2019 Australian Open at Superbru

The Australian Open gets underway in Melbourne on the 14th of January (Monday) and as usual there's plenty of anticipation among tennis and Superbru players alike as we all look to begin this fresh calendar year on a high. In case 2019 is your debut tennis season at Superbru, here's a quick run-through of how things work before we get into a small preview of what we can expect in this year's tournament.

Bands

As is the case in our 'Superstars' or '5-a-side' games in other tournaments such as Super Rugby, the Premier League and the World Cup, the aim of the game when playing the Australian Open at Superbru is to pick the player you believe will be most successful from four different lists of players known as 'bands'.

Rather than having a full, rather exhausting list of the many players that will be competing in Melbourne this year, we draw up four bands of players containing the top seeds for both the men's and women's title. By selecting one player from each list, you are left with a four-person team for a given round and you will score points based on how well each of those players get on.

The bands for Round One of the 'Aus Open' can be seen below. Note: You are allowed to pick a fresh team of players for each and every round of the tournament meaning it is sometimes best to pick players you are most confident will perform best in the particular match they have in a round rather than always picking the player you believe will win the overall Championship in every single round.



The bands are now open and ready for you to pick your players for Round One. Remember, as with all Superbru games, you can change your picks as many times as you like right up until the round deadline. Feel free to make some early picks that ensure you don't miss the deadline safe in the knowledge that you can come back and re-think your 4-player team once fixtures are confirmed after Thursday's draw. Bands for Round Two will open soon after the draw and may contain players that have been knocked out in Round One due to the very short (sometimes non-existent) gap between the rounds. In such cases, the player will be marked 'Withdrawn' and you will receive an e-mail alert if a player you have picked has been marked.

Scoring

The game is designed to reward players who win the most comfortably in each round, hence why looking at each player's opposition is a good idea. Players get their points from two different factors:

Net sets won - 3 points per set: That is, the number of sets a player wins a match by. For instance, if Roger Federer defeats Novak Djokovic by 3 sets to 1 he would be awarded six points as he won by 2 sets.

Net games won - 1 point per game won in a set won by the player: The same thing applies. Going back to the Roger Federer example, if he had beaten Djokovic 7-6, 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 then he would receive an additional 9 points for the number of games he won each set by (1 point in the first set, 6 in the third and 2 in the fourth).

The 2019 Tournament

As you can see from the above bands, the vast majority of this year's top ranked players are fit and set to feature in this year's Australian Open. Juan Martin del Potro, who is currently ranked 5th in the Men's world rankings, is one man that will be absent as he recovers from a fractured kneecap. Meanwhile, there are a few other notable names in the Men's championship that are expected to be carrying slight injuries into this championship, as Marin Cilic, Rafa Nadal and Kyle Edmund have all withdrawn from recent events in the hope they can recover from minor problems in time for Round One in Melbourne.

The bands in our game contain the players ranked 1-16 in the world ahead of either championship and will only change to include other players once certain seeds are knocked out. In the event of a Band One player being knocked out, the top seed from Band Two will replace them while the 17th overall seed would go into Band Two as a replacement and so on.

Though, as we have mentioned, our game is designed to ensure each individual round is important and therefore your picks are likely to vary, it is of course useful to know who the tournament favourites are. Here's a look at the Australian Open winners from the last 5 years:



As you can see, history suggests Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer are the men to beat this year while Serena Williams, Angelique Kerber and Caroline Wozniacki have all enjoyed recent success in the Women's tournament. In total, Federer and Djokovic have each won the Australian Open 6 times but the most successful performer in the open era has been Serena Williams with 7 Aus Open titles. Djokovic and Williams are the bookies' favourites to win this year.

Click here to play the Australian Open at Superbru

We hope you enjoy playing our Australian Open game for this year's tournament and feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments! Be sure to get your leagues set up and invite friends and family members to get involved this weekend as the action begins on Monday morning.