Tutorial
Your first night, end to end
Everything from making an account to reading the recap and finding yourself on the boards — one evening, followed all the way through, on the screens you will actually be looking at.
- 8chapters
- 61steps
- 5screen recordings
- ~15min read
Before you start
Dink Deck runs open play. Players find a night and join it; the host opens the desk and the people who signed up are the roster; the board deals every rotation so the wait is fair and the games are close. Everybody’s rank follows them to any court.
You need a phone for the first three chapters and, if you are going to run a night, something wider — a tablet or a laptop — for the desk. Nothing needs installing and none of it costs anything — for players and for clubs alike.
Start here
Everybody needs an account, whichever of the two you are. Five screens, asked once, and then the app knows enough to be useful.
Chapter 1
Getting in
An account, the one question that decides how your games are scored, and a look at where everything lives.
Make an account
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Pick a way in
Dink Deck opens here. An email and a password works everywhere, and is the one to choose if you might run a night from a laptop later — you will sign in there too. Google is offered alongside it: one tap, no password to remember.
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A name, an email, a password
Your name is what the board calls you all night, so write it the way people at your court say it. Passwords need eight characters — a short sentence beats a short word with a number stuck on the end. Gender is optional, used only for mixed doubles and divisions, and never shown on your profile.
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Say what level you play at
The one question that changes how your first games are scored, and it is asked once. Work it out for me watches ten games and reveals your rank when it settles. I know my level starts you where you say — your first games still count double while it settles.
Neither answer is a claim anybody has to take your word for. Ten games in, the ladder has its own opinion and that is the one that sticks.
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The ladder, in bands you already know
Seven ranks that line up with the DUPR and UTPR bands. Each rank holds five pips and each pip is worth 0.10, so an Intermediate 1 and an Intermediate 5 are genuinely different players and the board can tell them apart when it comes to balance a game.
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Where you play
Province and town, from the national register — all 81 provinces and 1,634 towns. This is what puts you on the boards near you and what makes Nearby work. Nothing is ever refused for want of it: skip it and add it later from your profile.
Where everything is
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Home is your feed
What your clubs are posting, open play near you, and every night you have played with what it was worth. On day one it is mostly other people’s news.
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Groups is clubs and courts
Clubs you can follow, so their nights reach your feed, and the courts near you with who plays there. Courts are a tab of this screen rather than a destination of their own.
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You is your standing
Rank and pips, your record, the nights you have played, your notifications and security — and, when you have one, the club you run. Your standing belongs to your account rather than to one club’s spreadsheet, so it follows you to any court in the country.
For players
You want a game. This is finding one, getting on the list, what the night looks like from the side of the court, and what you have to show for it in the morning.
Chapter 1
Finding a night
Open play near you, the page you land on when somebody sends you a link, and everything on it worth knowing before you turn up.
What is on
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Play is what is on
Every session laid out on a timeline. Filter to Today, Week, the Clubs you follow, or Nearby when you are away from home. Join takes a place; a full night offers Join the waitlist instead, and you move up when somebody drops out.
Nearby is a box drawn around a point, so it only finds nights whose host dropped a pin. An address on its own is not a location.
The night’s own page
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The link opens the night
Where it is on a map, when it starts, how many places are left, what it costs, and who is already going. No account is needed to read it — one is needed to get on the list.
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Asked in, not walked in
Sessions are vetted by default, so the button says Request to join and your side ends at “requested” until the host says yes. A night the host does not vet says Join this session instead and puts you straight on the roster.
Two people with the same name on one night are asked for a name for tonight, so the board never has two indistinguishable Noels.
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Who is going
Names and ranks, so you know what kind of night it will be before you turn up. Requests and the waitlist are counted separately from the confirmed, so “10 of 12” means ten people are actually coming.
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Bringing a friend
They take a place and play like anybody else. Say roughly how they play when you add them — a guest with no level is a stranger the matcher has to guess at, and guessing is how somebody ends up in a game nobody enjoys.
