the invitation must be sent again. An accepted duel is never re-scored under new rules or new weights. The first rules, which used PIR per minute, were replaced before any duel was decided under them.