How Bobtime works

The short version

Log in with start.gg. Make a Circle around a tournament, or open a join invite from a friend. Share the view link so people can peek; share the invite so they can join.

• A Circle is your crew plus one start.gg event at a time. Up to 20 players.
• The view link is for looking. The join invite is for becoming a member.
• Joined members see the crew’s pools, get My Day, and can turn on reminders.
• Times come from start.gg. Bobtime keeps the last good copy so the page stays usable at the venue.

Circles

A Circle is your friend group on Bobtime: a name, a description, and the people you care about. It watches one start.gg tournament at a time.

• When that event is over, the owner or an admin can relink the same Circle to the next one. Members, the name, and both links stay put.
• You can join as many Circles as you want.
• A Circle can have up to 20 players. Adding someone on Manage or joining with an invite both count. If an admin already listed you, opening the view link still joins you.
• Two Circles can watch the same start.gg tournament - a hotel crew and locals, for example - with different people, follows, and reminders.
• A Circle can also link side tournaments from other start.gg pages. Those games show muted on the same schedule. You can still make a separate Circle if you want a side event on its own.

Sharing

There are two links, and they do different jobs.

View link

The Circle’s address. Opening it while logged in does not add you.

• Anyone on the Circle page can copy it with View Link.
• Tracked players start private, so the schedule stays hidden until an admin makes them public.
• You do not need to be registered in the start.gg tournament.
• Viewing does not put you on the schedule or turn on reminders.

Join invite

A separate code and link for becoming a member.

• Owner and admins can regenerate it. Old join links then stop working. The view link stays the same.
• If an admin already added your start.gg account, open the view link while logged in - you skip the invite.
• Owner, admins, and inviters get Invite Link and Invite QR on the Circle view.
• Owner and admins also get the QR on Manage. Regenerating the invite changes the QR.

Viewing, listed, and joined

Three ways you can show up around a Circle:

Viewing

You opened the view link and logged in. You are not in the Circle.

• If players are public, you can see pool times.
• If players are private, you only see that the Circle exists until you join.
• It does not show under My Circles, and reminders do not fire.

Listed

An admin added you. You show on that Circle’s schedule so friends can see your pools. Open the view link with that start.gg account to join.

Joined

You used a join invite, or you were listed and opened the view link. Only then does the Circle appear in My Circles, and only then do reminders fire. A Circle stops at 20 players; a join invite cannot add an extra person once it is full, but a listed player can still join from the view link.

Owner, admins, and inviters

The owner created the Circle, or took over when the previous owner left. Everyone else has a smaller set of keys.

What each role can do

• Only the owner can make someone an admin, archive the Circle, or delete it.
• Admins can edit the Circle, pin a message, relink it to a later start.gg tournament, link side tournaments, add or remove players, and share both links and the join QR. They cannot make other admins.
• Owner and admins can make a member an inviter. Inviters can share the join link and QR from the Circle page. They cannot open Manage, add or remove players, or regenerate the invite.

Pinned message

• A pinned note sits at the top of the Circle for joined members. They cannot hide it.
• Only the owner or an admin can take it down on Manage.
• After they remove it, it stays gone until they pin a new note or change the text and save.

Leaving, archive, and delete

• Anyone can leave.
• The owner has to pick a joined player to take over first. If nobody else has joined yet, the owner cannot leave.
• Archive files the Circle under history on My Circles. View, join, and calendar links stay. Reminders, My Day, and start.gg refreshes stop, even if the event still looks in progress.
• Delete asks them to type the Circle name to confirm, then removes it for everyone.

The schedule

The Circle page is the crew board. Pools are grouped by time and bracket by default: each wave or later phase, then the games in it.

Reading a player row

• Use the Time / Game switch to group by game instead, with that game’s waves underneath.
• Each player shows their pool. After that pool’s start time, they also show the round they are in.
• If they make it out of that pool or phase, a green ADVANCED badge sits after their round, like Winners Semi-Final Advanced to Top 24.
• Click ADVANCED or “to Top 24” to jump to that section. From Timeline, that switches to Schedule first. If the phase is in hidden finished waves, they expand first.
• Eliminated from that pool or phase: a grey Out badge after their round.
• Win Grand Finals: a gold Winner badge instead of Out.
• If start.gg has a Twitch stream on a live or upcoming set, a Twitch logo and channel name sit after that player’s round. Both Circle members show it if they are in the same streamed set.