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Everybody on the night, in one thread
Where the host says the courts are wet and somebody asks for a lift. It belongs to the night rather than to the club, so it goes quiet when the night is over instead of becoming another group chat nobody can leave.
Chapter 2
On the night
You have turned up. From here the desk is running the queue — this is your window on it.
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The live board
Tap I’m here when you arrive: signing up last week and standing on the court tonight are different claims, and the desk only calls names that are in the queue. After that the same tab shows the courts, who is on them, the waiting list in order, and — pinned underneath — your own place in it, your rank as it stands right now, and the games you have played tonight.
It is a window and nothing more. Every control the desk has lives behind a check the server does, so there is no way to nudge the queue from here. If something needs fixing, tell the host.
Chapter 3
After the night
What you played, what it was worth, something to post, and where it puts you on the boards near you.
Your recap
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Your night
Your record game by game, the time actually spent on court, your best partner, and everybody you played with the head-to-head against each.
Time on court is summed from the games you were in, not from when the doors opened. Three hours at the venue of which you played forty minutes is not three hours of pickleball.
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Something to post
Pick a card — a win streak, the rank you climbed to, the night’s figures — and the one button under the rail acts on it. On a phone it opens your share sheet, which is how it reaches Facebook, Messenger or Instagram, and how Save Image gets it into Photos. On a laptop there is no sheet, so it downloads instead.
The cards are drawn transparent at story size, so they sit on whatever background the app you post them to gives them.
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Say what was good
A rating knows who won. It does not know who made the walk-up welcome, or kept their head when the score got away, or hit the one ATP everybody is still talking about. Commends are the other half — what the room says, rather than what the scoreboard says.
Positive only, and there is no downvote coming. A negative counterpart would turn the one thing you may write about somebody else into a weapon.
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Who made your night
Everybody you actually shared a court with, and whoever ran the night. You cannot commend somebody you never played: the server checks that, not just the screen.
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And what they did
Shots, the way they played, the way they were to play with. Pick as many as fit — there is a cap on how many people one person can name, and it is the server’s number, so the chips stop at exactly the point the API would refuse.
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The whole night, not just yours
Top of the board, the highlights, and every game in the order it was played. A host can flip between players with the chips at the top; everybody else reads their own.
What it did to your standing
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On your front page
The night lands on Home with three figures from three different places: the record from the games, the rating movement banked at the moment the host closed the session, and the time from the game clocks themselves.
The movement is the one that cannot be worked out afterwards — a rating is a running total, so if the close does not bank what it was before, nothing later can recover it.
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Your standing
Rank and pips, and your record all time. Win a game and you gain a pip; lose one and you drop a pip. The size of the step depends on who you beat, so beating a stronger side is worth more than beating a weaker one.
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Every night you have played
Each one keeps its own record and what it was worth, and links back to its recap. Nothing is lost when a club stops running.
The boards
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Your statistics
Reached from Your statistics on your profile. Games by day and by month, the venues you play most, and the line your rating has taken night by night.
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Who is climbing, everywhere
The boards rank on rating gained since the board last settled, so a good run shows up here long before it moves a standing anywhere else. Your own place is pinned at the top whatever it is — finding yourself is most of the reason anybody opens a leaderboard.
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Your province
The same board narrowed to your province. This is what the town and province questions at sign-up were for.
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Your town
Narrowed again. A town board is small enough to actually be somebody on, which is the point of having one.
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All time, or the last seven days
The board settles once a week, so a placing holds for the week instead of shifting after every game. The arrow beside a name is places moved since it last settled.
You appear on a board once you are past your ten placement games and your level has settled.
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The board that is not a ladder
The other half of the commends. Ranked on how many different people said something good about you rather than on how much you win — and a tag of its own answers “who is the best dinker here”. Nothing from the ladder leaks onto it: no rank badge, no rating.
