Ghost Player, Bracket Play, and Activity Feed

RoundBoss includes three features that enhance the competitive experience: ghost players for handling byes, bracket play for knockout tournaments, and a real-time activity feed for tracking league events.

Ghost Player

When a league has an odd number of players, someone would normally sit out each week. The ghost player feature solves this by providing a virtual opponent, ensuring every player gets to compete and earn points every week.

How It Works

When ghost player is enabled and there is an odd number of active players, the unpaired player is matched against the ghost. The ghost generates scores automatically based on the selected method, and the real player earns match play points as if playing a normal opponent.

Ghost matches are marked in the system so they are distinguishable from regular matches. The ghost is not a real player and does not appear on the leaderboard.

Enabling the Ghost Player

Impact on Scoring

• Ghost match points count toward the season leaderboard just like regular match points
• The ghost player does not earn points or appear in standings
• Notable scores (birdies, eagles) made during a ghost match are still tracked in the activity feed for the real player

Bracket Play

Bracket play adds a single-elimination knockout tournament to your league. Players are seeded into a bracket and compete head-to-head until a champion is crowned.

Generating a Bracket (Manager)

Seeding Methods

Byes

When the number of players is not a power of two (4, 8, 16, etc.), byes are automatically assigned. Players with byes advance to round 2 without playing. Byes are distributed to the top seeds.

Advancing Winners

After a match is played, the manager selects the winner from the bracket view. The winner automatically advances to the next round and is placed in the correct position. When the final match is decided, the bracket is marked as completed.

Deleting a Bracket

Managers can delete an active bracket to start over. This removes all bracket matches permanently.

Player View

Players see the bracket from their portal with:

• Status card showing their next opponent and round (or elimination status)
• Match history listing all their bracket matches with win/loss results
• Full bracket visualization showing all rounds from Round 1 through the Final, with their own matches highlighted

Round labels adjust automatically: the last round is "Final", the second-to-last is "Semifinals", and so on.

Activity Feed

The activity feed is a real-time stream of notable events happening in your league. Both managers and players can view the feed to stay up to date on league action.

Event Types

How Events Are Detected

Events are generated automatically after score submission:

1. Notable scores — Each hole is checked against course par. Scores of 1 (ace), 2+ under par (eagle), or 1 under par (birdie) generate an event.
2. Lead changes — After scoring, the leaderboard is recalculated. If the #1 position changed, a lead change event is created.
3. Match completion — When both players in a match have submitted scores, a match complete event fires with the result.

Real-Time Updates

The activity feed delivers events in real time. New events appear instantly without refreshing the page. If the real-time connection is temporarily unavailable, the feed automatically falls back to periodic updates so you never miss anything.

Push Notifications

Activity events can trigger push notifications on players' devices. Players can control which events send notifications from their Settings page:

Accessing the Feed

• Players — The activity feed appears on the player dashboard. Events show the player name, a description of what happened, and a relative timestamp (e.g., "5m ago", "2h ago").
• Managers — The activity feed is available on the league management page, showing the same events.

Pagination

The feed loads the most recent events first and supports a Load more button to fetch older entries. Events are paginated in groups of 20.

Troubleshooting