Swiss, ladders, and later brackets

• Swiss and ladders (start.gg Matchmaking) sit in the same list under the phase name. They stay LIVE while start.gg has the phase active. Completed and archived Circles hide that badge.
• A loss does not mean Out until that phase is finished and they did not advance.
• Each player in those phases also shows their W–L after the round, like (2-1).
• When a poll or Refresh sees a new win or loss, that number turns green or red, ticks to the new value, stays bold and colored for 15 seconds, then fades back.
• An in-bracket round move does the same: green after a win (Losers Round 3 to Losers 4), red after a loss that drops them to losers. Going Out bolds and reds the round and the Out badge for those 15 seconds.
• A one-round ladder says Ladder instead of Round 1, and the badge is Ladder instead of Pool 1, even if the phase is not named Ladder.
• A later bracket such as Top Cut still shows under that phase name even before anyone from the Circle is seeded there. It stays until the phase is done, then hides with the same finished-wave setting as pools.

Live pools and hide-finished

• Pools stay live for the Circle’s pool length (2 hours unless you pick something else on Manage). After that they fade.
• Settings can hide finished waves as soon as they finish, or 1, 2, or 4 hours later, or keep them.
• Default is immediately, so they drop off when the pool length ends.

Clicking around

• Click a name for that person’s pools, including waves hidden on the main list.
• Click a game name to filter the Circle to that event.
• The link icon next to a wave, bracket, or game copies that section’s URL. A green check flashes in its place.
• Opening a section link that sits in hidden finished waves shows those waves and scrolls there. If All Events, Registered, Followed, or the games or players dropdown would hide that section, an info note says so.

Tabs and filters

• Schedule, Timeline, and Rankings sit as tabs.
• All Events / Registered / Followed is a single-select dropdown. Registered and Followed appear after you have joined.
• Games picks one or more events. Empty is All Games.
• Players picks one or more people the same way. Empty is everyone, and a search appears when the Circle is large.
• Those filters apply on all three tabs. Share the URL to keep that view, filter, and grouping.
• Follow games from the main view after you have joined.

Timeline

A live feed of round moves, advances, outs, wins, and DQs for this Circle. The same filters as Schedule apply.

• Each row is one line. Click the player’s underlined name to open their pools.
• Underlined phase names (Wave A, Top 24) jump to that section on Schedule, including the bracket at the end of a round-move line. Game names on advance, out, win, and DQ lines do the same.
• Each row ends with that player’s pool badge (Pool 2, A1, AC6), which opens that start.gg bracket the same way as on Schedule.
• The dotted clock time is event local, like pool times. Tap it for device and home times.
• It shows the latest 25. Load 25 more and Load all walk back through earlier updates.
• A Live mark shows only when a later bracket is actually live, not for live pools. Completed and archived Circles hide it.
• If the feed is missing advances, outs, wins, or DQs that are already on the schedule, those gaps are filled in from wave times. Numbered round moves (Winners Round 4 → 1 then 2 then 3) fill on poll and Refresh.

Rankings

Grouped by game. Hide-finished does not affect this tab.

• The big number is Circle place among people in this Circle, not start.gg place. Same start.gg finish means a tied Circle place; the next number skips.
• Next to the name is their current round (Winners Final, Losers Round 5), then a bold start.gg finish (Placement: 2nd) once they are out or start.gg has published a place. Losing Grand Finals is 2nd; Losers Final is 3rd.
• If they won the event, they get the gold Winner badge.
• Winners Round 3 stays ahead of Losers Round 3.
• If they have not played yet - including an unstarted bracket that only has inferred seed rounds - the place is ? with no medal.
• First, second, and third in the Circle get gold, silver, and bronze.
• Click the Circle place for a shareable card: who finished where, in this Circle, in that game, at the tournament. Save image, copy, or share it.
• Click Top 3 graphic on a game for a wider podium banner of gold, silver, and bronze, with start.gg profile photos behind the names. Two Circle 1sts put the other gold on the usual 2nd-place stand, at gold height. Two Circle 2nds get matching silver stands on both sides of gold; two 3rds share the bronze stand. Same save / copy / share.
• The Games dropdown is multi-select and starts on All Games. Click a name for their pools.
• ?tab=rankings lands there.

