The path of beer pong tournament software has been an interesting one. When you say software you automatically think some type of program you buy at the store or online to install on your computer. Truth be told, this type of program can come in a variation of forms.
When competitive beer pong began, the “program” consisted of the organizer, someone’s hat, a sheet of paper and a paper bracket probably from Printyourbrackets.com. The organizer would write everyone’s name/team down on little pieces of paper, fold them up and toss into a hat. Those would be pulled “randomly” to fill out those brackets which would be hand written from start to finish.
The progression of beer pong tournament software
As time went on the beer pong tournament software of choice turned to Challonge.com for some of the more internet savvy organizers. This never really took off within the community because shortly after BPong came out with their beer pong specific program. This eventually manifested into their current version from WS VII when they took the NBPL initiative live.
Since 2012 the majority of competitive beer pong tournaments have taken place on that software. Other organizers who manage large scale events have taken it a step further to create their own program in excel/google sheets if they’re familiar enough with the formulas. Going this route can fully customize your event from taking sign up #1 to calling the final game of the tournament but can be very tiresome to put together and maintain.
In the last seven years there’s been a few other attempts at taking over this space, most notably and to date my personal favorite, The Pong List and most recently, Tournament Wizard. Both of these programs were developed by beer pong organizers deep within the community.
The Pong List was written in Excel and had the ability to rank players by State, Regionally and Nationally. This ranking was based on the popular ELO rating and took into account who you played, when you played them along with who your partner was.
Tournament Wizard was developed in the last couple years and focuses more on all things bar games. This software took things a little bit further by incorporating a notification system to let players know when and where they were up. You were also able to log in and follow the tournament through the app if that’s what you were into.
Unfortunately, neither one of these had much success in the beer pong community for very different reasons. But what if I told you that out there, somewhere, lies a team who have written nearly the perfect program suited for our needs? What if this program has already been up and running in a similar sport that we envy daily for the last year? What if I told you that this team found Pongstars to help expand their program into their next market of choice, Beer Pong?
That’s why we’re here today, to officially announce the partnership behind the last beer pong tournament software you’ll ever need. We are thrilled to introduce to you, the beer pong community and Pongstars supporters to SCOREHOLIO!
What is Scoreholio?
The simplest explanation is that it’s the most efficient, soon to be beer pong tournament software for both player and organizer. It frees up more time than you knew possible for an organizer running an event no matter the size. It creates a worry free environment for everyone involved.
Players never have to wonder where they are in the bracket, when they’re up or who they’re playing because the app automatically notifies each person this information on a need to know basis. To date, Scoreholio has amassed 19,000 tournaments – 310,000 games – 9.1 million points in cornhole since they launched a year ago.
Being that most beer pong players are avid bar games enthusiasts, many of you might have already used this software through a cornhole tournament you played. This weekend alone(10/12), Scoreholio will be used in California, Kansas, Georgia, Arizona, Ohio, Idaho, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado and Nevada.
They’re growing at an astounding pace and the main contributors are their fantastic team and even better list of features this program boasts.
The Features
The great thing about this partnership is that the nuts and bolts behind this software go hand in hand with beer pong. There are many similarities when it comes to functionality, the only big difference would be the scoring with Cornhole compared to ours. Below we’ll break down many of the current features that benefit both the player and organizer
Flexible
-
- Scoreholio makes it easy to run tournaments no matter how many players, courts or format.
Digital
-
- Everything is done via your phone/firestick/tablet. A quick QR code scan based check in process, interactive scoreboards to report scores and a colorful event dashboard that makes it easy and fun for everyone to track the action, playing or not.
Simple
-
- Scoreholio automates the tournament so the organizer can relax, play with less stress if they choose, or use newfound free time to engage players, run side games or sell merchandise.
Quick Scan Check-in Process
-
- All players will be required to download the app to create an account which will designate them a QR Code. You already need to check into a tournament but after this one step you’ll never need to visit the registration table again. Once checked in players will get alerts that let them know when they’re up, who they’re playing against and on what court. Once the game is over and reported through the app, each player will also receive a confirmation alert about the game that just ended.
Scoreboards
-
- This will be one of the differences from cornhole to beer pong tournaments but the same general idea will be there. Currently there’s a scoreboard(tablet) located at every court where the scores are updated after every “frame”. Players enter their points with a few taps, and the tournament dashboard located nearby is instantly updated. When the game is over, the teams will submit the result and Scoreholio will automatically update the tournament(standings, brackets, matchups) and assign the next the pair of teams to play on that court.
Real-Time Dashboard
-
- Whether you set this up on a TV in the bar or bring your own monitor, everybody can see who’s playing who, on what court and the current scores. The dashboard is capable of listing all the current courts being used, current standings, messages and even advertising space.
Other Features
-
- Single and double elimination brackets, blind draws, round robin, pool play, seeded single and double elimination brackets after round robin as well as player favorite Switcholio.
- Anyone can follow a tournament with the app so no more annoying friends and family not there asking how you’re doing. Now they can download the app, find the tournament and follow the dashboard or even follow a specific team as they progress.
- Importing players from other events you held so they only have to check in once during a weekend of events.
- Real-time notifications allows you to send custom alerts to notify everyone of a promotion or bar deal, thank sponsors and such.
- No more calling games as an organizer and then having to follow up with each table. If a team is at the table waiting for their opponent they’ll be able to hit a button that notifies the team again that they’re up and on what table. No more getting pulled away to track people down or call them multiple times.
- Tired of doing random pairings manually? This software handles it all once everyone is checked in and you’re ready to go. Just push one button, pairings are randomized in front of everyone and then placed onto tables to begin the tournament.
- ELO+ ratings for proper rankings
- There were will be many more features added/changed
The Catch?
Most of you are now probably wondering what this is going to cost you. Obviously products and services as in depth as Scoreholio come at cost for both developers and users. However, if you download the app now and have a look, you’ll see the majority of the features I laid out are part of the free versions.
If you’re a local organizer who runs a few tables a night of normal structure then you’ll have no need for the paid versions. Current pricing tiers are Free/$4.99/$9.99/$19.99 per month but the best part is you can cancel these at anytime. So if you have one large event a year or every few months that you could benefit from a higher tier then you only have to worry about paying for it that month. More on the pricing tiers and what they offer here.
For the players, currently there is no paid versions but I would only assume that as they add more features focused on players this could change.
What’s Next?
After reading all this I hope you guys are excited and itching to get your hands on this. But as of now the only portion that exists is what’s used for cornhole. Feel free to download that and play around with it if you haven’t. Visit the Scoreholio.com and poke around to get a better understanding at exactly how it works and what you need to get started.
In the meantime, the team is currently working on putting together a test site for the beer pong portion. We are going to need organizers from around the world to help test and offer suggestions on improvement. If this is something you’d like to be a part of, please reach out to us or comment below.
We’ve been working diligently with Scoreholio the last few months teaching them the ins and outs of our world in order to better mold this to our needs. We are as confident as we are excited about what this will bring to tournaments, organizers and players everywhere!
Lastly, the first large scale event that Scoreholio will be powering is none other than the Arizona Beer Pong State Championships on January 24th-26, 2020. Each event will be ran using scoreholio during the entire weekend.
