Help & FAQ

ClubLadders gives your club one place to manage members, record matches, run tournaments, track ratings, and plan sessions.

You can create a club for badminton, baseball, basketball, bowling, boxing, chess, cricket, cycling, darts, fencing, football, golf, handball, hockey, padel, pickleball, ping pong, pool, racquetball, rugby, snooker, soccer, softball, squash, swimming, table tennis, tennis, volleyball, or another sport.

Yes. ClubLadders uses Google Sign-In. You need an account to join a club, manage your profile, or use an invite link.

Yes. ClubLadders is currently in Pilot, and the features available today are free to use.

Yes. On supported browsers, you can install ClubLadders on your device. On iPhone or iPad, open it in Safari, tap Share, then choose Add to Home Screen.

The Pilot plan includes all current ClubLadders features: Elo ratings, standings, matches, tournaments, club challenges, sessions, RSVPs, badges, match confirmation, and optional inactivity decay.

Yes. Club Pro is available to selected Free clubs during the rollout. It adds more capacity, all ClubLadders tools, and protected match history while the plan is active.

Yes. A Pilot club can have up to 75 active players. The club owner does not use a player slot, and archived or former players do not count toward the limit.

A Pilot club can record up to 750 regular matches in one season. When you reach the limit, start a new season to record more regular matches. Tournament and club-challenge results do not count toward this limit.

After a Club Pro subscription ends, the club keeps Pro tools for seven days. Then it moves to Free, extra admins become members, the custom invite link is replaced, and old completed-season match details may be cleaned up under the Free plan.

Open the club's invite link and sign in with Google. You will either join straight away or send a request for the owner to approve.

Every club has an invite link. Owners can let people join immediately or require approval first. Resetting the invite code turns off all older links.

No. To join a club, you need an invite link from someone in that club.

A guest player is someone the owner adds by name only. Their matches and rating are tracked like everyone else's. When they create an account later, they can claim that player record and keep its history.

Pilot and Club Pro owners can promote members to admin. Admins can manage matches, tournaments, challenges, sessions, and announcements. Free clubs have one owner; extra admins return to regular members when a Club Pro grace period ends.

You can leave any club you do not own. If you have match or tournament history, the club keeps an anonymous player record so past results still make sense. Owners must transfer ownership or delete the club first.

Deleting a club archives it first. The owner has 30 days to restore it from the home screen before it is permanently removed.

You can own up to 20 active clubs. An archived club cannot be restored if you already own another active club with the same name.

Everyone starts at 1200. Win and your rating goes up; lose and it goes down. Beating a stronger player is worth more than beating a lower-rated player.

Your first 5 games have larger rating changes. This helps your rating settle quickly before normal changes apply.

For some sports, the score can affect how much each rating changes. This applies to point-score sports such as badminton, table tennis, ping pong, and bowling, and set-score sports such as tennis, padel, squash, and racquetball.

Each player gets their own rating change. Your result is calculated using the ratings of both teams, so partners can gain or lose different amounts from the same match.

Chess matches can end in a draw, which gives each player a half-point result. Other regular-match sports use a winner and loser.

Standings show current Elo rating. Progress shows who has gained the most Elo this season, with wins used to break a tie.

Owners can turn this on to gradually move inactive players above 1200 back toward 1200 after about three weeks without a match. It is off by default and never takes a player below 1200.

Yes. Owners can set a player's starting rating between 100 and 4000. If that player already has matches this season, ClubLadders recalculates their current rating from those results.

In a public club, any member can record a regular match. In a private club, only the owner and admins can.

For badminton, table tennis, ping pong, and bowling, you can record a single game, best of 3, or best of 5. The winner must take most games, and the series is saved as one match.

Owners and admins can edit or delete a regular match from the current season if it is one of the latest 100 matches and no tournament is in progress. You cannot change the players on an existing match.

When this setting is on, the other signed-in player can confirm or dispute a recorded result. Ratings update straight away, and owners or admins can resolve disputes.

ClubLadders recalculates this season's ratings after you edit or delete a match. That keeps every rating consistent with the corrected results.

Owners can archive a player to hide them from standings and match pickers. They can also remove a player while keeping their history, or permanently remove them when it will not disrupt an active tournament or challenge.

Starting a new season saves the final standings from the season that just ended, then gives every player a fresh 1200 rating and 0-0 record for the new season.

Yes. Only the owner can start a new season, and they must finish or cancel any in-progress tournament first.

Yes. A new season resets current ratings and player records. Previous seasons remain available as read-only history with their final standings.

Current-season matches stay available. For completed seasons, ClubLadders keeps the final standings and player records. On the Pilot plan, detailed match-by-match history can be removed once a season is more than one year old.

No. Your season and its final standings stay in ClubLadders. After one year, only the detailed list of individual matches may be removed on the Pilot plan.

