Less admin. More chess.

BillyChess is a self-service web app for managing chess club ladders and league teams. Members issue their own ladder challenges, record results and report availability for matches; team captains import fixtures, pick teams and submit results. Phone or desktop, with the Google account everyone already has. No passwords to manage, nothing to install.

See how it works

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The rapid ladder at Barn Chess Club: fourteen players in rung order with recent form and an open challenge.
What BillyChess does

The admin you're not going to miss

Up to ten ladders and ten teams per club, each with their own configurable rules and member admins.

The ladder keeps itself

Challenge anyone within a few places above you; either player records the result and the ladder reorders itself. Configurable ladder rules. Link played games to game analyses on lichess.org or chess.com.

A pending challenge: Billy Gruff Jr at number 5 versus Tumnus at number 4, showing who has checked in and the buttons to record who won.

Your rules, explained

Set the movement rule, challenge range, draw handling and expiry once. BillyChess turns your settings into a rules screen anyone can read — so nobody has to remember how your ladder works.

The ladder rules screen: challenging, one at a time, what happens if you win or lose, and the deadline for recording a result, all in plain English.

Team availability, without the chatter

Members answer Available, Maybe or Unavailable from their phone. Captains can answer for the 'quiet' ones and copy polls into the club group chat.

Availability for a match: seven of seven answered, grouped into available, maybe and unavailable, with each player’s rating.

Pick team board order with linked ratings

BillyChess integrates with chess rating authorities. Members (and opponents) are linked to their rating and fixtures know board colours - so no more lookups or copy/pasting.  Assign boards by rating and piece colour and reorder with a click.

A team sheet: four boards in order, our players in the White and Black columns with their ratings, the opposition not yet named.

Full match life cycle

Start picking a team in private, copy it to chat for a second opinion, publish it to team and club, record results, add opponents (and their ratings), add links to online game analyses and lock to keep for posterity (and gloating).

A finished match, board by board: both sides’ players, ratings and scores with white on the left, our side marked, and the team result two and a half to one and a half, locked.

Import the whole season, not one fixture at a time

Upload or paste in your league’s fixture list in seconds. BillyChess intelligently reads in fixture dates, venues, opponents and notes and shows you what it has found before anything is saved.

A pasted CSV of three fixtures, read into dates, venues and opponents, ready to import.
What BillyChess doesn't do

No emails. No pinging. No buzzing.

BillyChess never contacts your members. Members check in when they arrive at the club — and the app asks them as they open it — so a challenge nobody played can be settled fairly and the club knows who showed up.

The check-in question as a member sees it on arriving: Are you at Barn Chess Club? with PRESENT and ABSENT to answer.

Tell us about your club

Send us your club’s name, your ladders and your teams and we’ll have it ready for your next club session. The first 60 days are free, which gives you about eight club sessions to try us out.

Ask about a 60-day free trial Sign in with Google

Know a club that would use this? Send them this page.

billychess.com/welcome