Online scoreboard

What it's for

A simple scoreboard so you stop arguing over the count: add players, then add or subtract points for each with a tap. No pen and paper.

Note

Scores stay until you reload the page. Use «Reset» to start a new game while keeping the players.

Why hand-kept scores end in arguments

Not out of dishonesty, hardly ever: out of reconstruction. A score written on a sheet accumulates, and when somebody disputes a number the whole column has to be checked back. If there is an error, it sits in a ten-line addition done in your head while talking about something else, and nobody can say where any more.

The remedy experienced players use is keeping the running total and not only the rounds, updating it every hand: an error shows immediately, not at the end. It is the same principle as a cash book, and it is why in long games the running score is written down.

Negative points, which break more scoreboards than anything

Many games have points taken away — cards left in hand at the close, penalties, failed contracts — and that is the part where hand-kept scores go wrong most, because at some point somebody writes a number without a sign. A scoreboard that accepts additions and subtractions solves the problem at the root.

There is then a rule worth deciding beforehand: whether the score can go below zero. In some games it can, in others the floor is zero, and the difference changes the endgame of long matches. It is the same family of questions as tie-break criteria: they are settled at the start.

Who wins, if it is not whoever has most points

It seems obvious and it is not: in a good many games the winner is whoever has fewest points, from golf to any game where points are penalties. It is the first misunderstanding to clear up when teaching someone a game, and the cause of half the matches that end badly among children.

The other question that always comes up is the tie: is the win shared, is a decider played, or does whoever scored highest in a single hand win? Three answers all reasonable, and none obvious. Saying it beforehand costs ten seconds.

A scoreboard that survives the evening

A score that lives in the page disappears on reload, and in a long game that is the fastest way to ruin an evening. It is worth deciding at once where the register lives: on one person's phone, resting in the middle of the table and not in a pocket.

And it is worth, at the end, photographing the scoreboard before clearing it: in home tournaments running over several evenings, last night's score is exactly the thing nobody remembers precisely, and a photograph ends every argument.

Nearby tools

To organise a tournament there are Tournament bracket and Group generator, to make teams Random team maker. For draws during play Roll the dice and Wheel of fortune.