Real questions. Honest answers.

Click "Get Started Free" and create an account — the whole process takes about two minutes. The Getting Started guide walks you through signup, terminology, and your initial profile setup in detail.

Three ways: add them one at a time, bulk-import a CSV, or send email invitations and let them fill in their own profile. The Adding Members guide walks all three flows in detail.

Yes. The CSV importer auto-matches common column headers (First Name, Last Name, Email, USCF ID, …) and lets you map the rest manually before anything is written. The Adding Members guide covers the column-mapping step and what each target field means.

Yes — that's a core part of the product. Rules-true pairings, live standings with tie-breaks, and a rating report you export when the event closes. The full tournament module is part of the Rook tier, and there is a 14-day free trial — one per person, enough to run your first rated event before paying anything. Start with the tournaments overview or the Set Up a Tournament guide.

Each section picks its own: USCF Swiss, Double Swiss, Round Robin, Double Round Robin, Quads, or single-elimination Knockout. Knockout runs best-of-N matches with an automatic rapid → blitz → Armageddon tiebreak ladder and a live bracket, and a mixed event (a Swiss Open next to a knockout side section) is no problem. The Tournament Formats guide walks through each one.

The pairing engine generates each round following the USCF Swiss rules — score groups, color allocation, and due-color logic handled for you. You review the pairings before posting, and the Run Your Event guide covers the round-by-round flow, including withdrawals, late entries, and fixing a wrong result.

Yes. Pairings, individual games, and live standings are viewable from any phone — no login required. The Follow the Tournament guide shows players and parents exactly where to look.

Yes. Registration captures USCF ID, section, and entry details, and players (or parents registering their kids) can pay by card, payment link, or at the door. The Enter a Tournament guide walks through the player side.

Yes — team sections with board order, alternates, and a free-agent pool. Individual results roll up into team standings automatically. The Run a Team Event guide is the playbook.

When the event is complete, Rook Ready generates the rating submission from the results you already entered — no hand-assembled report. One click builds both a USCF .txt and a FIDE TRF16 file, so a FIDE-rated section reports right alongside your USCF sections. The Close Out and Submit guide covers marking the event complete, settling prizes, and exporting the files.

Yes — each section runs under its own rating system (Regular, Quick, Blitz, or Dual), so a G/5 blitz side event reports separately from your Regular Open, all from the same tournament and the same close-out.

Yes. A full audit log tracks every pairing, result, correction, and bye — who did it, when, and the before-and-after — and you can filter it to a single player. So "what happened to my kid's bye request?" has a real answer. The Understanding the Audit Log guide explains it.

Yes, two ways. Send tournament announcements to entrants — scoped to specific sections, sent now or scheduled — and message an individual entrant directly, with replies threaded to their entry so a guardian can handle it for a younger player. Both land in the entrant's Updates inbox alongside everything else their clubs have sent, on the web and in the app, so a round delay does not depend on anyone refreshing their email. The Tournament Announcements guide covers the broadcast side.

Yes — My Events is one cross-club list of everything a player (or a parent's kids) is entered in, across every club, not just their home club. Each entry opens to that player's games and standings. It's covered at the end of the Enter a Tournament guide.

Yes — and Rook Ready acts on them, it doesn't just pass along a note. Registration always offers accessibility needs: an accessible / step-free table, near an exit, a quiet / low-distraction area, or a large-print or raised board, plus a free-text note. You mark which of your physical tables have which facilities, and when you pair a round the engine automatically seats accommodated boards at a table that meets their needs — it prints on your pairing sheet, and it re-does it every round without anyone having to ask again. You can always override a table by hand; the engine won't touch a manual assignment.

No. The tournament module is included in the flat Rook tier ($4.99/mo, with a 14-day free trial) — there's no per-player or per-event fee from Rook Ready. Any entry fees you charge players are yours to set, and you keep them (minus your payment processor's card fees).

Every club starts with two event types ready to use — Meetup and Tournament — and you can add as many of your own as you like on any plan, free ones included: lessons, practice sessions, workshops, casual play, whatever your club actually runs. The Your First Event guide walks through creating and configuring one end-to-end. For running a rated tournament end to end — pairings, standings, USCF report — see the tournament module (a Rook feature) and the Tournaments section above.