Offline

Venue wifi is often unreliable. After this device has loaded a Circle, My Day, or My Circles, Bobtime keeps that last good copy.

• The installed app does the same: if you open it with no network, it shows the last My Circles, My Day, or Circle this device saved.
• Those pages say Offline and when they were last updated.
• My Circles marks which Circles this device already saved.
• It does not fetch start.gg while you are offline.
• It does not save Manage, login, or Circles you have not opened here.
• If nothing is saved yet, connect and open Bobtime in the browser once.

How the schedule loads

Pool times come from start.gg. Bobtime saves the last good copy and shows that first, so the page does not wait on start.gg.

What you see while it updates

• If a Circle has never loaded yet, you see a skeleton until the first copy arrives.
• If start.gg is slow or busy, the last good copy stays up.
• Opening a Circle that needs a start.gg update asks the background worker. The page keeps the last schedule (or a skeleton if there isn’t one yet) and says Loading until the worker pushes the new copy.
• While waiting for the next Fast or Normal window, it counts down Updating in Xs, or Updating soon when that load is due.
• While the background worker is fetching that Circle, it says Loading with the same animation.
• Completed and archived Circles do not show that Updating control. Automatic start.gg refreshes are already off.

Fast and Normal

• While someone has the Circle or My Day open, Bobtime rechecks start.gg on a timer. Opening a Circle before the two-hour live window still starts that background worker for an hour, and staying on the page keeps the live connection. If nobody has had it open long enough for that view score to fade out, automatic refreshes stop until someone opens the Circle or My Day again.
• Fast starts 30 minutes before a pool and runs until that wave finishes: every 3 minutes, or 6 minutes if the Circle has more than 50 players. Circles people are watching can refresh as often as every 2 minutes (4 for those larger Circles).
• Otherwise it is Normal: every 6 minutes, or 12 minutes for those larger Circles, and as often as every 4 / 8 minutes when the view score is high.
• When several Circles are refreshing at once, ones people are watching less can wait up to 50% longer than their Fast or Normal window, based on how far their view score sits below the highest. That scales in as more Circles join the queue (full effect at four).
• When many Circles are live at once, Bobtime also spaces those refreshes further apart, up to 10 minutes, so the worker can keep up. If the shared start.gg window has room, the next refreshes move up and the countdown shortens with them.
• The popup shows the last refresh. If spacing is still past 5 minutes, it also says refreshes are farther apart.
• Your phone polls the saved copy more often than that. start.gg itself is asked at most once per Circle per window.
• Automatic updates also stop 24 hours after the last known event time, or 24 hours after the last schedule change while the event was still running. Archive on Manage turns them off immediately. Relinking starts the clock again.

When something changes

• Updated just now only appears when a later poll actually changes something, not when you first open the page.
• When someone moves rounds, advances, goes out, wins, or is DQ’d, that line is followed by longer blue notes that say what happened. Up to eight of those notes can show at once.
• The Timeline tab keeps the same history.

Large Circles

• Each start.gg check updates the 50 players who have waited longest, and new players go first. A 150-person Circle fills in over several windows.
• Finished events stay on the saved copy and do not keep hitting start.gg.
• If two Circles watch the same start.gg tournament and share a player, Bobtime reuses that person’s pool times instead of asking start.gg twice. Who is in which Circle stays private.

Manage catch-up

• Owner and admins can speed catch-up on Manage when the Circle has 51 or more players. Load remaining players runs those 50-player batches back to back and shows how many chunks are loaded. Stay on Manage to keep going. Leave or switch tabs, and it stops after the chunk already in flight.
• Force reload queues the schedule worker to walk every chunk again from start.gg, still 50 at a time, once per Circle every 5 minutes. You can leave; the worker keeps going.
• Adding or removing players on Manage waits 10 seconds so several changes share one update, or use Update schedule now. Leaving Manage also kicks that update. The first players on a Circle start loading right away, and Manage and the Circle page say Loading until their pools show up.
• At most one of those start.gg updates runs at a time, and another cannot start until 10 seconds after the last one.

My Day

Your pools across every Circle you have joined that is not archived, including side tournaments. The Circle view is still the crew board.

