SitomoPlay field guide

How to use SitomoPlay

SitomoPlay helps a group of friends run a recurring game night — poker, board games, quizzes, anything with a winner — as a proper little championship: seasons, results, prizes, and bragging-rights statistics. This page walks through everything you can do with it.

Getting started

Create an account with your email and a name, and confirm you're 18 or over — that name is what everyone else in your championships will see you as. Once you're signed in, the home page shows anything waiting on you (invitations, polls to vote on) and lets you join a championship by its registration number. Your championships, pools and timers are listed in the menu. Right after registering, you'll be emailed a 6-digit code — you can use the app right away without entering it, but you'll need to confirm it before you can invite anyone else to a championship. A banner at the top of the app reminds you until it's confirmed, and can resend the code if it expires or gets lost. Every time you log in, SitomoPlay also emails you a separate one-time login code that you'll need to enter before you're let in — this applies to every account and can't be turned off.

Finding your way around

The menu (on the left on a computer, behind the ☰ button on a phone) lists your championships, pools and timers, with New championship under your championships. The Championships, Pools and Timers headings are links too: Championships opens a page to join a championship by its registration number or create a new one. Click a championship's name to open it: the menu slides over to that championship's own pages — Games (calledStandings in round-robin and bracket championships),Moments, Messages,Statistics, Polls,Members and Activity log. Owners also see Seasons,Plan & billing and Edit. Click Back at the top of the menu to return to the full list.

Profile at the bottom of the menu slides in your profile's sections — received invitations, your account details, notification settings and message templates — and Back returns to wherever you were.

Installing the app on your phone

SitomoPlay can be installed straight from your phone's browser — no app store, nothing to download. It then opens full-screen from your home screen just like a normal app. Pick your phone below for the exact steps.

Creating a championship

A championship is the container for everything — one for your Friday poker night, one for the office chess league, whatever. When you create one, you pick a format, and this is the one setting worth thinking about up front, because it locks as soon as the championship has its first game or match:

• Placement — every game ranks its players from 1st to last, and points come from a scoring formula. This is the shape for poker nights, Uno, racing games, or anything where a group of people all play at once and finish in an order.
• Round-robin — players face each other one match at a time (like chess or table tennis), and standings are built from match results — win, draw, or loss.
• Bracket — a single-elimination knockout. Lose a match and you're out; win it and you advance. Everyone eliminated in the same round ties for the same finishing place.

For a Placement championship you also choose how a game's finishing order turns into points:

• Linear — last place scores 1 point, and each better place scores one more.
• Decreasing — the gap between places is biggest at the top and shrinks toward last place, so winning matters more than usual.
• Manually entered — you type each player's raw score directly (points in Uno, lap time in a race), and SitomoPlay works out the placing from those numbers. Useful whenever "who won" isn't just "who got knocked out last".

Like the format, the scoring formula locks once the championship has its first game, so standings stay comparable across the whole history. You can still rename the championship or edit its description at any time. Rebuys and bounties are set up per game, not for the whole championship — see below.

A championship can also have a banner: choose a photo (JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 10 MB) when creating the championship, or later, as an owner, from its Edit page. It appears across the top of every championship page — games, moments, messages, statistics, polls and members — for every member. Owners can upload another to replace it, or remove it altogether. Photos are resized, and hidden details such as the location where they were taken are removed before they're stored. Only members of the championship can see its banner. If you delete your account, any banner you uploaded is deleted too.

Your free championship and plans

Every account gets one free championship: the first one you create. It can have up to 2 seasons, up to 5 games in each season and up to 200 members. Round-robin and bracket matches inside a season aren't limited. Deleting a season or game makes room for a new one. Deleting the free championship itself doesn't give you another free one.

Any championship you create after that needs a paid plan before it can have seasons, games or members other than you. The create page tells you which kind you're about to make.

When a championship reaches a limit, the button for that action is replaced by a short note saying which limit it hit. Nothing that already exists is removed or locked: games in progress can still be finished and scored, and polls, pools, moments, messages and timers keep working. When a championship is full, nobody new can join: invitations stay pending until there's room, and new requests to join by registration number are turned away.

A plan belongs to one championship and is billed annually. Every plan has unlimited seasons and games; they differ in how many members can join: Friends(up to 15), Community (up to 50) andLeague (up to 200). Prices are on thePricing page, shown per month, but the whole year is paid up front; the checkout shows the price in your own currency.

Owners manage the plan from the championship's Plan & billingpage: open it from the championship's menu or use the link under any limit note. It shows the plan, how many members, seasons and games are used, the renewal date and the price. Any owner can choose, change or cancel the plan. Other members don't see the plan and can't change it.

