Nobody has to remember the score — the table keeps itself.
Every point entered courtside with one tap lands in the standings straight away. Players check their own points and their next match whenever they like, spectators follow in a browser, and the club shows its sponsors on the same screens.
Start to finish
Set up, join, watch, reward.
A club tournament passes through these four screens — all in the same app.
The organizer sets it up
Type the names or paste the list, choose the format and the number of courts; draw and schedule are ready in one tap. The club logo and sponsor visuals are uploaded here too.
Players join with a 6-digit code
A player with the app types the code or scans the QR and picks their name from the list. Their next match, court and points are on their own phone.
Spectators follow the live board
scoresay.com/t/CODE opens in any browser and goes onto the TV. Courts, scores, standings and the sponsor strip refresh instantly after every score.
Standings are final, prizes are handed out
Tie-break rules apply, medals show in the standings, the sponsor report stays with the club. Sign-up for the next tournament starts that evening.
What it solves
Three problems with a club tournament.
What makes an Americano hard is not the draw. It is scores written on paper, a table nobody can see, and an event that earns the club nothing.
Nobody can hold the scores
Four courts, sixteen players, twenty matches. Scores on paper go missing, the table gets worked out by hand at the end, and the argument starts. Here every point goes in courtside with one tap and the standings are recomputed on the spot.
Players cannot see the table
“What is the score? Where am I? Who am I with next, and on which court?” None of that needs asking: the table and the match list sit live on everyone’s phone, and spectators follow the board.
The tournament earns the club nothing
Tournament day is the club’s busiest day, and yet the screens show nothing. The club logo and sponsor images rotate on the players’ screens and on the live board, and their exposure is reported.
Below is the whole thing — the step-by-step walkthrough, formats, scoring, prizes and the sponsor system.
Step by step
This is a whole tournament, start to finish.
The eight frames below are the app’s real screens. The numbers on each frame match the notes beside it — you can see at a glance what gets tapped where.
-
1
Enter the roster
Whoever creates the tournament becomes the organizer. A four-step wizard asks for the format, the players, the prizes and a summary.
- 1 Four steps: format and courts · players · prizes and club · summary
- 2 The counter says “roster complete” and Next opens
- 3 Type a name, press Enter — the box clears, the next one is ready
-
2
Share the code
Once created, the tournament gets its own code and QR image. Drop the code into the group chat and you are done.
- 1 The tournament code — three letters, four digits
- 2 Scanning the QR lands straight in the tournament
- 3 The browser address to hand to spectators
-
3
Players join
Entering the code opens the roster. Everyone picks their own name — no account is needed for a tournament.
- 1 Everyone picks their own name from the list
- 2 A name already taken cannot be picked twice
- 3 Anyone not playing chooses “just watch”
-
4
Score at the court
Every match has one scorer. The screen splits in two: top half is one team, bottom half the other. Tap and the point lands.
- 1 Matches are played to a total — 9 of 16 here
- 2 Who serves and from which side is on screen
- 3 A mistap is undone with a single tap
-
5
The tournament runs itself
When the last match of a round finishes, the next round opens by itself. The organizer just watches.
- 1 Rounds advance on their own — there is no “next round” button
- 2 Progress counts the whole schedule, not one round
- 3 The club’s sponsors rotate here
-
6
Everyone knows their own match
Each player sees their rank, their points and their next match on their own phone. “Who am I with, which court?” stops being a question.
- 1 Your own rank and points at the top
- 2 Your next match: court, partner and opponents
-
7
Spectators watch the board
The same address on the television by the court or on everyone’s phone: no app, no sign-up.
- 1 The code is on the board too — latecomers can still join
- 2 Which round is being played
- 3 Live court scores, scorer and server
- 4 The standings table with medals
-
8
The podium
When the tournament ends the standings settle: the podium, the medals and the prizes you typed appear on screen.
- 1 The podium and the medals
- 2 Your prize name shows under each place
All it takes is one phone: whoever sets the tournament up. Players can join from the app if they want to, or follow along on the board without installing anything.
Formats
Four formats, all of them 2 v 2.
