How RankT works

What RankT is

A leaderboard for your pub that hangs on the wall instead of sitting in a folder behind the bar. A guest scans a QR code next to the table football, enters the result, and is on the list seconds later. No account, no app from the store, no paper.

1. This is the goal

   One screen on the wall – an old telly with a small computer behind it, an iPad, a spare monitor. On it, the leaderboard of your house, big enough to read from the bar.

   Bottom right there is a code that changes every minute and a half. That is how RankT knows somebody is actually standing in your pub and not entering points from home.

   

2. What you need

   A device on the wall with a browser. Wi-Fi that reaches it. A printer for the sheets next to each table. And an email address you can actually get at.

   That is all. No contract, no installation, nothing to set up on your till.

   You do not need to buy anything new. An old telly with a streaming stick or a small computer will do, and so will a retired iPad.

Create an account

The account belongs to you, not to your pub. One account can run several houses later on – if you have two places, or if you also want RankT in your own cellar.

1. Open the operator area

   On a computer, go to rankt-score.de/admin. That is the front door: email address and password, with the other ways in written small underneath.

   

2. Enter an address and a password

   The password needs at least ten characters. There are no other rules – forced special characters produce notes under keyboards, not better passwords.

   If you would rather have no password at all: you can have a link sent to your address every time instead. That way still exists, it is simply no longer the first one offered.

   

3. Confirm the email

   RankT sends you a link. Only after that can you create a pub – not to annoy you, but so that nobody else can take your address.

   If nothing arrives, check the spam folder. The card has a button that sends the mail again.

   

Create the pub

1. Name and address

   The name later sits in large letters above the leaderboard on the wall. Write it the way your guests say it – “Lucas’ Boazn”, not “Fugel Hospitality Ltd.”

   The postal address is needed for the privacy notice your guests can open on their phones. You also set the language the wall screen speaks and the time zone you are in.

   

2. The web address follows the name

   As soon as you type the name, the web address of your pub appears underneath – “Lucas’ Boazn” becomes lucas-boazn. You do not have to invent it.

   If you rename the pub later, the address moves with it. A QR code you have already printed keeps working: every address that was ever in use leads to your house forever.

   A printed sheet never stops working just because you renamed your pub. That is the whole point of it.

   

Setting up a leaderboard

A leaderboard is a way of scoring, not a table. Six pool tables make one list – not six. And one table football can appear in two lists, say the monthly standings and a tournament night. It is set up in five steps, and next to every one of them you can see how it will look on the wall. Nothing is saved until the end – stop halfway and you leave no half-finished leaderboard behind.

1. Setting up for the first time is shorter

   Anyone who has just created their account gets the first leaderboard inside the setup path: the game, how many tables, what it is called, how long it counts – four questions, and it is on the wall. That is enough for the first night.

   Everything else – the extra periods, the deadline, the points, doubles – is in the assistant afterwards, and the next steps show it. If you already have a pub, you go straight there: “Ranglisten”, then “Neue Rangliste” at the top right.

   

2. Step 1 – What gets played?

   You pick the game – table football, pool, darts, bowling, pinball and a dozen more. That settles everything else: how it is counted, what a table is called (“table”, “lane”, “board”), and whether somebody has to confirm the result.

   Below it is the name the list hangs under on the wall. It comes filled in with the name of the game; if you have two football tables, you type “Cellar” and “Garden”. And where there is something to count, you say straight away what it is played up to – 10 goals at table football, 3 legs at darts.

   Once the first match has gone in, the game is fixed: the matches hang off it. Everything else stays changeable.

   You never configure a points formula. You say what is being played, and RankT knows the rest.

   

3. Step 2 – Which rankings run?

   First the big list, the one with a prize at the end: week, month, quarter, half-year, year – or “forever”, and then it never starts over. The month is what we recommend.

   Alongside it, further lists over the same matches: today, this week, this month, this quarter, this year, the all-time best list. A period is a pair of glasses, not a second leaderboard – a match goes in once and counts in every period it falls into. We recommend adding “today”: the monthly list gives the regulars something to play for, and “today” picks up everyone who is only in for one night.

   For “today” you also decide how it is sorted: by wins, or by points like the big list. By wins is easier to grasp over a single evening – 3 wins beat 2, however close they were.

   

4. Step 3 – When does a result become final?

   Until then a result already counts, but it stands there as “provisional” and can be disputed. Final immediately, after an hour, after an evening, after a day, after three days – or only once the other side explicitly confirms.

   We recommend an hour. Anyone who wants to object does it straight away or never – a long limbo only annoys, and the list is right the same night.

   A match against a name with no phone behind it never becomes final by itself, by the way: somebody who is never asked cannot agree either.

