Can the Brackets feature in BLS be used as a stand-alone program?

Question asked by Ellen Smith - 8/15/2026 at 7:35 AM

Answered

For example, if I manage a tournament for my center, can I do Brackets without using the league features? In this case, the center has the full version of BLS (for uploading scores etc).

6 Replies

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Frank Goebel [Team CDE] Replied

8/16/2026 at 6:10 AM

It can be done but may not be particularly easy. Everyone participating in the tournament would have to be rostered onto a team so that they have a lane number so they could have their scores entered.

What are you using to manage the tournament? If you are using BTM, the PRO version has Brackets capability.

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Ellen Smith Replied

8/16/2026 at 7:05 AM

Thank you. I had already worked out that all the bowlers would have to be entered for BLS to work for Brackets. I have TBrac for all the additional features (high game, mystery doubles, all-in-all, etc). The Brackets in BLS and BTM is limited. I have BTM also but find the registration process confusing. I restarted the tournament 3 times last night until I got the registration done. But practice makes perfect. For association tournaments that are team, singles, doubles without variations, I use WinLABS.

Another question then - if I set up the tournament on my computer using BLS, can I back it up to a flash drive to download in the center's computer so we are not redundant in our efforts? I tried once with one of my leagues a few years ago but was not successful. It would be great if I could.

Frank Goebel [Team CDE] Replied

8/16/2026 at 8:01 AM

Marked As Answer

The only way that a BLS backup could be reliably used between a center with an automatic scoring version, and an individual user with a professional version, would be that they both use the same version (year/season) of BLS. I know that centers do not upgrade BLS every season.

If the center is still using, say, BLS-2024 AS and you (still) have a licensed BLS-2024 on your computer, you probably could manage that interface. But you'd have to create a league in that older BLS version. If you create a league in BLS-2026, BLS-2024 is not guaranteed to be able to open it. For active leagues, there's always the caveat of restoring backups between computers overwriting needed data.

Also, note that the "end of life" for a particular version will result in there being no support, downloads, updates, etc. For the above example, BLS-2024 will reach its end of life on May 31, 2027.

TeamCDE Volunteer
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Always check, download, and install the most recent update of your software to ensure that issues may have been corrected.

Ellen Smith Replied

8/16/2026 at 8:15 AM

Thank you. I think my center has 2025 but expects to upgrade. I have ordered 2027 already. Thanks again!

Lance Rasmussen [CDE Staff] Replied

8/27/2026 at 12:14 AM

Employee Post

TBRAC really does well with brackets and side pots. So not sure why you want to run brackets from BLS or BTM when you have TBRAC.

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Ellen Smith Replied

8/27/2026 at 6:29 AM

I have and use the most current versions of BLS, BTM and TBRAC. I use many of the additional features that TBRAC has when I am working a tournament that the league version does not have. While someone could learn how to do brackets in BLS, that's all they could do. Thank you for the additional input.

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