Waitlists

A popular session fills the second invites go out. Without a waitlist, the fastest clicker wins — which has nothing to do with who deserves the spot. A waitlist removes that race. RSVPs collect during a window, and the system decides who gets in when the window closes.

Two moments matter: the early-bird rush right after invites go out, and what happens later when someone drops and a spot reopens. You control each separately.

The early-bird grace period

When you create or edit an event, set an Early Bird / Grace Period method. It decides how the opening scramble gets handled:

Method	How spots are filled
None	First come, first served — spots fill instantly as people RSVP.
Lottery	Everyone who RSVPs during the window goes on the waitlist; winners are drawn at random when the window ends.
Rating	The highest-rated early birds are placed in when the window ends.
Take turns	Players who haven't gotten in recently are prioritized; ties broken at random.
Manual	Everyone waits; you pick who gets in from the event page.

With Lottery, Rating, or Take turns, nobody benefits from refreshing the page the instant the email lands. Every RSVP made during the grace period is treated equally. You set the window length in minutes (a few minutes is plenty), and when it closes the system promotes players up to your max-players limit and emails everyone who made the cut.

Take turns suits a regular weekly group. It spreads the spots around so the same people don't get squeezed out week after week, falling back to random only when there's a genuine tie.

Rating mode is a good fit when you want skill level to be the deciding factor. See the next section for how the ranking works.

Promotion when a spot opens later

The grace period only handles the opening rush. After it closes the session settles, but people still drop out. A separate setting, the Waitlist Promotion Order, decides who gets pulled in when a spot frees up:

• First come, first served — the player who RSVP'd earliest.
• Highest rated first — by current rating.
• Take turns — whoever's gone the longest without getting in.
• Organizer chooses — nothing happens automatically; you promote by hand.

Unless you pick Organizer chooses, promotion is automatic. The moment a spot opens, the next eligible player on the waitlist moves to in and gets a promotion email — no action needed from you.

How Rating mode ranks players

When the grace window closes under Rating mode, the system reads each waitlisted player's current rating from the group and ranks them highest-to-lowest. Players without a rating are placed after everyone who has one — they are still eligible, just at the back of the sorted list.

The ranking uses the decay-adjusted figure, so a player who has missed recent sessions and accumulated rating decay is ranked on their effective rating, not their peak. Exact ties in rating are uncommon in practice, and their resolution order is not defined.

Rating mode fits groups where competitive balance matters and skill level should determine who gets in — not timing luck.

How the window timer works

The grace period clock starts the moment invitations go out — not when the event was created. If you send a second batch of invitations later (to add more players), the clock restarts from that point so the new arrivals get the same window as the first batch.

After the window expires, the system processes the draw automatically within about a minute. You do not need to take any action; promotions and emails go out on their own even if you have closed the browser.

If you used Manual mode, promote your picks from the event page first, then switch to an automatic promotion order so remaining spots top up on their own.

What's next

• Get more people to RSVP in the first place with Auto-invite.
• Running fixed-partner play? See how pairings interact with the waitlist in Partner requests.