In individual formats your partner changes every round and the points go to you. In team formats the pairs are fixed and only the opponents change.
Americano
The classic club tournament. A new partner every round, and new opponents wherever possible.
How the draw is built
- Sit-out fairness comes first: whoever has rested least sits last
- Then a different partner, then a different opponent
- Rounds can be drawn up front; the schedule advances by itself
The format where everyone plays with everyone and a single individual ranking comes out at the end.
Mexicano
Round one is a draw; every round after that is built from the live standings. Whoever is on form meets whoever else is on form.
How the draw is built
- Players are split into blocks of four by rank
- Inside each block, 1st + 4th play 2nd + 3rd
- The top block goes to Court 1 — the headline match is in the middle
Because it reads the standings, rounds cannot be drawn in advance; each round is built once the previous one finishes.
Team Americano
Pairs stay together and face a different pair every round. Standings are per pair.
How the draw is built
- Meeting the same opponents again is penalised
- A pair rests together and plays together
- Rounds can be drawn up front
For groups who arrive with a fixed partner and would rather not swap.
Team Mexicano
Fixed pairs, matched by rank: 1st pair plays 2nd, 3rd pair plays 4th.
How the draw is built
- Swiss style: neighbouring pairs in the table meet
- An immediate rematch is avoided by swapping with a neighbour
- The strongest tie goes to Court 1
The format that feels like a club league: play well and you meet stronger pairs.
All four formats put four players on a court. When the numbers do not divide evenly, the sit-outs are shared fairly: whoever has played most sits first, whoever has rested least sits last.
The draw
The draw is not random — it is scored.
The app does not shuffle and deal. It gives every possible line-up a cost, tries hundreds of line-ups, and keeps the cheapest one.
Sit-out fairness first
When there are not enough courts, the cost decides who sits: whoever has played most rests first, whoever has rested least sits last. Nobody sits out twice in a row.
Repeating a partner is expensive
Repeating a partner costs a hundred times more than repeating an opponent. So if a fresh partner requires it, the draw will accept meeting the same opponent a second time.
Hundreds of attempts, one answer
Each round is searched from 300 different starting points, and all three ways of splitting every foursome are tried. If the cost reaches zero the search stops there.
Example: 8 players, 2 courts, 4 rounds
The draw below came out of the app’s own draw engine. Players are numbered 1 to 8.
| Round | Court 1 | Court 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 + 6 / 3 + 7 | 2 + 8 / 1 + 4 |
| 2 | 6 + 7 / 2 + 4 | 3 + 5 / 1 + 8 |
| 3 | 1 + 5 / 4 + 6 | 2 + 7 / 3 + 8 |
| 4 | 1 + 6 / 7 + 8 | 2 + 3 / 4 + 5 |
After four rounds every player has had four different partners — nobody plays with the same person twice.
Same tournament, same draw
The randomness is tied to the tournament’s own seed. Within one tournament a given round always produces the same pairings; the draw cannot be re-rolled until it looks better.
Rounds are built on the spot
The draw is not a fixture written in advance — it is derived from the matches played so far. That is why you can add or remove players mid-tournament and the next round is still fair.
How many matches fit?
A round holds the smaller of two numbers: the court count, or a quarter of the players. In team formats it is half the number of pairs.
Scoring and standings
Points are never stored — they are recomputed every time.
The table is not a counter. It is derived from the finished matches on every read, which is why correcting a mistyped score fixes the standings instantly with no manual adjustment.
Matches are played to a total
No sets, no games: the match ends when the two scores add up to the target. The default is 16; 8, 12, 20, 21, 24 and 32 are also available. A result whose total does not match is not accepted.
A team’s score goes to both players in full
If a match ends 10-6, both players on the winning side get 10 and both on the losing side get 6. Points are never split or halved.
How ties are broken
In order: points, then point difference (scored minus conceded), then wins, then name. If all three match, the players share the same rank.
What the standings table shows
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| P | Matches played |
| W / D / L | Wins, draws, losses |
| F / A | Points scored, points conceded |
| Diff | Difference — scored minus conceded |
| Pts | Points — every point collected |
In team formats the table is per pair: the ranking is of pairs, not of individual players.