   

5. Step 4 – What is a match worth?

   Win and you get 10 points; lose and you get up to 5, the closer it was the more; a draw gives both sides 5. The leaderboard is the sum of those points over the current period, and level on points, whoever needed fewer matches comes first. That is the recommendation, and almost every pub takes it. “Like football: 3 · 1 · 0” sits next to it, and anyone who wants to can type their own numbers.

   Below that is a table with every possible result and the points it produces – at table football up to 10, that is ten rows from 10:9 down to 10:0. It works with whatever is in the fields right now; none of it is saved yet.

   “On the podium from 3 matches” is the second number here: anyone below that stands in the list with their points, but does not reach the podium or the prize yet. 0 means: from the very first match.

   At pinball, bowling and machines there is no points system. There the same step asks whether the best value counts or the average of the best three – and whether the higher or the lower number wins.

   Win and you get 10 points. Lose and you get up to 5 – the closer it was, the more. The leaderboard is the sum.

   

6. Step 5 – Is it played in pairs here too?

   Two against two at the football table is a different game from one against one. So doubles gets a leaderboard of its own: the same tables, the same points, but teams instead of single names. Two guests become a team with a name of its own at their first doubles match.

   As long as the two lists belong together you set them in one place: the points, run time and confirmation deadline of the singles list apply to doubles as well. On the phone a switch then sits at the top, and the screen can show both lists side by side.

   At pinball, bowling and machines the step falls away – there everyone plays for themselves.

   

7. Done – and from now on the settings page

   At the end, what you set stands there in five rows. From now on this page is the settings page for that leaderboard: every row has a “change” on the right that opens its step again. Change something on a running list and it is saved right away – the wall shows it on its next round.

   Under “more …” sits what you do once and then never again: which tables belong to it, the periods in detail (rename, sort, “the last 30 days”), unlinking the doubles list – and the two ways to get rid of the list. Ending it can be undone at any time; deleting is final.

   What is still missing now are the tables: “assign tables” at the bottom left leads there. Without a table nobody can put a result in.

   The summary is the settings page. There is no second page with the same switches on it.

   

Put up the screen

The device on the wall gets no account and no password. It shows who it is, and a person confirms that with a phone. So there is no keyboard to wrestle behind the telly.

1. Open the address on the device

   Put the device on the wall, open its browser and type rankt-score.de/s/ followed by any word – /s/bar for instance. The word is only the name this device remembers itself by.

   After that there is nothing more to do on that device. Put the keyboard away.

   

2. The screen shows a QR code

   At the top there is a band with a QR code and a short identifier. Below it, an example leaderboard with made-up names – so the device does not look broken while it is still waiting.

   That it is an example is written above it in large letters. Nobody should mistake those numbers for real ones.

   

3. Scan it and take the screen over

   Scan the code with your phone. You land on a page where you sign in and then choose two things: which pub and which leaderboard. Plus a name for the screen so you recognise it later – “bar”, “back room”, “above the table football”.

   

4. Done – the screen switches by itself

   A few seconds later your leaderboard is on the wall. You do not have to restart anything or confirm anything.

   

5. If you grabbed the wrong one

   For one minute there is a cancel button on the screen itself. Whoever stands in front of it has the last word – no account, no asking you first.

   After that, unpairing only happens in the operator area, under “Screens”.

   

6. The screen is now in your list

   Under “Screens” you see every screen in the house: what it shows, whether it is online, and when it last reported in. This is also where you change which leaderboard it shows.

   If there is no phone to hand or the camera is being difficult, the old way still works: generate a code here and type it in on the screen.

   

7. Two lists side by side

   Under “Was er zeigt” you set which slides the screen runs through and how long each one stands. One of them shows two leaderboards side by side, full screen – meant for singles and doubles, but you can pick any pair.

   If you pick nothing, RankT takes the obvious one: this screen’s leaderboard on the left, its doubles list on the right. Where there is no second list the slide drops out – better one slide fewer than half a slide on the wall.

   

Print the QR codes and put them up

One sheet next to every table. That is the only way a guest ever finds out the list exists.

1. Open the print page

   It sits at the end of the setup path and is available in the operator area afterwards. You get one page per table.

   

2. Pick a size and a look

   Four sizes: A4, A5, A6 and a ten-by-ten-centimetre sticker. And four looks: plain black on white for any printer, plus the three designs of the wall screen.

   On the left you see exactly what will come out. Print, laminate or slip into a sleeve – and then next to the table, not on the door.

   Next to the table, not on the door. Somebody standing at the table should see the code without turning round.

   

The operator area

From here on it runs by itself. What you see here is mostly an answer to one question: do I need to do anything?

