Everything Benchcard can be told to do, in one place: the four ways to split a game, the four lineup shapes, all seven rules, what to do when the plan meets a real bench, the season and the two card sizes. The short version is on the About page; this is the one to keep open while you set a season up.
One setting, four answers. Four sample players, one game; the number on the right is that player’s total at the buzzer.
Everybody as close to the same number of minutes as the clock allows, and the default. Where the clock will not divide evenly, somebody plays one stint fewer. The plan records who, and the season further down pays it back.
You set each player’s total yourself and the plan hits it. The totals always add up to the whole game, so giving one player more takes it from the others in front of you rather than by accident. Lock the two or three you care about and leave the rest; an unlocked total is free to move.
Even minutes for most of the game, then a group you name stays on to finish, in the shaded window on every track above. The minutes still come out level, because the closers give the time back earlier.
Two or three fixed fives that swap as whole units. It is the easiest thing to run from the bench, and good for the youngest ages. The minutes only come out even if the groups themselves are even, so here the roster does the work rather than the solver.
How long everybody plays and who they play beside are two different questions. This is the second one.
This game · the shape
Give each player a level on the Team page, once a season rather than once a game, and Benchcard keeps the fives from tipping. The share of the minutes is still worked out without the levels: they change who shares the floor, not how long anyone is on it. Then, beside each game, pick where the strong lineups land:
The whole feature is off until you use it: everyone starts on the middle level, every five is worth the same, and the plan is the plan you would have got anyway.
Rules are things that have to be true. Everything else bends to fit, and the plan holds all of them at once.
This game · rules
When two rules cannot both hold, the plan says so in a note beneath it rather than quietly dropping one, naming the rule it could not honor alongside everything else that was asked of it.
One number, set once, that reaches every available player in every game.
If your league says everyone plays a minimum, Settings holds one number for the whole team, Everyone plays at least … min, so you are not adding a rule for each player before each game. It composes with the per-player rules above: a minimum you set on one player wins when it is higher, and a cap you set wins when it is lower, so a cap under a league rule holds instead of turning into an error nobody asked for.
Worth setting on the day you install this, before the roster is finished.
Foul trouble, a twisted ankle, a kid who is having a miserable afternoon. The card is a plan, not a contract.
Bench mode · swap in for Bria
Every one of them is undoable from the toast that follows. The card in your pocket stays the record of what was planned; the app knows what actually happened.
The part a phone is better at than a parent under pressure: remembering, in March, who was short in November.
Season · 4 games
and seven more · exports as one CSV
Turn Even out the season so far on and the next plan opens each player ahead or behind by how far they are off their share of everything played to date. It moves nobody more than two stints either way, and never over a cap or a locked number. The targets it handed the solver are printed underneath the switch, so a number never moves without saying why.
A tournament day is the same machinery on a shorter clock. Add a second game and it copies the format, who is at the gym and your rules; only the opponent and the tip-off are new. The day balances across every game by default, so a player who sat more in game one gets it back in game two.
Three blocks of a printed card, at the size they print.
Two sizes, under Size:
Both print from the browser with no app and no account, and both are legible from a clipboard in a dim gym.
An assistant can run the subs from their own phone. On the game screen, tap the share icon, then Hand off. The sheet shows a code and a Share link button; they scan the code or open the link and the game is on their phone, ready for bench mode.
What travels is one game: its settings, the team name and color, the rotation, and where the game stands, including the stints already played. For each player it carries the card name, jersey number and skill tier. Full names stay behind. It is a copy, so the two phones are not linked afterward: a change on one does not show up on the other.
Your roster never leaves your device. Benchcard
runs in your browser. Your roster, your games and your rules are stored
on the device you typed them into. There is no account and no server
holding your team, so clearing your browser data clears it too. The site
counts anonymous usage (page views, and which features get used) so I
can see what is worth building next; those are counters only, never a
name, a team or an opponent. A hand-off link carries one game, with each
player’s card name, number and skill tier, to whoever you send it
to; the game rides after the
#, which a browser never sends, so no Benchcard server sees
it.
Settings can write a backup file with your roster, your rules and your season in it, and read one back in the same panel. Worth doing once at the start of a season, and again any time you would hate to lose the season you have built up.