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The whole ladder
Thirty steps end to end, Beginner 1 to Pro 5, and where you are on it. Crossing a rank raises its own notice at the desk, so a promotion is something the room sees.
For hosts
You want to run a night. Anyone can — there is no application and no invite code. This is a club, a session on the calendar, a roster, and the desk that deals the whole evening.
Chapter 1
Your club, and its first night
A club is one screen. Posting a night is three steps. Together they take about two minutes.
Start a club
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Anyone can host
From You, tap create one under “Run your own open play”. A club or group is a set of people; a court or venue is a place that runs its own nights. There is no application and nothing to be approved for.
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Your club page
Sessions, a feed you can post to, members and payments all live here. It is also the page you share when somebody asks where you play, and it reads perfectly well for people with no account.
Post a night
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What and where
Name the night, say where it is, and set the date and time — or take one of the presets. Then tap Pin it. The address is for reading; the pin is what a search “near me” actually answers, and a night with no pin is outside every one of those boxes.
The pin uses the phone’s own location, so drop it while you are at the venue — or fix it later from the edit screen.
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How the night runs
How many courts, and a cap on numbers. Two courts seat eight at a time and everybody else waits their turn, so a cap of twelve on two courts is a busy but rotating night. Sixteen on two is a lot of sitting.
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Read it back, then post
The last step shows the night as a player will see it. Posting publishes it: it is on the Play timeline, it is in the feed of everyone following the club, and it has a link you can send.
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It is live
The night’s own page, and the one you will come back to all week. Put a photo on it, message the people who are in, and — when the evening comes — open the desk from here.
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Playing, or running it?
Only whoever runs the club is asked this. Playing tonight takes a place and puts you in the queue like anybody else — you can still run the board. Running it, not playing keeps your place free for a player.
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Getting it in front of people
A link anybody can open, whether or not they have an account. It also lands on the Play timeline and in the feed of everyone following the club, and people nearby are told a new night has been posted.
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Nothing is final
Courts, numbers, the time, the fee, whether you vet who comes — all of it changes after posting, and everybody already in is told. Cancelling is here too, and it is a status rather than a deletion: the night stays readable for the people who had planned around it.
Chapter 2
Filling it
Requests come in all week. This is the half hour before the first game, and it is mostly saying yes.
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Confirm who asked in
Every request with the rank they play at and, if they have played your nights before, how often they did not turn up. Confirm the ones you want; the rest stay requested or go on the waitlist, and nobody is left guessing which.
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The roster is the night
Nobody types a name at the desk. The people who signed up are the people the board deals, and their standing comes with them — which is what makes the first game of the evening a fair one instead of a guess.
A regular with no account is added here too. A walk-up takes a place and plays like anybody else; they simply carry no standing between nights.
Chapter 3
Running the desk
It deals every rotation, keeps the wait fair, and does all of it on the device in front of you — a court with dead wifi keeps rotating.
Opening the night
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Sign in where you will run it
A laptop or a tablet at the desk, on the same account. Anything wider than a phone gets the two-column console; a phone gets a one-handed version of the same board rather than a squeezed copy of the other.
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Open the desk
View session on the event page opens the console — organizers only; the server refuses anybody else rather than hiding the link and hoping. It shows who is expected and then waits: opening the night is a deliberate act, not something that happens because somebody looked at the page.
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Check people in as they arrive
The night begins with an empty room. Nobody is dealt into a game until they are checked in — tap them one at a time as they walk up, or Check all in when the room is already full.
The board
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What you are looking at
Courts on one side, the queue on the other. Games are planned together rather than picked one at a time, so the board seats as many people as it can and match quality only breaks ties — which is what stops an awkward-to-pair player sitting out all night while everyone around them plays.
Whoever has played fewest games is called first, always. Nobody plays their sixth while somebody waits on their third.
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Who is on, and who is next
Each court shows the match it will actually play — Team A over Team B, with the projected rating on each side. The waiting list is split the same way: On next, Then, Still waiting, each headed with the matchup and who is partnered with whom.