• Grouped by start.gg tournament with the same art, dates, and status as My Circles, plus game tags.
• If two Circles watch the same event, that pool shows once.
• From two hours before an event through when it is live, My Day reads the saved schedule and waits on the background worker, the same as a Circle page. Changes push to My Day over the live connection.
• Opening a Circle earlier does the same for an hour, and staying on that page keeps the live connection. My Day itself does not start that early hold.
• Out of that window, or if the worker is down, My Day uses the same Fast and Normal windows as a Circle page and still shows the saved schedule while an update runs.
• If you have a live or upcoming pool, My Day shows when the next update is due (Updating in Xs). It is not a button. If you have no pools left to update, that label is hidden.
• Hide-finished follows Settings.
• If venue wifi drops, My Day shows the last pools this device already loaded and marks the page Offline. Game names still open a Circle if that Circle was saved here.

My Circles

Your Circles, grouped by start.gg tournament, with that event’s art, dates, and status.

Badges and Active Circle

• Each Circle has a square game badge: one logo if the crew is in a single game, or a small stack if they are in more than one, with the most-played game in front.
• The Active Circle is a live event, or the next upcoming one, even if it is your only event and it is still in the future. The header hides that link when every joined Circle is completed or archived.
• An event stays live while a later bracket like Top Cut is still going, even if start.gg’s listed end time has passed. More than one tournament can be live at the same time.
• If you are in more than one Circle for the same event, pick which is Active for that tournament. Another live event, the next tournament, or a later one uses Set Active on that event, even if it does not have pool times yet.
• Owner and admins can also set the Active Circle from Manage, which names the one you have now.

Settings, completed, and archive

• Settings apply across every Circle. Follows and the schedule filter are per Circle.
• Followed games reset when an admin relinks to a new start.gg tournament.
• Completed events sit in a collapsed Completed row below live and upcoming Circles. The first open loads 10, then you can load 10 or 25 more.
• Bobtime also stops start.gg updates 24 hours after the last known event time, or 24 hours after the last schedule change while the event was still running.
• Archived Circles sit in a collapsed Archive at the bottom. The owner can unarchive one to put it back with the active list.
• Archived Circles keep their view, join, and calendar links, but they do not get reminders, My Day, start.gg refreshes, or the header Active Circle. Completed and archived Circle pages also hide the Updating countdown.
• Offline, My Circles shows the last list this device saved and which Circles you can still open. Manage, New Circle, changing the Active Circle, and loading completed Circles need a connection.

Calendar

Owner and admins can create a subscribe URL on Manage for this Circle’s upcoming pools. On the Circle page, Calendar lets you add it to Apple Calendar or Google Calendar, or download a .ics snapshot.

• The calendar is named after the Circle.
• Events are one block per wave and game, with player names grouped by pool.
• Event local time is in the title and notes. Location is the start.gg venue when we have it.
• Each block uses the Circle’s pool length (2 hours unless you pick something else on Manage). That same length is how long pools stay live on the schedule.
• Phone calendars pick up time and length changes when the schedule cache updates.

Treat the subscribe URL like a secret

• Do not post it in Discord or a public page.
• Regenerating it kills old calendar subscriptions. The view link and join invite stay.
• Relink drops the old tournament’s pools off the feed.
• Finished, DQ, and Out pools drop off. An empty calendar is still valid.
• The feed reads the schedule cache only. It does not fetch start.gg. In-app and browser push reminders stay the alerts at the venue.

Reminders and settings

After you join, Bobtime can remind you before your next pool: once, in the app, and optionally as a browser push.

• The reminder window is account-wide. In-app reminders follow that too.
• Push is per device: turn it on or off in Settings on that phone or computer. The checkbox takes effect immediately. Save settings does not change other devices.
• Bobtime checks start.gg while someone has the Circle or My Day open, and on a Circle load or Refresh. DQs, bracket updates, and reminder times wait until then.
• A reminder still fires once per pool from the last loaded times. It skips DQ, Out, and archived Circles.
• Times on the schedule are the event’s local time. Tap a time to see your device and home timezones.
• Home timezone is set from your start.gg location or this device when you first log in. You can change it in Settings.
• Hide finished waves defaults to immediately after a pool finishes (after the Circle’s pool length).
• Google Analytics is on when you first log in. Turn it off in Settings if you want. Details are on the Privacy page.