1. The overview

   At the very top sits the only thing that really needs you – disputed results. Below that, the numbers of the week and a short report of what happened.

   If nothing is up there, there is nothing to do. That is the normal case.

   

2. The leaderboards

   Every scoring in your house side by side: what it is called, what is played, how long it runs, when a result becomes final, and how many tables hang off it.

   “Ansehen” shows the list as it appears on the wall. “Einstellen” opens the summary from the assistant – which is also the settings page, and every row in it leads back into its step.

   

Tables and machines

Tables change nothing about the leaderboard – it counts across all of them. Here you only see which one is running and which one is out.

1. What is in the house

   Each one shows which leaderboard it belongs to and how much was played on it this week. Renaming is always possible.

   Deleting always works – even where games were played. The games stay with their points and their leaderboard, and the name of the table stays beside them: “played on Table 1”, long after the table itself went to the cellar.

   

2. Take it out of service instead of deleting it

   The table football went out during the refit, the dart board has a hole in it: then you take it out of service. It disappears from the choices on the phone, from the wall screen and from the next printed sheet – and nothing else changes. Games, points and past standings stay exactly as they are.

   Before it happens, it tells you what happens: how many games hang off it, from how many players, whether it is the last table of a leaderboard, and what the affected screens will show afterwards. You can bring it back at any time.

   Deleting is the second way, and it is final. Use it for the test table from the first evening or for the machine that is never coming back – for everything else, out of service is better, because it is one tap back.

   

The “to settle” tab

Everything two guests could not sort out between themselves ends up here. This is the one job that is genuinely yours.

1. Settle a disputed result

   Somebody entered a result, the opponent disagreed. Until you decide, it does not count. You see who played whom, the score, when it was and on which table.

   Two buttons: it counts, or it does not. If you are not sure, “does not count” is always the safe choice – the game leaves the leaderboard, nobody gets points, and the evening is saved.

   

2. A game that is wrong

   Wrong score, a joke entry at two in the morning, mixed-up names: below that you find the most recent games of your pub, filtered by leaderboard or searched by name. Two buttons per row.

   “Correct” opens the result: names, goals and the table can be put right. Beside every name it says how many points they have today and how many they would have afterwards – worked out before you save. The leaderboard and the time stay; a game that moves to another list would not be a correction any more.

   “Delete” takes the game out of every standing. For everybody, at once.

   

3. One guest, two entries

   It happens that one person is in the list twice – once as “Schorsch”, once as “Georg”, because they changed phones. Further down the same page you merge the two: every game moves to the entry that stays, the empty one disappears.

   And if somebody claimed the wrong name, you release the phone from it. The entry then belongs to nobody again, and for half an hour the right person can claim it on their phone.

   Whatever a guest can break, you can fix on your own. You never have to ring anybody.

4. Sixty seconds back

   After every deletion – a table, a leaderboard, a game, a name, the whole pub – a bar appears at the bottom edge: what is gone, and an “undo” next to it. For one minute. After that it is final.

   There is no wastebasket. What is deleted is gone everywhere at once – off the wall screen, off the phone, out of every list. The minute is there for the click you did not mean to make, and for nothing else.

   

The house

1. Name, address, prize and the required details

   What is here is what your guests see: the name above the leaderboard, the prize on the wall screen (“first place this month drinks on the house”), and your details in the privacy notice they can open on their phones.

   Without those details your guests only get a note telling them to ask at the bar. The tab carries an exclamation mark until they are complete.

   

2. Who shows up in the list on the phone

   On a busy night fifty people play. After a month that would be fifteen hundred names in the opponent list on the phone, and nobody would find anyone in it. So you set a period here: whoever has played at your place within that period is in the list.

   Everyone else turns up through the search field above it – two letters are enough. Nothing is deleted, every game still counts, in every standing and in the all-time best list, and anyone who plays again is back at the top on their own.

   Only one thing counts here: when somebody last played at your place. Having an account makes no difference – otherwise the list would be just as long again after a year.

   Our tip is “this week”. Then on a Friday the list still holds whoever was in the weekend before, and it stays short. “Everyone, always” works too – then nobody ever drops out.

   Your own name always turns up again – even after two years, even while it rests. Nobody has to create a second one.

   

The trial period

1. What happens when it ends

   Exactly one thing stops: no new game can be entered. The screen on the wall keeps running, and confirming still works.

   That is deliberate. A dead screen embarrasses you in front of your guests, and somebody who entered a game yesterday has nothing to do with an unpaid invoice.

   With seven days left the operator area shows a quiet note. Once it has run out, the note is prominent and cannot be dismissed – it concerns the running of the place.