Yes, if you want to keep every individual match long term. Owners can export a CSV from Club Settings → Data. ClubLadders shows a reminder when a completed Pilot season is 11 months old.

No. Once detailed match history is removed, it cannot be restored in the app. Your season summary and final standings remain, so export a CSV first if you need every match.

You can run single elimination, double elimination, round robin, Club Swiss, groups-to-knockout, and main-plus-consolation tournaments.

Yes. Every tournament format supports singles or doubles. For doubles, add an even number of players, review the balanced team suggestions, and confirm the partners before the bracket starts. Teams cannot be changed after confirmation.

One loss eliminates a player. ClubLadders places players in a seeded bracket, gives the strongest seeds any required first-round byes, and keeps seeds 1 and 2 apart until the final. You can also add a third-place playoff.

A first loss moves a player or team into the losers bracket, and a second loss eliminates them. The two bracket winners meet in a grand final. Organizers can enable a bracket reset, which adds a deciding rematch if the losers-bracket side wins the first final, and can award third place automatically to the side eliminated in the losers-bracket final.

Every player faces every other player once. Standings use match points first, then head-to-head results and point differential. Players can remain tied when those results are equal.

Club Swiss is ClubLadders' club-friendly Swiss format, not an official FIDE pairing system. Players complete a fixed number of rounds without elimination. New rounds pair similar scores and avoid repeat opponents when possible; standings use points, Buchholz, then Sonneborn-Berger.

You need at least 6 players. Automatic setup creates balanced groups of 3 or 4 and spreads seeds between them in serpentine order. Each group plays round robin, then the top 2 advance by default. The knockout keeps players from the same group apart in its opening round.

ClubLadders creates 3 groups of 3, so each player has 2 group matches. The top 2 from each group advance, creating a 6-player knockout in an 8-slot bracket with 2 byes.

The main draw is single elimination, and the consolation draw is shown as soon as the tournament starts. Anyone who loses their first played match enters consolation; unused places become byes. A first-round bye does not count as a match, so that player still enters consolation if they lose their first game in round two. The main-draw winner is the tournament champion, and organizers can optionally add a third-place playoff for the two main-draw semifinal losers.

The draft starts in rating order. Owners can move players up or down before starting. Elimination brackets use that final order, while groups spread the seeds across the field in alternating serpentine order.

A bye advances a player without an opponent when a bracket or Club Swiss round has an open slot. It appears as BYE and does not require a result. In Club Swiss, a bye counts as one tournament point and is given to someone who has not already received one when possible.

Results remain editable drafts until an owner or admin confirms the round. Confirmation locks those results, applies Elo changes when enabled, and creates or fills the next games. Round robin and group rounds must be confirmed in order.

Only if the tournament owner turns on Count towards club Elo. Otherwise, tournament results do not change player ratings.

A club challenge is a head-to-head event between two clubs. Players are paired by rating, and the club that wins more pairings wins the challenge.

No. Challenges update each club's challenge rating, not individual player Elo ratings.

A challenge that never starts can expire after 7 days. A started challenge with no result can be voided after 14 days.

Sessions are club events with a date, time, and optional note. Members can RSVP Going, Maybe, or Can't. Past sessions are hidden after the event.

Owners and admins can schedule or cancel sessions. Any signed-in club member can RSVP.

Owners and admins can post announcements. ClubLadders keeps the latest 5 and can send members a push alert or post to Discord when those options are on.

Yes. Owners can connect a Discord channel and choose whether to post match results, tournament results, and announcements.

Yes. From Profile → Data, you can export your account and your match history as JSON. Club owners can export all club matches as a CSV from Club Settings → Data.

First, transfer or delete any clubs you own. Then ClubLadders removes your account details, signs you out, and deletes your push subscriptions and join requests. Past club results stay in place without your identity attached.

ClubLadders has backup and recovery tools for operational incidents. For your own records, export club matches from Club Settings → Data or export your account from Profile → Data.

If ClubLadders is temporarily unavailable, you should see a maintenance or downtime page. Try again shortly. You can also export important club records from Club Settings → Data.

In Profile → Notifications, choose which tournament, announcement, and badge push alerts you want. Your match setting also controls match alerts.

Yes. Turn on push notifications in a supported browser, then choose the alerts you want in Profile → Notifications. Push settings apply to that device only.

Yes. In Club Settings, owners can turn tournament and announcement push notifications on or off for the whole club.

When an owner or admin selects Notify ready matches, ClubLadders alerts players whose tournament matches are ready. Each ready match is notified once.

Club Pro is planned for higher player and match limits, plus longer match-history retention. Pilot includes every current ClubLadders tool while the product is being tested. Match CSV export remains available on every plan.

No current Pilot features are being removed. Club Pro is not available yet, and any future plan changes will be shared before they take effect.