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Everything the desk can do
One row along the top, and it is the whole console. Fill all courts seats every open one at once. Then, in order: Players, Rank medals, Session results, Session setup, How this works, and Finish. Every one of them is named and explained in Every control on the desk, in the reference.
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And everything you can do to one player
Three controls on every row. Priority stars them to the front — for a coach, a member, or somebody who has to leave soon. Partner pins two people together for the night. Sit out takes them off the queue until they tap back in. A fourth, Skip, appears only on somebody who has just been called: nobody further back has a game to be pulled out of yet.
Priority reorders the queue; it does not exempt anybody from the matchmaking range, so a starred Beginner still waits for a game they belong in.
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The room, in one sheet
Not just the queue: everyone signed in, who is on court and which one, and who is sitting out with a one-tap way back. This is also where you add the regular who does not use the app.
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How the night is matched
Setup holds the courts, the optional challenger court, and the matchmaking range — how far apart players in one game may be, counted in ladder steps, where a pip is one step and a rank is five. It works itself out from who is actually in the room, so there is nothing to set.
If nobody waiting satisfies the range, the court says so and offers a one-off override. It never quietly starts a mismatched game, and it never deadlocks either.
Playing the games
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Lodge the result
End the game, type the score, and confirm the side that won. The score names its own winner — the buttons only confirm it, which is what stops “Team A won, 7–11” being lodged by a mis-tap.
A score the clock could not have held is recorded but flagged, and its margin counts for nobody’s rank. Eleven points in four minutes is a typo, or a court that never really played it.
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Recorded, and on its way
The next four go straight on. Results queue on the device and send when there is signal — the counter tells you how many are still to go, and a replayed batch is a no-op rather than a game counted twice.
The desk never depends on the network. If the wifi dies mid-session the queue keeps rotating and everything arrives when it comes back.
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Tonight, so far
Session results is the night’s own leaderboard and its history — who has won what, and every game in the order it was played.
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Re-draw the order
The night opened in check-in order, which is the order people happened to arrive in. One tap re-draws it — seeded, so it survives a re-render and a reload without anybody appearing to jump the line.
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Or choose the four yourself
For the game the queue will not offer — a coach who wants a particular pairing, or four friends who came together and want one game before the night swallows them. The board picks up again afterwards.
Chapter 4
Closing out
The step that actually writes the night back to everybody who played it — and what is left afterwards.
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Last game in
Wait until the counter says nothing is left to send. Everything on this screen is already on the device; this is about the server having it too.
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Finish and post the results
This is what writes the night back to everybody who played it: their record, their pips, and what their rating was before and after. It is the only moment that can bank the “before”, which is why the app asks rather than assuming.
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The desk is shut
Coming back to a closed night gets this instead of a board. If somebody turns up late and you want another hour, Reopen the night picks the board up exactly where it was closed — nothing that was banked is lost.
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The club’s post of the night
The whole session as a card — the board, the record, and the club’s own mark ghosted into the ground, in the club’s colours if it has them. This is the one you put on the club page or in the group chat the morning after. Host-only, because posting it is the club speaking.
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What the night took
Who has paid and who has not, night by night. The money itself never goes through Dink Deck — a club’s fee is settled in GCash or cash on the night, and this only keeps the count so nobody has to remember it.
Every control on the desk
The console is icons and almost nothing else. That is right for a screen read at arm’s length across a table, and wrong for anybody meeting it for the first time — so here is every one of them, grouped by where it sits rather than by what it does, because “which of these is it” is a question about position.
