Captain-driven tournaments, built for the Washington Cup.

A new format for elite team play: a DUPR-screened combine, invite-only Pro Team-Captain divisions, and standard amateur divisions in the same event. Captains form rosters, share invite links, and pay for everyone in one Stripe charge. Built end-to-end with the same hardening discipline behind Player Hub and Kids Camps.

Three division types, one tournament

Team Cup composes a single tournament out of three division kinds. Run any combination — a pro-only event, a community-only event, or both at once with a combine in front.

Combine

Players register individually. DUPR-sync gate optional. Org splits the field into divisions (banded, snake, post-play, or manual) — or converts the top N to a singles playoff bracket.

Pro Team-Captain

Invite-only. Captains receive an email invite, register, get a shareable team-invite link, and recruit teammates. Captain-pays bundles N teammates' fees in a single Stripe charge.

Standard amateur

Existing tournament division behavior. DUPR-sync and invite-only gates ship to all division kinds — opt-in per division.

How a captain runs a team

  1. Receive an invite. Org issues a DivisionInvite (single or bulk CSV up to 500). Captain gets an email with both deep-link and web URLs to claim.
  2. Register the team. Captain consumes the invite, the team scaffolding is created, and they get a shareable TeamInvite link to send teammates.
  3. Recruit + pay in one charge. Captain creates a captain-pays bundle covering themselves + N teammates. One Stripe PaymentIntent. Platform fees are non-refundable to teammates per pre-beta legal review; entry-fee refunds flow back to the captain's card.
  4. Submit lineups per round. Drag-drop slot builder validates 2M2F gender (when set), captain_required_seats, no duplicate players, and roster membership. Captains have until 1 hour before each round's scheduled start to submit; reminders push at the deadline window.

How an org runs the event

  1. Set up divisions. Pick the kinds you want, set DUPR caps + buffer + gender rules per division, set captain_required_seats if a specific seat is reserved for the captain.
  2. Run the combine. Open registration, watch real-time fill, then split into divisions when the field is set.
  3. Issue captain invites. Single or CSV bulk. The system idempotently dedupes — clicking "Invite alice@example.com" twice produces one invite, not two.
  4. Buffer-flag review. Teams in the buffer zone (over cap but within tolerance) are flagged for org review with three actions: approve / reject-with-refund / allow-reform.
  5. Atomic round publish. Org draws the bracket privately. Click publish — lineups lock, per-seed pairings materialize, the round-published push fans out to every team member, and matchups reveal in one transaction.

What's built in

  • Pairings stay private until publish. Hardening Round 8 + 16 closed the bracket-leak surface on every API endpoint that returns rounds. Captains can see their own team's matchup at publish time, never before.
  • Captain-pays Stripe Connect bundles. One PaymentIntent for N teammates. Stripe fees absorbed by the club per CLAUDE.md §3.1; entry-fee refunds use reverse_transfer: true + refund_application_fee: false; per-line refund granularity.
  • Click-through legal acknowledgment. Captain-pays teammates click-through that platform fees are non-refundable to them and refunds flow back to the captain's card. Pre-beta legal review required this surface; the API endpoint records ToS version + acknowledgment platform.
  • Lineup deadline reminders. Hourly Sidekiq job pushes captains who haven't submitted as the deadline approaches. Per-team Rails.cache dedup ensures one push per round, not one per cron tick.
  • Force-republish power tool. Org can re-fanout the round-published push after a lineup edit, with a 30-minute dedup window so fans don't get spammed on rapid edits.
  • Find-a-team discovery. Players in the same division can browse public-join teams whose roster has open slots and whose MLP rules they fit. No org-side configuration; just opt in per team.
  • Buffer-flag review queue. Combined-DUPR over cap+buffer triggers a review state. Org approves, refunds with dissolve, or lets the captain shuffle the roster.
  • Team chat per Pro team. Created when the team is registered. Teammates are added at acknowledgment time so they only see the chat after consenting to the captain-pays terms.

How it was hardened

5 audit pushes, 25 rounds, 42 production bugs found and fixed across data integrity, concurrency, billing, atomicity, privacy, notifications, and authorization. The audit caught — among others — the Stripe webhook missing the captain-pays branch (CRIT), pre-publish pairing leaks on two parallel endpoints (CRIT × 2), the inverted-visibility logic on combine show (HIGH), and three Stripe-in-DB-transaction sites that would have left orphan refund state in production. The full audit log lives in developer_documentation/team_cup/.

Built for the Washington Cup, June 26, 2026

Ungated for v1 — every Picklebeast tournament can run a Team Cup format. Captain-pays per-division org choice, atomic round publish, full mobile + web admin parity in flight.

Talk to us about hosting one