How Clinkup works

Getting started

Three things make everything else work properly:

1. Pick your sports. You get a separate rating for each one, and matchmaking only pairs you with people who play what you play.
2. Set your area. Start typing a street or town and pick a suggestion. Others only ever see the rough distance to you — never the address.
3. Set your range. How far you're willing to travel. It controls which players and which events you get shown.

Recording a game

Play your game in real life, then one of you records the result on the Play tab: who you played, which sport, and the final score.

Nothing counts until the other player agrees. The result sits as pending until they confirm it. Only then do the ratings and win/loss records move. If they think the score is wrong they can dispute it instead, and nobody's rating changes.

This is the whole point of the app: a leaderboard nobody can quietly inflate. You can't award yourself a win, and you can't record a result on someone else's behalf.

Equal scores count as a draw. Draws are worth half a win to both players.

How points work

Clinkup uses Elo — the same system chess uses. Everyone starts at 1000 in each sport they play.

The core idea: beating someone better than you is worth more than beating someone worse. Every game moves points from the loser to the winner, and how many depends on the gap between you.

Worked examples

An even match swings 16 points. Beating someone 200 points above you is worth 24 — but a heavy favourite beating a much weaker player earns almost nothing, and losing to them is expensive. Whatever the winner gains, the loser drops. Points are never created or destroyed.

Tiers

The label next to your number is just a readable shorthand for it:

Things worth knowing

• Ratings are per sport. Being a darts Legend says nothing about your pool rating.
• Only confirmed games count. Pending and disputed results move nothing.
• The score line doesn't matter. Winning 3–0 and 3–2 are worth the same; only who won counts.
• Byes in a tournament aren't games. Advancing without playing earns no points.

Groups

A group is a crew — your regular pub team, or just people who play the same thing. Create one and you're its owner. Share the four-character join code and people can find it instantly.

• Joining is by request. Someone asks, an admin or moderator approves.
• Moderators can approve requests and remove members. Only the owner appoints them, and only the owner can delete the group.
• Rank gates. An activity group can set a skill band, so a beginners' night stays a beginners' night. Leave both sides open and anyone can ask to join.
• General groups have no sport and no rank gate — just people.

Events & tournaments

An event is a night out with a time and a place. Say you're going, and it shows up on your Play tab. Attach it to a group to keep it members-only, or leave it open to everyone nearby.

Knockout tournaments

When the organiser draws the bracket, everyone who said they're going is entered:

1. Seeding. Entrants are ranked by their rating in that sport. The bracket pairs the top seed against the bottom seed, so the strongest players only meet late.
2. Byes. If the entry count isn't a power of two, the top seeds skip the first round. A bye is not a game — it earns no points.
3. Results. Either player records the score and the other confirms, exactly like a normal game. The organiser can settle a match directly as referee, so a bracket never stalls on someone who's gone home.
4. Advancing. The winner moves up automatically, and the game counts towards both players' ratings like any other.

A knockout match can't be a draw — someone has to advance.

Matchmaking

The Match tab shows players you could actually get a game with. Swipe or tap to like or pass. If you both like each other, it's a match and you'll see each other in your matches list.

To appear in your deck, someone must:

• play the same sport you're browsing,
• be within your range (people with no location set still show up), and
• be within 200 rating points of you, so games are competitive.

Run out of people? Widen your range, or bring back everyone you passed on.

Locations & range

Location fields search real streets and venues as you type. Picking a suggestion pins it to the map; typing free text without picking is fine too, it just won't have coordinates.

Once an event has a location, it's matched against each person's range. Three things are never hidden:

• events in a group you belong to,
• events you've already said you're going to, and
• events with no location set.

Your own coordinates are never shown to anyone. Other people only ever see an approximate distance, like "3 km away".

Admins

Admins can edit, disable and delete accounts. Who can do that to whom follows a chain.

• The owner sits at the top. The owner can't be demoted, disabled or deleted — by anyone, including themselves. That's deliberate: it means the site can never be locked out of its own administration.
• Any admin can promote someone else, and the app records who promoted whom.
• You can only remove admins below you in that chain — someone you promoted, or someone they promoted. You can never remove whoever promoted you.

Removals cascade

If you remove an admin, everyone they promoted loses admin too, all the way down. Their access existed because of a judgement that's just been reversed, so it goes with it. You're told exactly who will be affected before you confirm.

Authority follows the whole chain, not just the direct promoter. So if the person who promoted an admin leaves, that admin doesn't become impossible to remove — responsibility for them moves up to the owner.

Any admin can step down voluntarily. Doing so cascades in the same way.

Every promotion, removal and account action is written to an audit log visible in the admin console.

Your content

You are solely responsible for the content and contributions you post, share, or link to in Clinkup. Media is hosted on third-party services (e.g. YouTube, Imgur) — Clinkup does not host, review, or endorse it. Do not post illegal, infringing, or harmful content.

Profile pictures you upload are re-encoded on arrival, which strips any location data the photo carried. See the content policy.