Schedule
“How many matches each?” — it works out the rest.
In Americano and Team Americano every round is drawn while the tournament is being created. Who plays with whom, on which court, is known from the first minute.
From matches to rounds
You pick how many matches each player should get; the app works out how many rounds that takes from the court and player counts. A tournament holds at most 20 rounds.
When does it finish?
The estimate allows roughly 36 seconds per rally plus three minutes between rounds, and the default suggestion aims at a two-hour session. The finish time is shown while you set up.
The next round opens itself
When the last match of a round finishes, the next round opens — nobody has to press “next round”. A match from a round that has not opened yet cannot be played early.
Once the schedule is done the main button becomes “Finish tournament”, and extra rounds can still be added. Mexicano has no schedule: since each round is built from the previous standings, rounds open one at a time. A tournament can also be given a start date and time in advance.
Courtside
Keeping score is one tap.
Every match has one scorer, and that phone is the match scoreboard. Everyone else sees the same score as it happens.
Two zones, one tap
The screen splits in two: top half is one team, bottom half the other. Tap and the point lands. Undo is a single tap. With a Bluetooth remote the phone stays untouched.
The app tracks the serve
The serve rotates A1 → B1 → A2 → B2, each player serving 2, 4 or 8 points in a row. The first point is from the right, then alternating. The scorer picks the first server; after the first point the order locks.
Nothing counts until it is confirmed
At the target the screen asks you to confirm the result. If the total does not add up the server refuses it. If someone gets it wrong, the organizer corrects it — a corrected match is marked with ✎ in the list.
The scorer can be changed while the tournament runs. Voice announcements work in tournaments too: after every point the score, the server and the side are read out loud — in six languages, and in two of them at once if you want.
Prizes and medals
How many places get a prize? You decide.
The number of prize places runs from none to eight (three by default), and each place can carry a prize name. The names appear as chips above the standings and inside the podium on the result screen.
Who gets a medal?
A player gets a medal when they have played at least one match and their rank falls inside the prize places. First three get 🥇🥈🥉; fourth and below get 🏅.
What happens on a tie?
While the tournament runs, the whole tied group has to fit inside the prize places. Once it is over that condition drops: a shared rank is a shared prize.
With three prize places
| Situation | While running | Once finished |
|---|---|---|
| One player 1st | 🥇 | 🥇 |
| Two players 1st (next is 3rd) | 🥇 🥇 | 🥇 🥇 |
| Four players 1st | no medal, plain rank | 🥇 ×4 |
The reason is simple: showing four gold medals halfway through a tournament would be misleading — nobody knows yet who will actually take a prize.
Live board
One address for the spectators.
Every tournament has a live board at scoresay.com/t/CODE. No app to install, no account, no login — the address opens in any browser.
TV mode
One tap goes full screen: the scores grow, the club logo and sponsor strip take the stage. Built for the television or projector beside the court.
Six languages, automatically
The board reads the browser language and opens in English, Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian or German. No setting to change when you have visiting players.
Genuinely live
The board holds an open connection to the server and refreshes the moment anything changes; if the connection drops a backup poll takes over and the link repairs itself.
The board shows live court scores, the scorer, the current server and side, who is sitting out, the prize chips, the standings table with the medal rule applied, and the full match history grouped by round. Ways to get the board onto a big screen are covered on the Big Screen page.
Club branding and sponsors
Turn the tournament into the club’s shop window.
The organizing club and the sponsors are deliberately kept apart: the club’s logo and name sit at the very top of every screen, while sponsors rotate in their own strip.
The organizing club
The logo and club name appear at the top of every tournament screen, and to the left of the board heading. The image is picked from the phone’s photo library — there is no URL to type.
The sponsor strip
Up to five sponsor images, rotating every five seconds, each with its own caption underneath. A single image stays still; with none at all the strip disappears.
Exposure report
How much a sponsor was seen is counted: impressions, unique viewers and total screen time, with a daily and per-sponsor breakdown and an export of the table.
The numbers carry an honest label: they come from viewers’ own devices and are meant for internal club reporting — this is not audited ad measurement. An image counts once it has been on screen for at least a second, and time only accrues while the screen is actually visible.
