Thursday, June 6, 2013

App Review: Challonge

Well, I haven't been the best about posting app reviews like I started, but I found an app today that I just have to share: Challonge.

This week I'm leading a chess camp at my son's school.  We've covered basics, opening move strategies, various techniques, and today we started a championship tournament - which led me to this awesome find...

I really needed to create a bracket, but have you ever create a double-elimination tournament bracket for 11 people?  Well, it's not easy.  So I turned to Google, and that's when I found Challonge (www.challonge.com): a free web-based bracket generator with some nice features that are really unexpected and make this more of a full-featured web application.



It took me two minutes (2:00) to create this fantastic looking bracket.  I entered all of their names, then selected a random seeding option.  I was then able to put in up on the projector so the kids could track the standings as we went along using the app's full-screen view.. perfect!  Later I was able to email a URL to the kids' parents so they an see the bracket online.  They loved it!

There are a lot of features that I didn't use this time, but will probably use in the future (Cub Scout pinewood derby) such as displaying seeds, photos of participants, different types of tournaments (single elimination, round robin, Swiss), public sign-up page, maximum number of participants, allow participants to report their own scores and more!

This is obviously an app with a specific niche, but as you can tell I'm a big fan.