Two months of the new app - stats, improvements and a few tips

Hi everyone,

It's been just over two months since club nights started running through our own app. A lot has changed in that time, and much of it came from your suggestions, so thank you.

Some numbers

Since the first app-run club night on 9 June:

• 414 games played across 14 club nights
• 79 different players on court, 73 of them in the last month
• 92 flames earned for standout nights 🔥
• Our busiest nights now fit 40 games in an evening
• Players get a minimum of 6 games on average, and early birds can get 7, or sometimes 8, with the baseline being 5. The algorithm actively tries to make sure each player gets 6 games, but that's not always possible. Turning up on time boosts your chances of getting more games.

Turn on push notifications

More than half of members can't currently receive a push notification from the app, and that includes plenty of regular players. If that's you, you're missing the things that matter most: waitlist offers (a place is only yours for 30 minutes before it opens up to others), session changes, and your night recap.

The app will show a warning at the top of the screen if notifications can't reach you - tap it and it will guide you through fixing it. Otherwise, check Account Settings, then Alerts, and make sure notifications are allowed for the app in your phone's own settings too. It takes under a minute, and it's the single best thing you can do to get more out of the app.

Fairer games, less waiting about

The app picks the line-ups on club nights, and we've tuned it a fair bit since launch. Line-ups now go up within moments of a court coming free, the evening runs without stalls, and hosts accept the suggested games almost every time rather than reshuffling by hand. Games should feel closer and turnarounds quicker.

It balances each game on current form, mixes partners and opponents across the night, and keeps everyone's game count as even as arrival times allow. If a line-up ever feels wrong, tell your host on the night. We use that feedback to tune it.

Some important points to understand:

• Sometimes, there may be a short pause while the algorithm is waiting for a better game. You can skip this, but it's time-boxed, and will quickly move on if the next game is taking a while to finish.
• The previous system, eBadders, would often try to hold back players with higher skill levels to get them a top-tier game. This sometimes led to the game never materialising, and someone feeling like they were being kept off-court for most of the evening. This can't happen with our custom FairMatch algorithm, which prioritises court time above all else. It will accept a slight mismatch in skill levels to make sure everyone gets roughly the same amount of court time.
• Initial skill levels were seeded from legacy eBadders data. As our new system learns your true skill levels, games will become more competitive and fairer. This will take a few more weeks, and there will always be some suboptimal games to keep the night moving, but these should be few and far between.
• After each night, I personally pore over the evening's data to evaluate how effective the algorithm was. If there are any obvious anomalies, I make small tweaks and evaluate the results in the next session. This has been highly effective, and it's almost at the point where I don't need to tweak anything else, but I'll keep monitoring it. The algorithm logs every single decision it took over the evening, so there's no guesswork - if someone tells me "I was stuck with the same person all evening", or "I didn't get many games", I can clearly see why, and let them know, or tweak the algorithm if it surfaced a bug or deficiency.

Above all, trust the system, and it will get even better over time. If you spot anything odd, please let me know, or leave feedback via your post-session summary notification.

Booking ahead, and why we count late cancellations

Booking weeks ahead is fine if you turn up to what you book. The problem is places held for weeks as a maybe and then handed back at the last minute. That makes sessions look full when they aren't, and other members simply can't book. It also discourages new club members, since they get the impression they won't be able to book a session for months.

So the app now counts late cancellations (inside 48 hours) and no-shows, and if someone collects too many, their booking window is shortened for a while, and they sit very slightly further back in waitlist queues. That's it. No bans, no lost credits, and the count resets over time. There's a new section in the Member Guide explaining exactly how it works.

The other half of this is that the waitlist is now much fairer and quicker at handing freed places to the people waiting, so there's no need to stockpile bookings far in advance. Book what you'll play, join the queue for the rest, and let the app do the work.

Even the most diligent players will get strikes from time to time - sadly, life sometimes gets in the way of badminton! This is absolutely expected, and it's not a problem. If you see that you're accruing a lot of strikes, consider if you can change your booking habits a little and cancel further ahead. The new waitlist system is very fair, and prioritises those who haven't played recently, so if things change, you can always go on the waitlist and have a reasonable chance of getting a place.

Things you asked for

Several of this month's changes came straight from your messages:

• Games with guests now count. If you played alongside or against a guest, that game used to be invisible in your stats. It counts now, and we've counted every past one back in, so don't be surprised if your played and won numbers jumped this week.
• The leaderboard shows current players. It opens on everyone who's played in the last four weeks, so you're comparing yourself with the people you actually play against. One tap shows the full all-time board.
• Your game history. A new screen in Account Settings (Stats tab) shows every club night you've played, week by week, with game-by-game results.
• Guests keep their real names. Book a saved guest and the app uses their actual name on the night, not "Guest 1".
• The Android back button behaves. It steps back through the app instead of dropping you out of it.
• Other fixes: accurate notifications, smoother screens on the club tablet, and messages that fit properly on phones.

How your rating works

Tap the info button on the leaderboard for a short explanation, or read the full version in the Member Guide. In short: every scored game moves your rating a little, closer games move it less, and it's about direction over a season rather than any single night.

Badminton England membership

If you play regularly, we'd encourage you to register with Badminton England. It gives you proper injury insurance while you play, discounts on gear, and it's what makes you eligible for our league matches against other clubs. It supports grassroots badminton too. And it's a condition of our club's affiliation that regular players sign up from their 6th session onwards.