The measurement uses no advertising identifier. Each viewer gets a salted identifier specific to that tournament, so the same device cannot be matched across two tournaments, and those records are deleted after 90 days. The organizer’s own screen and the spectator preview are excluded from the count — the club’s own eyes should not inflate the sponsor report. Details are in the privacy policy.
Roster
Sixteen names in a minute.
The slowest part of setting up a tournament is typing the names. There are three ways in, and all three end in the same list.
Type and press Enter
Type a name, press Enter: the box clears, the focus stays, the next name goes straight in. A repeated name is numbered automatically (“James”, “James 2”).
Paste the list
Paste the sign-up list straight out of the WhatsApp group. Bullets, numbering, phone numbers, times, email addresses and emoji are stripped out; the names remain.
Read it from a photo
Scan a handwritten list or a screenshot. Text recognition runs on the phone; the image never leaves it. Only the recognised lines of text are used, to work out which of them are names.
The roster can change after the tournament starts: a late arrival is added, someone who leaves is deactivated, and the next round is built around the new roster. Individual formats run from 4 up to 64 players, on up to 8 courts.
Offline and resilience
No signal at the court? The score still survives.
The tournament system is server-backed, but the phone at the court never waits for the server. Every tap is applied on the device first, then queued.
Local first, server second
The point appears on screen immediately and joins a queue. Until the connection returns the queue retries every five seconds, and the scorer’s screen always shows its own state.
Double counting is impossible
Every point event carries a unique id. If the same event arrives twice the server marks it as already seen. Losing and regaining signal cannot inflate a score.
The app opens full
The last state of the tournament is kept on the device, so with no connection at all the app still opens on the last known score and standings. One device can hold several tournaments at once.
Organizer rights can be recovered
Creating a tournament produces a recovery code shaped like XXXX-XXXX. If the phone is lost or the app removed, that code takes control back from another device.
The server broadcasts the whole state on every change — never partial updates. That is why nothing is missing when a dropped connection comes back. Finished tournaments move into the device history: the last 30 stay readable offline with their standings, and the result table can be exported.
Share the code, everyone sees the same table
No account is needed for a tournament. The only things a tournament sends to the server are player names and scores.
Frequently asked
Questions that come up.
How many players and courts does it handle?
Individual formats take from 4 to 64 players. Team formats need at least 2 pairs. The court count runs from 1 to 8. A round cannot hold more matches than there are courts; the remaining players sit that round out.
Does every player have to install the app?
No. It is enough that the phone keeping score has the app. Everyone else can follow the tournament at scoresay.com/t/CODE in a browser. A player who does join in the app also sees their own rank, points and next match.
What if the connection drops at the court?
You keep scoring. Points are applied on the device and wait in a queue, then go up together once the connection returns. Event ids make it impossible for the same point to be counted twice.
Someone turns up after the tournament has started?
Add them. Because the draw is not a fixed fixture but is derived from the matches played so far, the next round is built fairly around the new roster. A player who leaves can be deactivated the same way.
A score was entered wrong — now what?
The organizer can correct any match result. Since the standings are recomputed from the finished matches, the correction shows up instantly. Corrected matches are marked with ✎ in the list.
Is the tournament over if the organizer loses their phone?
No. The recovery code issued when the tournament was created takes control back from another device. The tournament keeps running on the server in the meantime.
Do voice announcements work in tournaments?
Yes. After every point the score, the serving player and the serving side are read out loud. Announcements are available in English, Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian and German, and two languages can be used at the same time.
How do I get the board onto a television?
The board is a web page, so a smart TV’s own browser can open it directly and the full-screen button switches to TV mode. Ways to connect a phone or tablet to a TV are covered on the Big Screen page.
Where is tournament data kept?
Unlike ordinary matches, tournament mode uses a server: player names, matches and scores live there so everyone can see the same standings. No account is needed for a tournament. Details are in the privacy policy.
Every screenshot on this page comes from the app’s real interface. Advanced tournament features require an in-app subscription; the current scope and prices are shown in the app. How the data is handled is set out in the privacy policy.