Most of what you need from your chess club happens away from a desk. You’re in the car at 6:40 wondering whether club night is still on. You’re in the hallway outside the skittles room trying to find out which board your kid is on. You’re deciding, in the ninety seconds before you lose signal, whether to say yes to Saturday.
That’s what the Rook Ready app is for. It’s free, it’s coming to iPhone and Android, and it signs in with the same account you use on the web.
Get in
Once it is published, search for Rook Ready in the App Store or on Google Play, install it, and open it.
If you already have a Rook Ready account — the one you use at app.rookready.com — tap Log In and use the same email and password. Everything follows you over: your clubs, your kids, your tournament entries.
If somebody invited you by email, open that invitation link in your phone’s browser first and finish setting up your account there. Then come back to the app and log in. The invitation link itself doesn’t open the app.
If nobody invited you and you just found the app, tap Sign Up and make an account. You’ll land on a screen that offers to create a club — which is the right move if you are the club. If you’re joining someone else’s, ask them to add you; once they do, their club shows up the next time you open the app.
Make it yours first
Two settings are worth two minutes before anything else, because they decide how the app feels for the rest of the season. Both live under the Settings tab.
Appearance. Light, Dark, or System. Dark is genuinely dark — the standings tables and pairing cards were built for it — and if you’re going to be reading board assignments in a dim tournament hall, set it now. The choice sticks between sessions.
Notifications. Tap the Push Notifications row to see whether your phone is letting Rook Ready through, and to jump straight to the OS settings if it isn’t. This is worth doing deliberately rather than leaving to chance: pairings are published minutes before a round starts, and a notification is the difference between being at your board and being paged.
While you’re in Settings you’ll also find Profile, Change Password, My Memberships, the privacy and terms links, and Log Out.
The five tabs
Along the bottom: Home, Members, Events, Inbox, Settings.
Home is a single feed of what’s happened lately across your club — new events, messages, new members — with a bell in the top corner for pairing and result alerts. If you or a child you manage is entered in a tournament, a My tournaments card sits here too, with a See all row into the full list.
Members is your club’s roster. Tap anyone to see their profile: how long they’ve been a member, their guardians, and their contact details, with tap-to-call and tap-to-email on any phone number or address they’ve shared. You can edit your own entry from here.
Events, Inbox and the tournament screens get sections of their own below.
Say yes to club night
The Events tab splits into Upcoming and Past. Tap an event and you get the date and time — converted to your timezone, with a note saying so if the club’s is different — the location with an Open in Maps button, or a Join Online button for online sessions, and whatever the organiser wrote about it.
If the event takes RSVPs, there’s a Yes / Maybe / No control and a free-text box next to it. Use the box. “Coming but 20 minutes late” is the single most useful thing a club organiser can be told, and it takes four seconds. Below the control, everyone else’s responses are grouped into Attending, Maybe, and Not going, so you can see who you’ll be playing.
Some events ask for registration rather than an RSVP — those show a spots-remaining bar and a deadline, with a Register button and a Cancel if you change your mind.
Read what your club sends
The Inbox tab is one merged list of everything anyone is telling you — club announcements and messages from a tournament director — sorted newest first, across every club you belong to. Unread items carry a dot, the tab carries a count, and anything the sender marked High or Urgent says so on the row.
Tap an announcement to read it in full. Tap a message from a tournament director and you go straight into that tournament’s Updates tab, where you can reply — and where their reply comes back to you.
Follow a tournament
This is where the app earns its place on your home screen.
From Home → My tournaments → See all, you get everything you’re connected to, grouped: Yours, Your players, Directing, and Other. Tap one and you’re inside that entry, with its own five tabs:
- Overview — where the tournament is up to, your next pairing, where you’re standing, and a peek at recent updates.
- My Entry — the round-by-round record: round number, opponent, result, running score. Your next pairing sits at the top with the board number.
- Standings — every section, expandable, with your own row highlighted so you can find yourself without squinting.
- Updates — announcements for this tournament, plus your own thread with the director.
- Sections — every section’s pairings, round by round. This is the one to open when somebody asks “who’s on board 4?”
Asking for a bye
If the tournament allows half-point byes, My Entry has round chips you can tap to request one, with a confirmation step. The app knows the rules the director set — how many byes each player gets, which round the request deadline falls in — and won’t offer a round that’s already started. If you don’t see the chips, this tournament isn’t offering byes.
Registering and paying
You can enter a tournament from start to finish on the phone. The wizard walks through who’s playing, their details, which section, whatever custom questions the organiser added, any byes you want up front, and then review and pay.
On the first step you pick Myself, one of the players you already manage, or Someone else — which lets you add a new player right there, without leaving the form. Payment opens a secure Stripe checkout; some organisers use their own payment link or take money at the door instead, and the app tells you which as you go.
If you’re a parent
Everything above works for a child you manage, and a few things exist only for you.
Switching between children. Inside a tournament, a bar across the top reads Viewing <player> · <section> — tap it to switch to another of your players, or to your own entry. My tournaments keeps a Your players group so you can see all of them at once.
Notifications name the child. The bell feed on Home lists alerts for you and for each player you manage, with the name on every row, so a pairing notification is never ambiguous about which kid it’s about.
Adding a player. The registration wizard’s Someone else option creates a managed player on the spot. You don’t need to have set anything up in advance to enter a child in their first event.
What the app sends you
Five things push a notification, and each one opens to the right screen when you tap it:
- A new announcement from your club or a tournament.
- An event is cancelled — this one is push-only, and it goes to parents as well as players, because it’s the one that changes your evening.
- Pairings are published — your own board, colour, and opponent.
- Results are published.
- A tournament director messages you directly.
What to do on the web instead
The app deliberately doesn’t try to be everything. Open app.rookready.com for:
- Team standings and knockout brackets — the app links you there rather than squeezing a bracket onto a phone.
- Replying to a club announcement.
- Withdrawing from a tournament, or changing a registration you’ve already submitted.
- Changing your email address, and fine-grained notification preferences.
- Anything to do with a paid club plan.
What’s next
- Registering for a tournament — the same flow, explained in full, including what the organiser sees.
- Pairings and standings — how to read a crosstable and what the tie-break columns mean.
- Your first event — if you’re the one organising club night rather than showing up to it.
Something not working the way this describes? Email support@rookready.com — a real person reads it.
Updated August 8, 2026