The complete rules of BlitzVolley

Last updated: 18 August 2026

BlitzVolley is a two-dimensional beach volleyball game played one against one, with a player on each side of the net. A match lasts a few minutes and runs entirely in the browser. This page describes the exact ruleset the server enforces — the server referees, never your machine.

The court

The court is a single side-on surface, split down the middle by a net. Each player owns one half and cannot leave it: by default the net post behaves as a wall over its full height, band included. You never cross to the other side, no matter how high you jump.

The floor stops the ball. The two side walls, however, send it back: a ball hit hard into the side bounces and returns to play, often at an unpredictable angle. This is a real departure from beach volleyball, where an out ball is dead. Here there is no "out" — anything that has not touched the floor is still live.

A match option allows players to cross over the net. It is off by default and stays off in ranked play and in tournaments. Private rooms may switch it on.

The serve

Whoever just lost the point serves the next one. That is the opposite of the usual volleyball convention, and it is deliberate: it gives the trailing player a small counterweight.

At serve, the ball hangs frozen in the air above the server. It does not fall until they touch it: you have time to reposition, to jump, to pick your angle. The rally starts on that first contact.

In ranked matches and tournaments a ten-second countdown runs alongside the serve. When it expires, the server serves automatically. Nothing can stall because a player stepped away. In friendly matches the countdown is disabled, so you can catch your breath between points.

Touches

Each side gets three touches at most before the ball must go back over the net. The counter resets as soon as the ball crosses, that is, as soon as your opponent touches it in turn.

In a one-on-one game, those three touches are not there to set up a partner — they are there to correct yourself. A first high touch to absorb a fast ball, a second to get underneath it, a third to actually strike. The players who improve fastest are the ones who stop returning everything on the first contact.

Going past the third touch is simply impossible: the next contact is ignored and the ball keeps its trajectory. It therefore reaches the floor, and the point goes to your opponent.

Scoring

A point is scored when the ball touches the floor. It lands on your side, the point is your opponent's; it lands on theirs, the point is yours. There is no other way to score: no net fault, no out ball, no illegal contact.

A match is won by reaching the target score with a two-point lead. At 10-10 in a match to 11 you must therefore reach 12-10, or 13-11, and so on. No upper limit caps that extension.

Match formats

The short tournament format is not cosmetic: a three-round bracket of first-to-7 matches fits in a single sitting, where first-to-11 would drag it out far enough that entrants would drop out midway.

What the referee sees

The match runs on the server at a fixed time step, one hundred and twenty times per second. Your browser predicts your own movement locally so controls answer instantly, but the server's simulation is the one that counts: both players see exactly the same ball, in the same place, and any disagreement is always settled in the server's favour.

In practice that means nobody can alter the score, the ball's position or their character's speed from their browser. It also means an unstable connection degrades how smooth the game looks for you, but not the fairness of the match.

To learn how to strike once you know the rules, carry on to shot techniques, or start with the beginner's guide.