• Subscribe: pick a plan and pay in the secure checkout from Paddle, our payment provider. The plan becomes active a few seconds after payment. Plans that are too small for the championship's current members can't be chosen. Subscribing for your free championship ends its free status for good.
• Upgrade: a bigger plan applies straight away. You're shown the amount charged today for the rest of the year before you confirm, and the renewal date stays the same.
• Downgrade: a smaller plan takes effect at the next renewal, with no refund for the rest of the year. The smaller member limit applies as soon as you schedule it, so the championship can't outgrow the new plan before then. You can undo a scheduled downgrade until about two days before the renewal.
• Cancel and resume: cancelling stops the next renewal; the plan stays active until then, and you can resume it any time before it ends.
• Card and invoices: only the owner who paid seesUpdate card, which opens Paddle's own page to change the card for this championship's plan, and Invoices, which lists every plan they pay for with its invoices. If a yearly payment fails, Paddle retries the card for a while and the plan stays active meanwhile; owners get an email.

When a plan ends, the championship becomes Closed: everything stays visible and games in progress can still be finished, but no new seasons, games or members can be added until an owner subscribes again with Reactivate. If the owner who pays for a plan leaves the championship, is removed or loses owner rights, or deletes their account, the plan is cancelled at the end of its billing period and the other owners get an email, so nobody keeps paying for a championship they're no longer part of. Deleting a championship also cancels its plan, with no refund.

Inviting players and managing members

Invite people by email. If they already have a SitomoPlay account, the invitation shows up right away under Profile → Received invitations, where they can accept or decline it. If they don't have an account yet, they'll get an email with a link to create one — the invitation is waiting for them the moment they register with that same email. If they respond, you'll get an email either way (unless you've turned that email off — see Notifications below).

Alternatively, anyone who already has a SitomoPlay account can join themselves: every championship has its own registration number, shown on the championship page just below its name. Share that number, and they enter it underJoin a championship on the home page (or the Championships page, opened from the Championships heading in the menu) to send a request. It shows up for owners under Members → Received registrations to approve or reject, and the requester can cancel it themselves while it's still pending.

• Every championship has one or more owners, who can add games/seasons, record results, invite and remove people, and change settings.
• Owners can promote another member to owner, demote them back, or fully hand over the championship with Transfer ownership — the new owner gets an email letting them know. If the championship's owner deletes their account, it passes automatically to the member who has been an owner longest.
• Anyone can leave a championship themselves with Leave championship at the bottom of its Members page, except the person who created it, and except a sole remaining owner (promote someone else first).
• The person who created a championship can delete it from the bottom of its Edit page. This removes it for everyone and can't be undone; a paid plan stops renewing, with no refund for the rest of the period.
• An owner can remove another member outright — they'll get an email that they've been removed.

Seasons

A season is a run of games or matches with its own results — a calendar year, a 10-week league, whatever slice makes sense for your group. Every championship needs at least one. Create a new one straight from the Season dropdown on the championship page — "Create new season" is always the last option — or manage the full list (reorder, rename, delete) from Seasons in the championship's menu.

In a round-robin championship, a season can also carry its own prize pool, split by final standings position once the season is done.

Playing a game (placement championships)

Inside a season, create a game and pick which members are playing (an owner can add or remove players right up until the first result is recorded). If someone you want to add isn't a championship member yet, invite them by email right from that screen — the same as inviting from Manage members — and add them to the game once they accept. From there, how you record results depends on the championship's scoring formula:

• Linear / Decreasing (elimination style) — as players get knocked out, click Out next to their name. They're placed at the next available spot from the bottom up, and once only one player is left, they're automatically placed 1st. Clicked the wrong person? Bring them back with Return and try again. You can also drag-and-drop finished players to fix the order without undoing anything.
• Manually entered — type each player's score straight into their row (or hours : minutes : seconds : hundredths, plus an optional penalty, when the championship is set up for timed results). Places are worked out for you from the numbers, with ties sharing a place.

Once a game's results are final, the owner clicks Finish game to lock it — it can always be unlocked again later if a correction is needed. Every player added to a game gets an email letting them know they're in it.

Rebuys and bounties

Both are optional, poker-flavoured extras you switch on per game, when creating or editing it (with a default number of points you can still override in the moment) — so different games in the same championship can turn them on or off independently:

• Rebuys — a player who's out can buy back in and keep playing. Click Make rebuy next to their name to add one at the default size, tracked per player and per game as a running total in its own column — click that total directly to edit it if you need to correct a mistake.
• Bounties — a points reward for eliminating a specific player. When you mark someone out, pick who eliminated them and the bounty points; that player's "bounties collected" total goes up. Undo an elimination withReturn and the bounty is undone with it.