   

Your account

1. Address and password

   Under “Konto” you find what gets you in – and nothing else. The pub lives under “Haus”.

   This is where you change your password, or set one for the first time if you have always signed in by link.

   

Arriving

1. Scan the code next to the table

   Point your phone’s camera at the sheet next to the table. A page opens – no app, nothing to install.

   You immediately see this pub’s leaderboard: who is ahead, on how many points, from how many games. At the top you can switch between the pub’s leaderboards and their periods.

   

2. Type in the code from the wall screen

   If you scanned the sheet, you are usually signed in already. Otherwise RankT asks for the four-digit number shown at the bottom right of the wall screen.

   That proves you are in the pub. The number changes every minute and a half – it does not work from home.

   

Your name

1. Type in a nickname

   What should they call you on the list? A nickname is plenty – a pub wall looks better with Bulldozer, Schorsch and Yeliz on it than with three names off a driving licence.

   Type it once and the phone remembers you. Next time you are you again straight away.

   

2. If the name is already taken

   There is no error message, just a question with three suggestions built from your name – and a free field. Whoever was there first keeps their name.

   If a phone already stands behind that name, RankT says so plainly: “That is Schorsch. There is a phone behind it – that person enters their own results.” Then take one of your own.

   

3. Change your name later

   At any time. On the way to entering a result there is a button for it under your name. Your games stay where they are – the history hangs on you, not on the word.

   What you cannot do is take somebody else’s name. There is no “I am that one from now on”.

   

Entering a game

Four questions, four answers. Once you have done it, it takes ten seconds.

1. Against whom?

   Pick your opponent from the list. There is a search field at the top if there are a lot of names. Someone who is not on it yet can add themselves first – or you type their name in.

   

2. On which table?

   If you scanned the sheet on the table itself, it is already selected. Otherwise tap it. And if you cannot remember, say so – the game still counts.

   

3. Playing doubles? Switch at the top

   If your pub also plays doubles, a switch sits above the list: singles or doubles. Underneath it says which leaderboard the game counts towards.

   The first time you play doubles you pick your partner from the list or type their name – and the two of you get a team name. The suggestion is “Ben & Cem”, but anything that suits the pub will do. From then on you are that team; your points go to the team, not to the two of you separately.

   If your partner has never been here, they are created along the way. The first time they scan the code themselves they pick up their name – until then a game of your team never becomes final on its own.

   

4. How did it end?

   Two numbers, that is all. For games without an opponent – highscore, pinball, bowling – it is one number.

   RankT works out the points itself: win and you get 10. Lose and you get up to 5 – the closer it was, the more. That is deliberate, otherwise nobody would play the best player in the house. At pool there is nothing to count, so losing is losing.

   If it says “You play up to 10” underneath the fields, RankT checks that too: whoever wins has exactly ten.

   

5. Done

   You see straight away how many points it was and where you now stand. A few seconds later it is on the wall screen too.

   If you do not have three games yet, it also says how many you still need for the podium. You are in the list all the same.

   Until your opponent confirms, your name carries “provisional”. It counts all the same.

   

Confirming

A second person always looks at it. That is the whole trick that keeps the list honest.

1. “Is that right?”

   If somebody entered a result against you, the question is at the top as soon as you open the page. You see the score and both names.

   “That’s right” – done, the result is final. “That’s not right” – it stops counting and goes to the landlord.

   

2. “Digger says you are Basti”

   If you do not have a name here yet and somebody entered a game against a name nobody has claimed, RankT asks whether that name is you.

   “Yes” means: the name is yours from now on – here, and only here. “No” means: the game is disputed and goes to the landlord.

   

3. If somebody says no

   Nothing bad happens: the result stops counting and appears in the landlord’s overview. Nobody gains points, nobody loses any.

   The landlord then decides – it counts, or it does not. That is two clicks for them, and you can carry on playing in the meantime.

   Disagreeing is not a row, it is a query. In case of doubt the game simply does not count – and that costs nobody anything.

An account – and what it is good for

You do not need one. RankT works without it, completely. An account protects you; it does not oblige you.

1. When it is offered

   Not at the start, but when it can explain itself: after your first win, on your second visit, when you make the podium. You can dismiss it, and after the third time it does not come back.

   

2. What it gives you

   Your name becomes yours: no other phone can tap it. And if you change phones or break one, you find your names again.

   You give an email address and get a link – no password, no form. The address never appears on the wall screen, and the landlord does not see it.

   Your account holds your places with your standing in each, your games, and any results waiting for your confirmation. What it does not hold: other people’s profiles, friend lists, a total score across pubs. Nobody learns which other pubs you play in – not the person you played, and not the landlord.