Tournament day-of: running brackets in DinkBoard
The draw is built and the schedule is printed. This is the guide for the day itself: what to do at the desk, what happens when a score is wrong, and how the day ends.
The night before
Generate the draw and let the scheduler place every match. Print what the venue needs from the Reports page: the bracket sheets, a court sign for each court with the join QR on it, and the check-in sheet. Then open the event so it shows live.
Morning: check-in and announcements
Work the check-in sheet or the check-in screen as players arrive. Post an announcement when you need everyone's attention: it banners across the event page, the court board, every player's schedule page, and the venue TV at once. "Courts 5 and 6 open" reaches the whole gym without a megaphone.
During: the desk and the board
Scores come in two ways: the score desk enters finished games, and players can report their own results from their phones. If two different scores arrive for the same game, the conflict lands in the console's attention queue with both versions, and you pick the right one. A correction is a new entry, so the audit trail keeps who entered what, and a corrected score re-decides the match and re-advances the bracket on its own.
Players find their next court on their own phones. The board answers "when do I play and where" so the desk can do desk work.
Advancing pools into brackets
When a pool finishes, the standings show who advances. Press Advance on the bracket and the qualifiers seed into the elimination rounds; byes go to the top seeds, and the one and two seeds can only meet in the final. If a late correction changes a pool result, the bracket re-resolves from the sources, not from a stale copy.
Ending the day
Finalize when play ends. The results page stays online for anyone with the link, and the roster, results, and match list export as CSV files for whatever your club does next.
Frequently asked questions
Can I move a match to a different court?
Yes. The schedule screen reassigns courts during the day; the board and TV pick the change up on their next refresh.
Related guides
Pool play to bracket: how amateur pickleball tournaments actually run
Pool play into a bracket is the format almost every local pickleball tournament uses, and for good reason: guaranteed matches in the morning, a real medal round in the afternoon, and a court plan you can predict the night before.
Double elimination in pickleball: how the losers bracket works
Double elimination is the standard medal-round format in amateur pickleball because it fixes the sport's biggest fairness complaint: one bad match, often against the eventual champion, shouldn't end your tournament.
Put the court board on the venue TV
The venue TV board is a web page. If the TV has a browser, or anything with a browser plugs into it, you have a live court board with no casting hardware and nothing to install.
The score desk: a volunteer's guide
You have a tablet, a stream of paper slips, and a gym full of people who want the bracket to move. This is everything the desk needs to know, in the order you will need it.
Need to run the event, not just plan it? DinkBoard builds your draws, schedules every match across your courts, and puts a live court board on every player's phone. Free while we're in early access.
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