Prizes

Buy-ins, rebuys, bounties and prizes are all counted in points— SitomoPlay doesn't deal in money or currencies. The buy-in — the points each player puts in — is set separately from prizes and always visible, whether or not prizes are on. Turn prizes on for a game (or a whole round-robin or bracket season) to have SitomoPlay work out the prize split automatically. You choose how much of that buy-in actually goes into the prize pool — the rest isn't tracked further. The pool is built from that contribution, plus an optional fixed top-up, plus rebuys if you choose to include them — then split across finishing places using whatever percentages you set (e.g. 50 / 30 / 20 for the top three). Prizes only show once the game or season is actually finished.

When a finished game has prizes on and players contributed to the pool (via buy-in and/or rebuys), a Settlement summary table appears at the bottom of the page, working out the fewest transfers of points needed so everyone who put in more than they won settles up with whoever won more than they put in — based only on the pool contribution, not the full buy-in, since the rest of the buy-in sits outside the pool. If the game also has a fixed prize top-up, those points aren't owed by any player, so they show as their own "Fixed prize" row for each winner, split the same way as the rest of the prize split.

Separately, a game can have"Track paid buy-ins" turned on (right below the buy-in field) to add a Paid checkbox next to each player in the game — handy for remembering whose buy-in is already in. It's purely a manual checklist for you: checking or unchecking it doesn't touch the prize pool, settlements, or anything else.

Blind / round timers

Independent of any championship, you can build a countdown timer with as many levels as you like — handy as a poker blind clock or a quiz round timer. ClickTimers in the sidebar to see all your timers, where you can create, edit or delete them; each timer has named levels with their own length. Your timers are also listed under that heading: click one to load it into the bar at the top of the page, then press Start, and pause and resume it from wherever you're playing.

Round-robin championships

Instead of games, a round-robin championship tracks one-on-one matches between members. Record a result with Record result, or click the+ in the results grid for the two players involved — it pre-fills both names for you, and clicking an existing score reopens it for editing.

• The Standings table shows played / won / drawn / lost, points, score for / against, and the difference between them — ranked by points.
• The Results table is a head-to-head grid: each row reads as "this player's score" against the column player's score, colour-coded green for a win and red for a loss.
• Points per win / draw / loss are configurable in the championship's settings (3 / 1 / 0 is the classic default).
• Made a mistake? Delete a match from the list at the bottom and standings recalculate immediately.

Bracket championships

A bracket championship runs one knockout tournament per season. Pick who's playing and hitGenerate bracket — SitomoPlay seeds the players into the first round automatically, spreading out any byes if the count isn't a power of two. This is a one-time, irreversible step: once generated, the participant list and championship format are both locked for good.

• Owners declare a winner on each match as it's played; the winner advances to the next round automatically.
• Losing eliminates a player. Everyone knocked out in the same round ties for the same place — both semifinal losers tie for 3rd, and so on.
• The Standings table fills in as players are eliminated, and shows "(tied)" next to any shared place.
• Prizes work the same as round-robin: a season-level pool paid out by final placement once the bracket is complete — see Prizes below.

Polls

Owners can raise a question for the group — "what night works next week?", "should we add a rebuy option?" — with any number of options, optionally anonymous. Everyone in the championship gets an email when a new poll goes up (unless they've turned that off). Members vote for as many options as they like, or say they won't be voting at all; owners close a poll once it's decided, which locks in the results and emails everyone the outcome.

Moments

A simple shared feed for the championship — post a quick update, a story from the night, or anything else worth remembering, and let people comment on it. You can always delete your own posts and comments.

A moment can include a photo (JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 10 MB). Tap Add photo before posting, with or without text. Tap a photo in the feed to open it full size. As with banners, photos are resized and hidden details such as the location where they were taken are removed, and only members of the championship can see them. Deleting a moment deletes its photo. If you delete your account, the photos on your moments are deleted too, though their text stays like the rest of your posts.

Messages

A private inbox for the championship, separate from the public Moments feed. Send a message to everyone by leaving the recipients blank, or pick specific members to message just them. Messages from an owner are highlighted so they stand out. Replying to a message always goes back to whoever sent it, even if they originally sent it to the whole group — nobody else sees that reply.

If you often send the same text, save it as a template underProfile → Templates, where you can also edit or delete templates. Then, when writing a message, clickAdd template and pick one by name — its text is added on a new line at the end of your message, ready to adjust before you send. Templates are private to you and work in every championship.

