How to start a Castle and run your first club night

On Castle Gambit a club is a Castle: a real room, in a real town, with real boards. To start one you need an account, which takes a minute: an email code or Google, your name and a handle. Like everyone on Castle Gambit, you need to be 18 or over.

Your players need nothing at all. They don’t download an app or make an account to play: they scan your code on the night, type a first name, and they’re in.

Tap Start a Castle (it’s on your Home and in the menu) and fill in one short form:

• Name and web address. The address goes on your poster, so short is good, and it can’t change later, so posters and links keep working.
• Where do you meet? The room and the town. It’s public, search engines included, so if you meet in someone’s home, give just the town.
• When do you play? Plain words work best: “Tuesdays 6–9pm”.
• Tell people about it, a cover photo that looks like your room, and, if you like, a pin on the map so people nearby find you. Tap the pin in the room itself, never at someone’s home: it’s where your phone is that becomes the pin.

Press Create Castle and you’re its owner. “Your Castle’s up.” It’s listed in the app straight away; search engines are asked to wait until it has held its first club night or been verified, which keeps the empty test Castles of this world out of Google.

People can now find your page and tap Ask to join. Requests land under People, in Members: Let them in or Not now. Members see everyone else in the Castle, so let in people you know from the club. Nobody needs to be a member to play on the night.

Where they’re on, a new Castle’s owner lands on Set up: four steps to “a Castle that runs itself on a Tuesday”.

1. 1

   The time zone. Every night’s time is written in it, so a player in another one still turns up on time.

2. 2

   House rules. How a night pairs, the clock, rated or friendly. Start from a preset (Club night, Blitz night, Casual G/15) and change what you need: who plays whom, how hard to avoid rematches, whether the last two waiting play each other after a while.

3. 3

   Your first event. “Every Tuesday at 7.” Its nights fill themselves in eight weeks ahead and show on your Castle’s page. Skip a holiday, move one night, or call one off with a note people will see.

4. 4

   The poster. Below, with the code.

Public nights also go out in your Castle’s calendar feed: anyone can tap Subscribe to this calendar on your page and see moved and called-off nights in their own calendar app. The feed never names anyone.

On the night, open Organizer tools (in your account menu), press Run tonight (or Open) on your Castle’s card, and then Open tonight’s lobby. With a schedule, it says Open tonight: and the night’s name, and the night follows its house rules. Either way you get three things:

• Tonight’s code: six characters. People scan its QR code, or go to castlegambit.com/play and type it. It stops working when you close the lobby.
• The poster: Letter or A4, with table tents to fold if you like. It shows tonight’s code only, so print a fresh one each night.
• The TV view: open it on any screen in the room, or a laptop plugged into one. It shows the code, who’s waiting and who’s on which board, in Paper or Carbon, sized for 43, 55 or 65 inches or a projector. Never a rating.

Anyone with the TV link can see who’s here, so don’t post it anywhere. If a photo of tonight’s code ends up somewhere it shouldn’t, press New code: everyone already here stays checked in, the TV switches by itself, and you reprint the poster.

People scan in, answer the age question, type a first name, and they’re in tonight’s lobby. Your panel’s Who’s here list fills up: waiting, playing on Board 3, here, or roster.

No phone? Under “New tonight, no phone?” type a first name and last initial and press Add and check in. They’re on your roster now, and you check them in, pair them and enter their results. Everyone on a roster is 18 or over, on your word, and the app keeps a note that you added them. Regulars on the roster sit under “Roster, not here yet” with a Check in button.

Not checking in beside a waiting player means their phone has gone quiet (screen locked, battery, no signal). Nobody is paired until it wakes up, and a nudge usually does it.

And if someone shouldn’t be in the room tonight, their More menu has Remove for tonight. Tonight’s code won’t let them back in unless you say so under “Removed tonight”. More on that in keeping your club night safe.

You don’t have to pair anyone. When a player taps Find me a game, Castle Gambit pairs them as soon as someone suitable is waiting: close in level, not the person they just played, colors evened out over the night. The longer someone waits, the wider it looks.

Prefer a round? Press Pair everyone. It shows every proposed board first, as the TV will show it, with no ratings anywhere, and nothing starts until you press Start these games. If the room changes while you look, nothing starts and you get a fresh preview. It needs at least two people waiting, with their phones on.

After each game both players tap the result: I won, Draw or I lost. Two matching copies confirm it, and the ratings move. If only one comes in, it stands the next day; if nobody reports a game, it’s voided after a day, so nobody is left “playing” forever.

Roster players have no phone, so their games come to you under Needs you, with the other player’s answer beside them. One tap settles each.

Mistakes are fine. The Games page (under Results) lists tonight’s games and your past nights. Change result or Void any of them, and every rating the game touched is worked out again as if it had been right the first time.

When the two copies don’t match, the game lands at the top of your panel: “Copies don’t match”, with each player’s answer side by side. Both players are free to play on meanwhile.

1. 1

   Ask both, one at a time. Most disputes are someone tapping the wrong button.

2. 2

   Look at what there is: the position if it’s still on the board, the scoresheets, the clock.

3. 3

   Decide and tap it: who won, a draw, or Void game if nobody can say.

4. 4

   Say why in a sentence, and offer both of them their next game.

Nobody settles a game they played in, owners included. If you played, another organizer makes the call, which is one good reason to have a co-organizer (see sharing the work). The longer version of handling a disagreement is in how to run a chess club night.

At the end, press Close the lobby. Nobody new can join, waiting players stop looking, and games still going can still be reported. Forget, and it closes itself once it has been open twelve hours and no phone has been seen for an hour.

Under the code, “The night so far” keeps the count: checked in, here now, games played. Afterwards, Insights (under Castle) has your nights in numbers, with no names, so it’s safe for the club newsletter, and Activity shows who changed what, for the week two organizers both swear they didn’t move Tuesday.

Then count the pieces. The missing black knight is under a chair.