Kitchen Line: pickleball with the rules in

Almost every pickleball video game is Pong with a net drawn on it. That leaves out the two rules that make pickleball a different sport from tennis, from padel and from table tennis — the non-volley zone and the two-bounce rule. Both are enforced here, and every point you lose says which rule ended it.

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Play Kitchen Line

Game to eleven, win by two

Ready when you are

Arrows or WASD to move, 1–4 to choose a shot, Space to serve. Or just drag.

←→↑↓ or WASD to move · 1234 to choose your next shot · Space to serve · P or Esc to pause · drag anywhere on the court to move

Pick an opponent and serve.

The two rules the other games leave out

These are not difficulty settings. They hold in Social and in Open, on the first point and the last, for you and for your opponent, and each is checked by a test that plays whole matches and watches every frame.

The non-volley zone — the kitchenSeven feet either side of the net. You may stand in it all day; what you may not do is hit the ball out of the air while you are there. So this game does not swing for you: if the only shot available would be an illegal one, you simply watch the ball go past, exactly as you would on a court. The rule still costs you — it costs you by leaving you stuck in the wrong place while the ball bounces a second time, which is how it costs you in the sport.

The two-bounce ruleThe serve has to bounce, and so does the return. Only then may anyone take the ball out of the air. It is the rule that stops pickleball being a serve-and-volley game and the reason both players end up at the net at the same time, and no video game version of this sport seems to have it.

Side-out scoring, called server-firstOnly the serving side can score. Win a rally on your own serve and you get the point; win one on theirs and you get the serve, not a point. The score is called with the server's number first, which is why it appears to jump around when the serve changes hands — it is the same score, read from the other end.

Every fault says which rule it wasNot "point to them". The ball did not clear the net; the serve landed in the kitchen; you volleyed with a foot in the non-volley zone and could not get back out. A sports game that will not tell you what you did wrong is a game you cannot get better at.

Four shots

Press 1 to 4, or tap. Your next contact uses whatever is selected — choosing it before the ball arrives is the game.

What is actually being simulated

And what is not. Worth saying plainly, because a game that implies more than it models is the thing this one is trying not to be.

A real court and a real ballTwenty feet by forty-four. A net thirty-four inches at the centre and thirty-six at the posts, which matters, because the sag is where a dink lives. The ball is slow through the air and bounces the way the rulebook's own drop test says it does — released from seventy-eight inches it comes back about thirty-two.

Shots are aimed, then missedEvery shot solves a trajectory to a point you aimed at, including the climb needed to clear the net. Then it is missed, by an amount that depends on how far you had to reach for the ball and how good the player is. Almost every point in this sport is somebody's error rather than somebody's winner, and that is modelled directly rather than approximated with randomness at the end.

Singles, not doublesPickleball is mostly played as doubles, and doubles has a second server and partner positioning that is a different game. This is singles, where the kitchen and the two-bounce rule work exactly the same way.

No spinSpin is a real part of the sport and it is not here. The ball has drag and gravity and a bounce; it has no Magnus force, so there is no topspin roll-off and no slice. Adding it dishonestly — a sideways nudge labelled "spin" — would make the game less predictable without making it more true.

Your results

Kept in this browser, nowhere else. Clearing site data clears them.

Result	Opponent	Longest rally	When
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Common questions

Is this pickleball game free?

Yes. It runs in your browser with nothing to install and no sign-up.

What is the kitchen rule?

The non-volley zone is the seven feet either side of the net. You may stand in it; what you may not do is hit the ball out of the air while you are there. It is the rule that stops the sport being two people swatting at each other from the net, and it is why the soft game exists.

What is the two-bounce rule?

The serve has to bounce, and so does the return. Only then may anyone volley. It is what kills serve-and-volley and the reason both players end up at the net together.

Why do most pickleball games feel like Pong?

Because they leave both of those rules out. Without the non-volley zone you can stand at the net and volley everything, and without the two-bounce rule you can rush the net off your own serve — at which point nothing about the sport is left.

More to play

Other originals on the site, each with its own idea rather than a re-skin of the last one.

Bomber RunWaves of aircraft, a hitbox you can see, and no shot you cannot get out of the way of. Brick ReboundThe paddle is an aiming device, not a wall. Where you hit the ball decides where it goes. Maze ChaseFour chasers, each with its own way of thinking about where you are. How to play Kitchen LineThe rules, the shots, and what the kitchen actually costs you.