Statistics

The Statistics page turns your history into a scoreboard, viewable per season or across all time:

• Leaderboard — games played, wins, podium finishes, average place, total score, "in the money" rate, best/worst finish, current streak, and how consistent each player's placings are.
• Prize points — points won, buy-ins, rebuys, and the net result for every player, so everyone can see who's actually up or down.
• Progression — a chart of each player's points or ranking over time, so you can see form building (or falling apart).
• Season winners — a season-by-season honours list.
• Finish distribution — for placement championships, a chart of how often a player finished in each place.
• In round-robin championships the page shows Standings instead of the leaderboard, with each player's recent Form (their latest results, newest last).

Across standings, statistics and member lists, every player has their own colour and initials badge, the same on every page and in every season. Colours repeat in bigger groups, so names are always shown next to them.

Activity log

Every meaningful change in a championship — a game created, a result recorded, a rebuy logged, a member promoted — is recorded in the activity log with who did it and when, so nothing that affects shared results happens invisibly.

Pools

A pool is a one-off guessing game, separate from championships — the classic example is a baby pool: "When will the baby arrive?", "How much will it weigh?", "Boy or girl?". Everyone guesses, and once the real answers are known, the closest guesses win. OpenPools in the sidebar to find one, orNew pool under it to create one.

Clicking a pool in the sidebar slides in that pool's own menu, the same way championships work;Back at its top returns to the main menu. It hasQuestions (the questions and your guesses),Players andResults (the leaderboard and real answers). The organiser also gets Stages, Duplicate andEdit, and their own pools open on Stages. Someone who hasn't joined yet only sees Questions. Every page has a Copy invite link button once the pool is published.

• Playing — anyone can play, with or without an account. Enter the pool's code (like K7QM-X4TR) on the Pools page, or open the invite link someone shared, then join. With an account you play under your name and the pool appears under Pools in the sidebar. Without one you just enter a name; your device remembers you, and Questions shows a personal link to get back to your guesses from another device — keep it private, since it lets anyone edit your guesses. If you later create an account on the same device, the registration form offers to add those pools to it — your guesses are kept and you play on under your account name.
• Guessing — change your guesses as often as you like until the pool is locked. You can skip a question; it just scores no points. Nobody sees anyone else's guesses, the organiser included, until results are published.
• Running a pool — with an account (and a confirmed email), click Create a pool. It starts as a draft only you can see: add questions (a number with a unit, a date, a time, a date and time, or pick-one options), optionally starting from ready-made templates, then publish it from Stages and share the code or invite link. Stages is a timeline of the pool's whole life — created, add questions, publish, collect guesses, lock, enter real answers, publish results, done — showing when each step happened and what to do next, with the actions for the current step. Publishing also makes you a player in your own pool; if you'd rather only run it, leave from Players while it's open (you can join again until it locks).
• Locking — lock the pool when guessing should end, or set a time for it to lock by itself. Locking is permanent: nobody can change their guesses afterwards. Set the automatic lock time and stop new players from joining on Stages; remove a player on Players.
• Results — once locked, enter the real answers on Stages as you learn them; they stay hidden until you click Publish results there. That reveals the leaderboard and everyone's guesses, and players with an account get one email. You can still correct a wrong answer afterwards (Correct an answer on Stages) and the leaderboard recalculates, without another email.
• Scoring — the usual pool scoring: on each question, the closest guess gets as many points as there were guesses on it, the next closest one point less, and so on (equal guesses share the higher score). A correct pick on an option question gets full points, a wrong one none. Points add up across questions; if two players are level, the organiser's chosen tie-breaker question (usually the birth time) decides.
• Using a pool again — Duplicate in the pool's menu starts a new draft with the same questions, ready for the next occasion. Players, guesses and real answers aren't copied, and the copy gets its own code.
• Leaving and deleting — leave from the bottom of Players. Leaving before the lock removes your guesses; leaving after it only removes the pool from your list, since your entry is part of the results. The organiser can only stop playing while the pool is open, since it stays in their list either way. The organiser can delete a pool at any time from Edit, and finished pools are deleted automatically 12 months after results are published.

Email notifications

SitomoPlay emails you when things happen that need your attention — an invitation, a new or closed poll, being added to a game, a finished game, being removed from a championship, ownership being handed to you, someone responding to an invitation you sent, your registration-number request being approved or declined, or results being published in a pool you play in. Every one of these is optional: turn any of them on or off individually fromProfile → Notification settings. A few account emails (your email confirmation code, your login code, a password reset code, and confirming account deletion) aren't listed there, since they're tied to the account itself rather than to championship activity.

Your account

Update your name any time from Profile → My info. Forgot your password? Use the Forgot password?link on the log in page to get a code emailed to you and set a new one. If you ever want to leave for good, Delete account removes your personal details and signs you out, and deletes any pools you run — see thePrivacy Policy for exactly what that does and doesn't erase.

Feedback

Found a bug or have an idea? Send it from the Feedback link at the bottom of every page in the app. It's only available while you're logged in.

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