Frequently Asked Questions

Greater Vancouver's badminton community runs on Feather Rally. Find rally days, organize games, manage your club — all without the WhatsApp group-chat chaos. Free, built by local players, available on web, iOS, and Android.

Yep. Free to join as a player. Free to host rally days. No credit card, no ads. Free accounts can own one club. If you run multiple clubs, a Pro tier is on the way (no payment flow yet — everyone is on the free plan today).

Greater Vancouver — Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, North Van, and nearby areas. Rally Days are listed with their actual court or community centre.

Anyone who plays badminton casually or competitively — beginners through tournament-level players. Hosts and club organizers who want to stop spreadsheet-ing their rosters.

You can browse rally days without an account, but the host name, exact date, and location are blurred until you sign in. To join, host, or get a spot confirmed, you'll need an account — it takes about 30 seconds.

We send a verification link to your inbox during signup. It cuts down on spam, mistyped addresses, and lets us notify you reliably about pending approvals, waitlist promotions, and rally-day cancellations. If you don't see the email, check your spam folder — and if you mistyped (e.g. homail.com instead of hotmail.com), the form will catch the most common typos before you submit.

Sign in, open Browse or follow an invite link, pick a rally day, and tap Join. Rally Days are either open-join (you're in instantly) or approval-required (the host reviews your request first).

You can join the waitlist. If a spot opens — someone cancels, or the host bumps capacity — an admin can promote you in one tap and you get an email + push. Admins can also move people the other way: a confirmed player can be bumped back to the waitlist (e.g. to recover from an accidental over-approval) without being kicked entirely. You'll get a push if that happens. Either way, the database itself now enforces capacity — no more rally days sneaking past 18 / 18.

Always — confirmed players can queue a +1 on the waitlist of any rally day that's full. If the host has flipped Confirmed players can add guests on in the series settings, you can also add a guest directly to the roster while there's still room (it auto-routes to the waitlist once the rally day fills up). Look for the Guests row on each rally day page — it tells you the current policy at a glance: Anyone confirmed can add (you can bring +1 to roster) or Admins add to roster · players queue waitlist (you can only queue a waitlist guest).

Open the rally day from your My Rally page and tap Cancel my spot. Every rally day has a cancellation notice (usually 24–48 hours). Cancelling inside the cutoff is still allowed but may be considered a no-show by the host.

The host collects payment directly — usually cash or e-transfer. Feather Rally tracks who's paid so they can check you off, but we don't process payments.

Click it. You'll see a preview of the rally day. Create an account (or sign in) and you're in. No extra steps.

Create an account, then tap New Club on My Rally. Name your club, add your first session (e.g. Monday Doubles), and you're up.

Think of it as a club structure. A Club is your club (e.g. "Timmy's Badminton Club"). A Session is a recurring pattern within the club ("Monday Morning Doubles"). A Rally Day is one occurrence with a specific date, time, and location.

Yes. As the owner you can assign Club Admins (who can manage everything except deleting the club), and you or a club admin can assign Session Admins (who manage one specific session).

Your week-in-week-out players. A session admin invites them; once they accept, they're automatically enrolled in every new rally day in that session — no weekly group-chat ping required. They still get a confirmation email each time.

Recurring sessions auto-spawn the next rally day (same day + interval) once the previous one ends, and the old one is marked Completed. One-off rally days flip to Completed too. Admins can hit ✓ Complete to trigger the next rally day sooner. If you're a regular of that session, you'll be automatically added to every newly spawned rally day — no need to re-request each time. Talk to your admin to become a regular!

Your call. Most hosts use cash or e-transfer. Use the Paid/Unpaid toggle on each player row in rally day management to keep track. Feather Rally is the scoreboard, not the cashier.

Open Manage Club → Members. Tap the $ icon next to a member's name to open their balance modal. Enter a deposit (positive amount) or withdrawal (negative), add an optional note, and save. The balance is logged immediately and the member sees it on their Profile under Club balances.

Same balance modal — Manage Club → Members → tap $ on a member. The full ledger is right there: every deposit, every rally-day payment that drew down the balance, every manual adjustment, with timestamps and the admin who recorded it. The ledger is append-only, so corrections show as new rows rather than edits to old ones.

On the rally day Manage page, each confirmed player row has a Pay with balance button (only shown when their balance is at least the rally-day price). Tap it once — the price is deducted from their balance and they're marked Paid in the same click. No cash exchange needed at the door.

Yes. Open Manage Club → Members and tap Balance report. You get an on-screen table (sorted with debit-balances at the top so you can see who needs to top up), plus a Share button that opens the native share sheet on mobile — pick iMessage / WhatsApp / Mail / SMS and the report goes out as plain text. Desktop copies it to the clipboard instead. There's an Include $0 toggle if you want the full roster rather than just members with a non-zero balance.

Two built-in modes on every rally day, accessible from the Game modes ▾ menu: • Round Robin — generates a fair schedule of doubles or singles matchups across N rounds, tracks scores, and ranks players by W/L. For big sessions (3+ courts AND 5+ players waiting) it auto-switches to Live queue mode where each court runs independently and the next 4 players from the queue swap in the moment you lock a score. • King of the Court — pairs are fixed for the day; winners climb up courts, losers drop down (and the bottom court loser rotates out for the front of the waiting queue). Great for ladder-style mix-ins. Both modes share the same controls (re-shuffle, reset, 0–21+Other score input, ✓ Complete rally day, optional custom court # mapping for your gym) and a big-screen Dashboard for running the day off an iPad or TV. Wins/losses flow into every player's profile + the session-level Ranking. Beyond rally days, Feather Rally also runs Tournaments (bracketed events with seeding) and Leagues (recurring ladders with ELO). Both are currently run by the site team — the new-club self-serve flow is on the roadmap.