When running an event, you can mark each registered member as Present, Absent, Late, or Excused. Bulk actions are available for quickly marking multiple members. Attendance history is saved per event and per member. The Recording Attendance guide covers the full mark-and-save flow.

You can link a parent or guardian to a member profile. Linked guardians can receive event notifications. This is especially useful for youth chess programs. The Adding Members guide includes the guardian-invitation flow.

Custom fields let you add club-specific data to member profiles — USCF ratings, school grade, skill level, dietary restrictions, or any information relevant to your club. Pawn includes up to 5 custom fields; Rook unlocks unlimited. Define and permission them in the Custom Fields guide.

In one merged inbox — club announcements and tournament-director messages together, newest first, across every club they belong to. That is the same list on the web (where it is called Updates) and in the phone app, which is why a member who belongs to two clubs is not checking two places. Unread is marked in both; the web adds a Mark all read and an Archived tab for the ones they have dealt with. On Rook, announcements also go out by email — the in-app copy is the one still there next Tuesday when they go looking for the venue address. The Announcements guide covers both sides.

If you let them. Tick Allow replies when you compose and a reply box opens on their copy in Updates on the web — their answer comes back to you, never to the rest of the list. Leave it off for a broadcast you would rather not get forty separate answers to. (Replying to a club announcement is a web job today; in the app, a tournament director's thread is the one you can answer from your phone.) On an announcement you mark High or Urgent, Rook Ready also asks recipients to acknowledge it, so “everyone got the venue change” becomes a number rather than a hope.

Because your club's broadcast only goes out to addresses somebody has actually confirmed, and that is what keeps it landing in inboxes rather than spam folders. You are asked when you sign up, and a player is asked when they enter themselves in a tournament with an address we have never seen before — the two moments where a person types their own address about themselves. Confirming is also what lets you email member invitations and send your first announcement; until then you can still add members, build events, and look around. If somebody else typed the address for you — a director adding a walk-in, an admin importing a roster, a captain rostering their teammates — we do not email a stranger to ask; that introduction is theirs to make. See the Getting Started guide.

The Sent page shows Recipients, Read, and Acknowledged per announcement. And where somebody was held back — an address nobody has confirmed, one that has bounced, or one that has opted out — your club dashboard names them, grouped by reason, rather than letting you find out in the car park that a family never heard. An unconfirmed address is worth a nudge; a bounced one is a different errand. You get to tell them apart.

Yes, on Rook. You can customize the system emails (welcome messages, event reminders, registration confirmations) with your club's branding and messaging.

We use industry-standard SSL/TLS encryption for all data in transit, and store data on encrypted servers. We don't share or sell your information to third parties.

Only club administrators (you and anyone you designate) can see detailed member information. Members see their own profiles and public club information, but not other members' private details.

Tournament data exports to CSV right from the app — the Export CSV button on a section's standings, wallchart, cross-table, and roster gives you the file on the spot. For a full pull of your club members, events, or attendance history, email support@rookready.com and we'll send it — usually same day. Either way, your data is yours.

Honest answer: we've built with GDPR principles in mind — encrypted in transit and at rest, no third-party data selling, and we honor deletion requests. We haven't pursued formal GDPR certification yet. If you have specific compliance requirements (DPA, processor list, etc.), email support@rookready.com and we'll get you what you need.

I am — Geoff Lanotte. I'm the founder, and right now I'm the entire team. Rook Ready is built out of frustration with running my own chess club out of a spreadsheet. If you email support@rookready.com, your reply comes from me.

Email support@rookready.com. You'll usually hear back the same day. Rook customers get priority — replies prioritized on the order they came in, with paying clubs ahead of free.

Yes — the Guides section covers getting started (adding members, your first event, attendance), running your club (announcements, custom fields, registration forms, billing), and a full tournament series — setting one up, running it round by round, team events, entering as a player or parent, following live standings, and submitting to the USCF. For anything not yet covered, email support@rookready.com — we'd rather walk you through it than punt to a doc.

Yes please — email support@rookready.com with what you need and how you'd use it. Pre-launch is the best time for your feedback to shape the product.

Please report it — email support@rookready.com with what you saw, what you expected, and (if you can) which page you were on. We take all reports seriously and fix things as quickly as we can.