How many times have you played golden point (when the score reaches 29-29 the next point wins according to the Laws of Badminton)? I asked former world number one Thomas Laybourn how many times he's played it and he said once. Sounds like it's rarer than I thought. I got to play it a year after I started playing, and was not expecting to have played it the same number of times as Thomas! Unless he's played it unusually few times for a professional it sounds like this is rarer than a hole in one.
Have reached 30-29 four times so far: 1-2. During social doubles matches on two occasions 3. During a league MD match, really frustrating to lose 29-30 in the second after losing the first one 3. My favorite match: Was during a tournament with round robin format. Both my opponent and me had won equal number of matches. We were playing for 1st place but I had lost more games at that point so I needed to win. Lost the first game 25-23, had a great G2 and was down most of the third set but won 30-29 in the end
I've mentioned the rule to a number of club players, and almost no one knew of the rule. A Committee member at one of my clubs said that the club doesn't play by this rule.
Win by two. Though one can only guess how rare it is that the score reaches 29-29, so I doubt there have been many cases of a score above 30.
In a tournament/competition just once. Doubles, semifinals against people from the same club, we all know each other well, play on the same team for team matches... and it's always close matches between us. We split the first two games, so it comes down to the third and it's close, as close as it gets. 29 all. A longer rally, I play a tumbling net shot and it falls down on the net, stays there - in my memory it was around ten seconds - before it falls back to our side and we lose. Looking back, that was a very fun game.
I did an analysis. In professional matches a score of 29-all (or 30-29) is reached in about one in 3000 games. https://www.badmintonbettingguide.com/2022/03/16/statistics-of-extra-points.html You can also find the formula to calculate the probability assuming constant probabilities for winning rallies here https://www.badmintonbettingguide.com/2022/04/29/how-many-points-are-expected-to-be-played.html
