How it works

1. Starting a game

Click Start a game on the home page. You'll be asked for three things:

• A game name. Anything — "Tuesday Hearts", "Yahtzee Marathon", "Court 2". Just something everyone in your group will recognize.
• Your player name. This is how you'll show up on the scoreboard. You can change it later when you create an account, but the seat name is fixed for the game once set.
• A scoring mode.
  • Simple. One running total per player. Best for games where you keep a single score the whole way (Yahtzee, tennis sets, cribbage if you don't care about per-hand stats).
  • Rounds. Scores are tracked per round and totaled. Best for trick-taking card games (Hearts, Spades, Euchre) or anything where the round structure matters and you might want a per-round recap at the end.

Once you hit Create, you get a 5-letter PIN (uppercase, no easily-confused characters — no zero/O, no one/I/L). That PIN is the game's address. Anyone who has it can join.

2. Inviting other players

Inside the game, there's a Share button with everything you need to get others in:

• Just the PIN. Tell them in person. They go to scoremy.games, type the PIN into the Join box, pick a seat or add their name.
• A web link. Tap "Copy" and send it. The link drops them straight into the join screen — no PIN entry needed.
• A Telegram deep-link. Tap the Telegram option and it opens the bot pre-loaded with this game. They can play entirely from chat.
• A TV view link. Opens a read-only fills-the-screen scoreboard for an iPad or laptop facing the table. See section 6 below.

When someone joins, they pick from a list of open seats (player slots you added earlier) or add themselves as a new player. Once they claim a seat, that seat is theirs for the rest of the game — their browser remembers it via a cookie.

3. Scoring

Tap a player's name to add or subtract points. There are a few rules:

• The game admin (whoever created it) can score for anyone. Regular players can only score themselves. This keeps cheating contained and lets the admin act as the official scorekeeper.
• Points can be positive or negative. Type any number. To take points away, use the minus button or type a negative.
• There's no "edit." There's only "add another event." Every score you tap in becomes a row in the log. If you fat-finger a +50 when you meant +5, just add a –45 to fix it. The history stays honest — nothing is ever silently overwritten.
• An "Undo last" button exists for convenience. Under the hood it just adds an equal-and-opposite event, so the log stays append-only.

4. Rounds mode specifics

If you chose Rounds at game creation, you'll see a few extra controls:

• Per-round columns. The scoreboard shows each round as its own column. Tap a player's cell to score them for the current round.
• "New round" button. When everyone's scored for the current round, the admin advances. Past rounds stay visible and locked.
• Dealer rotation. Optionally mark a current dealer. With auto-rotate on (set at game creation), the dealer marker passes to the next player when you start a new round. Otherwise the admin sets it manually.
• Per-player totals. Each player's running total is the sum of their points across every round so far. There's no separate "total" entry to manage.

5. Team sports (volleyball, pickleball, generic two-side)

scoremy.games has a dedicated mode for the kind of game where two teams play against each other and you just want a big scoreboard on a screen. Open team sports from the landing page (or the link at the bottom of the regular New Game form) and pick which one fits:

• Generic team game. Two sides, two big scores. Tap to add 1 (or any custom amount). Good for soccer, basketball, hockey, dodgeball — anything where two teams just need a running total.
• Volleyball. Rally-point scoring. Tap which team won the rally — point goes to them automatically, and they take over the serve. No need to track whose turn it is to serve.
• Pickleball. Traditional sideout. Only the serving team can score. Tap which team won the rally — the board figures out whether that's a point, a server change (server 1 → server 2), or a sideout. Shows the traditional "your-their-server" score (e.g. 5-3-2) right under the serving team.

Undo is built in, and it's smart: it reverses the score change AND any service-state change. So if you tap the wrong team won the rally, hit Undo and the server marker, server number, and score all snap back to the moment before that tap.

All three flows work great with the TV view — put an iPad or laptop on the table showing /v/PIN, score from your phone, and everyone sees the live updates on the big screen.

6. Live updates

Everyone in the game — on the web or in the bot — sees changes instantly. No refresh, no polling, no waiting. When you tap +5, every other browser and the Telegram scoreboard update in the same heartbeat. The connection is a real-time websocket; if your phone goes offline briefly and comes back, the scoreboard re-syncs on its own.

7. TV view (iPad / laptop)

Open /v/PIN on any device with a screen — an iPad propped on the table, a laptop facing the room, a TV via AirPlay — and you get a read-only, fills-the-screen scoreboard. Names on the left, running totals on the right, sized as big as the screen allows. No tap targets, nothing to bump by accident.

It auto-updates in real time as players score from their phones or the Telegram bot, so the table view is always live.

How to open it. Inside the game, tap Share and pick the TV view option. That'll open it in a new tab — keep that tab on your iPad while everyone else uses their own phones. The PIN is never shown on the TV view, so a passer-by can't grab it off your screen.

Tap the ⚙ Options button (top right) for:

• Theme. Dark or light. Pick whichever looks better in your room.
• Sort. By rank (leader on top) or by seat order (the order players joined).
• Show round number, dealer marker, leader highlight. Toggle on/off independently.
• Fullscreen. A separate button (top right of the page) hides the browser chrome for a clean projector look.

All these preferences save to that device, so an iPad you keep on the table remembers your setup between games.

8. Completing a game

When you're done playing, the admin taps Complete. The game freezes — no more scoring — and you get a recap card at the top with:

• The winner, name and final total.
• Biggest gain and biggest loss — the single largest positive and negative event of the night, with who it happened to.
• The full standings, still right below.

If you completed the game by accident, the admin can re-open it from the same place. The score log is preserved.

Games are kept indefinitely. You can come back to any past game by visiting /g/PIN directly. (Better long-term: create an account and they'll all be listed in your profile.)

9. The Telegram bot

Search for @scorenowca_bot on Telegram, or just tap here. It works in DMs and in group chats.

• Slash commands.
  • /new — create a new game
  • /join — join one by PIN
  • /scoreboard — re-pin the current scoreboard message
  • /leave — leave the current game
  • /help — list these commands
• One scoreboard message, kept up to date. The bot keeps one live scoreboard message in the chat and edits it in place as scores change. It doesn't spam the chat with a new message every tap.
• Tap to score. The scoreboard message has buttons. Admins see a button for every player; regular players see a "Score yourself" button. Tap, type the number, done.
• Open the full app from inside Telegram. There's a "🎯 Open Score app" button below the chat input that launches the web app as a Telegram Mini App overlay. Use it if you want the bigger touch targets without leaving Telegram.

The web and the bot are the same game, the same data, in real time. Mix and match however your group wants.

10. Optional accounts

You never need an account. Accounts give you one thing: a permanent list of games you've created or played in, accessible from any device. Without one, you can only find old games by typing in the PIN.

Two ways to sign in, and both are passwordless:

• Magic link. Enter your email, we send a one-time link. Click it, you're in. The link expires in 15 minutes and only works once. We only use your email to send you sign-in links — never marketing, never shared. See the privacy policy.
• Passkey. Once signed in, you can add a passkey from your profile. Next time, just hit "Sign in with passkey" — Touch ID / Face ID / your security key signs you in instantly. No email needed at all.

Linking Telegram

From your profile you can also link your Telegram account. After you confirm in the bot, any past games you played via Telegram get attached to your scoremy.games account, and any future ones too. One identity, web + bot.

Your profile page

Once signed in, your profile shows every game tied to you. Tap any of them to drop right back into the scoreboard.

11. Privacy, in one sentence

We don't sell your data, we don't advertise to you, and we only use your email to send you sign-in links. The full privacy policy spells out everything we collect and every third party involved.