| Where | Control | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| The bar | Back | To the night’s own page, or to Home for a desk with no event behind it. |
| The bar | Fill all courts | Seats every open court at once. The one lime control up here, because it is the only one that changes the night rather than showing you something about it. |
| The bar | Players | The whole room: waiting, on court, sitting out — and where a walk-up with no account is added. |
| The bar | Rank medals | The ladder, and who on tonight’s board sits where on it. |
| The bar | Session results | Tonight’s own leaderboard, and every game in the order it was played. |
| The bar | Session setup | Courts, the challenger court, and how far apart players in one game may be. |
| The bar | How this works | The desk’s own walkthrough. Offered once to a device that has not seen it, and always here afterwards. |
| The bar | Finish | Ends the night and writes it back to everybody who played. Refuses while a game is still on court. |
| The bar | Theme | Light or dark. A daylit court and an indoor hall are not the same screen. |
| A court | Start game | Puts the four shown on. Reads “Need 4 in queue” until there are, and offers a one-off override when nobody waiting is a legal match. |
| A court | End game | Stops the clock and asks who won. The score names its own winner; the buttons confirm it. |
| A court | Court options | Rename it, close it for a lesson, or reopen it. Closing returns whoever was on it to the queue. |
| A court | A player’s name | Tap anybody on the card to swap them out of this game for somebody else. |
| A player | Skip | Passes them over for this game and no further — for somebody tying a shoe or on the phone. Only shown on whoever has just been called; nobody further back has a game to be pulled out of yet. |
| A player | Priority | Stars them to the front of the queue. Reorders; never exempts them from the matchmaking range. |
| A player | Partner | Pins two people together for the night, so the board never splits them. |
| A player | Sit out | Off the queue until they tap back in. Their wait stops counting. |
| The queue | View all | The roster sheet, from the panel rather than the bar. |
| The queue | Shuffle the queue | Re-draws the order the night opened in. Seeded, so it survives a reload without anybody appearing to jump the line. |
| The queue | Pick a game yourself | Choose all four by hand when the queue will not give you the game you want. |
The ladder
Seven ranks, five pips each, thirty steps end to end. A pip is worth 0.10, so the ladder lines up exactly with the DUPR and UTPR bands players already quote — and the board can tell an Intermediate 1 from an Intermediate 5 when it comes to balance a game.
| # | Rank | Rating | Who it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beginner | 2.0 – 2.49 | New to the game. Learning the serve, the rules, and how to keep score. |
| 2 | Novice | 2.5 – 2.74 | Can sustain a short rally. Starting to control depth and direction. |
| 3 | Improver | 2.75 – 2.99 | Rallies hold up. Getting to the kitchen line and staying there. |
| 4 | Intermediate | 3.0 – 3.49 | Reliable serve and return. Moving to the line with intent. |
| 5 | Skilled | 3.5 – 3.99 | Consistent third-shot drops, dinks with patience, covers the stack. |
| 6 | Advanced | 4.0 – 4.49 | Competitive tournament play. Controls pace and attacks the high ball. |
| 7 | Pro | 4.5 + | Open level. Wins points with speed-ups, resets and shot shaping. |
Win a game and you gain a pip; lose one and you drop a pip; a game ended with no winner moves nobody. The size of the step depends on who you beat. Your first ten games are placement games and count double while your level settles.
Every screen
Where each part of the app lives. The four along the bottom of a phone are Home, Play, Groups and You; everything else is reached from one of them.
| Address | Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
/ | Home | Your feed, open play near you, and the nights you have played. |
/play | Play | Every session on a timeline — today, this week, your clubs, nearby. |
/groups | Groups | Clubs to follow and courts near you. |
/me | You | Your standing, your sessions, your settings. |
/stats | Statistics | How you have played, and the boards. |
/medals | Medals | The whole ladder, thirty steps end to end. |
/guide | This guide | Always here, from the account menu on any screen. |
/events/:id | A night | The page a player joins from and a host shares. Its live board runs here too. |
/o/:slug | A club | Sessions, feed, members, payments. |
/host/:eventId | The desk | The console for the night. Organizers only. |
/recap/:sessionId | A recap | What a night was worth, yours and everybody’s. |
/session | A local desk | The same board with no account and no event behind it. |
That is the whole loop
Sign up, find a night, play it, read it back, climb. Free — for players and for clubs alike.