It's cheap, and if you join after June there's a discount on the BE website for the current membership year. Once you have a membership number, add it in Account Settings, Player Profile. When it's verified, your 5% discount on everything in the club store switches on automatically.

A few features you might have missed

Household sharing. If you book and pay for badminton as a family, or for anyone else in your house, link your accounts as a household and session credits are shared automatically. One of you buys a bundle, anyone in the household books with it. Account Settings, then Household. It takes a minute to set up and hardly anyone is using it yet.

Saved guests. If you often bring the same friend, save them as a guest and the app remembers them each time. You can also send them a guest invitation, and this is worth doing: even though the place sits on your booking, a linked guest manages their own slot. They see the session in their own app, they can cancel it themselves if they can't make it, and they can confirm a waitlist offer without you lifting a finger. And because you paid for the place, any refund due when they cancel comes back to you, the booker. If they later join the club, a friend link connects their guest history to their new account.

Auto-accept on the waitlist. If a session is full, join the waitlist and switch on auto-accept. When a place frees up it books itself, so you don't have to catch the notification in time. You can queue a guest or a group too.

WORTH A MINUTE Set your auto-accept limit. By default, auto-accept can book you in right up to the start of a session, and nobody wants a surprise booking an hour before play. Go to Account Settings, then Alerts, then Waitlist Settings, and choose how close to a session you're happy to be auto-booked. Anything inside your limit comes to you as a normal offer to consider instead, and nothing gets booked until you say so. A couple of hours suits most people; pick what suits you. And there's a safety net: if an auto-accept ever does catch you out, you have 2 hours to decline it with your credit straight back, even inside 24 hours of the session.

Automatic check-in. Arrive at the venue with your phone in your pocket and the app checks you in. Just make sure it has background location permission. The app will let you know if you haven't granted permission, and guide you to setting it up.

Pause yourself any time. On a club night, your own phone can pause and unpause you: open the session card on your home screen and tap PAUSE PLAY when you need a breather, then RESUME PLAY when you're ready. For a short break like a toilet stop, you can pause yourself on the club tablet too, and set how long you need: when the time's up you're put back into the rotation automatically. And if you have location on and you leave the venue, the app pauses you and checks you out for the evening by itself (walk back in and you're unpaused again). If you're heading home early though, it's always best to tap CHECK OUT yourself so nothing is left to chance.

Your night recap. After each club night you get a recap with your games, scores and who you played with. You can rate the night there too, and every piece of feedback is read and used to improve the sessions. If you have feedback about anything, good or bad, this is the best place to put it.

Fine-tuning your notifications. If you're getting too many notifications, or not enough, you can change exactly what you receive in Account Settings, under Alerts. There's a separate switch just for the courtside "you're up next" alerts on club nights, so you can keep those and turn everything else down if you like.

Pay as you go. You don't need to buy a credit pack to play - you can pay for a single session by card when you book. If a one-off booking is cancelled with a refund due, it comes back to you as a session credit.

Staying off the leaderboard. If you'd rather not appear on the club rankings, there's a switch in Account Settings to hide your name. Your games still count towards your own stats, you just show as anonymous to everyone else.

Your next game, on your phone. On club nights the app can tell you when your next game is lined up, so you can relax between games without watching the board. It's the "Courtier game alerts" switch under Alerts, and each alert replaces the last one rather than piling up.

TOP TIP During a session, press and hold anyone's photo, on the line-ups or the roster, and it zooms up while you hold it. Handy when you know the face but the name's escaped you. Which is also why a good profile photo matters: it helps the volunteers check you in and pair you up quickly, and it saves everyone the awkward moment of a forgotten name. Add or adjust yours in Account Settings, Personal, Change Photo. You can take a selfie, pick from your gallery, and crop it right there.

WORTH A MINUTE Set your game preference. Prefer men's, women's or mixed games? Please do set this in Account Settings, Player Profile. The algorithm takes it into account on club nights, and the more of you who set it, the better the line-ups get for everyone. There are separate men's and ladies' rankings boards too.

The Club Logo. Tap the club logo in the top left for quick access to the Help area, our social media pages, and the WhatsApp group.

The Member Guide. Quick Links, then Member Guide. It covers everything above and more, in plain English.

Your personal details

A quick word on your personal details. Your contact details are restricted to club volunteers only, and even then on a need to know basis - data minimisation is a principle we stick to. Other members never see your address, phone number or email through the app: what they see is what you'd expect on a club night, your name and photo on rosters and the leaderboard, and you can hide your name from the leaderboard if you prefer. Data security is taken very seriously and is our first consideration. We can be trusted with our members' data, and if you ever have a question about what's held or who can see it, just ask.

Thanks

Moving the whole club onto a new app in one summer has been a big change, and you've been patient with the odd rough edge while we ironed things out. Thank you for bearing with us.

One more helper: the app has an AI assistant with all the relevant club information, including visibility of upcoming sessions. If you need a quick answer, please consider asking it before contacting support. It saves our volunteers time, and it can see things like when the next available space is. It doesn't know about your personal data or your bookings, so for anything about your own account, the support chat is still the place.

The app is run by the same volunteers who run the club nights, and most of the improvements above started as a message from a member. Keep telling us what's confusing or broken. The quickest way to get something sorted is the in-app support chat (Help, then Message Support): every volunteer sees your message immediately, whoever is available picks it up, and you get automated status updates as soon as we start looking into it. For most queries it's now a better bet than the WhatsApp Booking Support channel.

See you on court,

Craig & the Didcot Community Badminton team