Yes — when you start any game mode, there's a Court #s row where you can type the actual court numbers at your gym (e.g. 7, 8, 9). The app then labels everything with those numbers instead of the default Court 1 / 2 / 3.

Absolutely. Any confirmed player can copy a rally day invite link (from the rally day page) and send it to friends. They sign up, they're in.

Yes — club admins can copy a club invite link. New members who accept see the club in their My Rally, get notified about new rally days, and skip the approval queue when they join one.

Email when there's something you'd want to know about — someone wanting to join your club, your rally-day getting approved, a waitlist spot opening up, your match advancing in a tournament, a new league match day on the schedule. You can turn email off in Profile if you'd rather not get them.

English, 繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese), and 简体中文 (Simplified Chinese) — full UI translations, not auto-translated. The Vancouver badminton scene is heavily Chinese-speaking and we wanted the app to feel native to everyone. Switch via the language picker in the top nav.

Your profile page. You'll see every rally day you've played, and if the organizer used our built-in Round Robin, your win/loss record and win rate.

A player or admin added you as their guest for one rally day. If the host sends you a Claim link, you can create an account to keep your spot and become a proper member of the club for future rally days.

Every public club gets a shareable link like featherrally.com/c/your-club-name — no login needed to view. Shows your sessions, upcoming rally days, top players (rating only, names blurred for privacy), and a clear Request-to-join button. Great for WhatsApp / WeChat sharing and Google search. Owners can flip it to private in Club settings if they want to stay hidden.

FRR is your global badminton skill rating, like DUPR for pickleball. Two numbers — one for singles, one for doubles — that follow you across every club, league, tournament, and KOTC night you play on Feather Rally. Every scored match nudges your number based on who you played and who won. Every brand-new account starts at the same neutral 1500 with a wide ± confidence band that tightens after a handful of matches — your self-rated skill level is used for matchmaking inside RR / KOTC but doesn't seed the rating itself. View it on your Profile; admins of clubs you belong to see it on the members list. Hide it from public profile + leaderboards via the toggle in Profile.

Simple version: beat someone better than you and your rating jumps a lot; beat someone weaker and it barely moves — and the reverse when you lose. Every match is zero-sum — the points the winner gains are exactly what the loser drops. The size of the swing depends on two things: • The rating gap. Before the match we estimate an expected result from the two ratings. Winning as expected nudges you a little; an upset moves you a lot. In a tournament, beating an opponent rated ~200 higher gains about +24, while losing to them as expected costs only about −8. • The event type. Higher-stakes events move ratings more: a tournament swings up to ±32, a league ±24, a club match ±20, a round-robin ±16, and a casual King-of-the-Court night ±12. For doubles, your side's level is the average of both partners' ratings, and both partners get the same +/−. Everyone starts at 1500, and your number only moves on matches you actually play.

CFRR is your rating WITHIN one specific club — same math as FRR, but it only counts matches played at that club. Every club you're a member of has its own CFRR for you. Pull up any club page → Rankings section and you'll see members ranked top-to-bottom by their CFRR there, with W/L and win-rate from matches played inside that club. Why two ratings? Some clubs have a totally different skill mix from others, and your number against your Tuesday-night regulars isn't necessarily the same as where you'd land in a province-wide pool. CFRR gives you a fair read on "where do I stand here"; FRR rolls everything up across every club + league + tournament you've ever played.

Every scored match counts for both. When you finish a doubles game at your Monday club: • Your Monday-club CFRR moves (just that club). • Your global FRR also moves (every match feeds it). If you play a tournament hosted by the platform (no specific club), only your FRR moves — there's no club rating to update. Same for an unaffiliated league. Players who claim their accounts get the full historical credit; players added by name only (un-claimed) don't have a rating until they sign up and link.

Yes. Browse open tournaments — public registration with admin approval, draws generated automatically, and a live public scoreboard during the event. During the tournament every public match page shows a red Live now banner with court + teams + event, plus a 🏆 bracket pill on each event so spectators can jump straight to the visual bracket and follow along match by match. Admins get bulk Auto-draw all events + Auto-schedule all events (cross-event player conflicts get respected so the same person isn't double-booked), manual Move-entries to fix seeding mistakes after the draw, Walkover toggle when someone withdraws, Print scorecards (8 per A4 sheet) for hand-scoring, and a Registration closed status that stops new signups while you finalize seeding. Read the deeper how-it-works guide for the full flow. Today only the site team creates tournaments; club-level hosting is on the roadmap.

Yes. Leagues are recurring competitive ladders with ELO ratings — sign up once, play every match day, watch your rating climb (or not). Two modes: open pool (individual ELO, partners rotate) or fixed pairs (one shared rating with a registered partner). Browse open leagues or read the deeper how-it-works guide. Like tournaments, only the site team creates leagues today; club-level hosting is coming.

Just what's needed to run the app: your name, email, skill level, area, and which rally days you've played. We don't sell or share your data.

Other players in rally days you join see your first name (with a last initial to disambiguate). Your email is only visible to you and to admins of clubs/sessions you're in. We never expose emails on public pages.

Email timmy@featherrally.com.

Yes — open Profile, scroll to Delete account at the bottom, type your email to confirm, and tap Permanently delete. Your name and email are removed; past match scores stay anonymized so doubles partners keep their history. You can't sign in with that account again after deletion.