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 ledger 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 what that player ends the game on.
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 ledger further down is what 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 — 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 — 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 this is the one split where 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 rotation level on the roster page — once a season, not 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 around them, and the plan is built around all of them at once.
This game · rules
When two rules cannot both hold, the plan says so on the chip rather than quietly dropping one — the red chip in the mock above is a pair the solver could not honour with 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 a floor for the whole team — Everyone plays at least … min — rather than your adding a rule for each player before each game. It composes with the per-player limits 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.
It is the one setting worth doing on the day you install this, before the first roster is even 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 Beckett
Every one of them is undoable from the toast that follows, and the card in your pocket stays the record of what was planned — the app is what knows what actually happened.
The part a phone is genuinely 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 — at most two stints either way, and never over a limit 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 Print:
Both print from the browser with no app and no account, and both are legible from a clipboard in a dim gym, which is the only test that matters.
Your roster and your players never leave 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, which also means clearing your browser data clears it. The site counts anonymous usage (page views, and which features get used) so it is possible to tell what is worth building next; those are counters only, never a name, a team or an opponent.
Settings can write a backup file — roster, rules and the season ledger, all of 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 ledger you have built up.