Two announcements today, and they go together perfectly. Player notifications are now live on Brckt, and the 2026 Cincinnati Open draw is out, which means picks are open right now.

Player Notifications: Never Miss Your Favorites Again

Your phone taps you on the shoulder when they take the court

Tennis is a global sport with matches starting all over the world at different times of the day and previous matches often dictate when your favorite players end up taking the court. It is often hard to track.

Until now. Pick your favorite players in the Brckt app, and you’ll get a notification straight to your phone the moment they start a match, and another when they finish, with the result.

A few ways I’ve already been using it:

Catch the start. Went to go touch grass during a rain delay and got notified right when matches started.
Track your bracket’s fate. Favorited the players my bracket depended on. When my champion pick finishes (Mensik still rolling) I’ll know immediately whether my bracket is thriving or in the mud.

How to turn them on

One thing to know up front: notifications only work when Brckt is installed as an app on your phone. Using it in a browser tab won’t cut it, since your phone only delivers push notifications to installed apps. The good news is installing takes about thirty seconds and you only do it once.

On iPhone (iOS):

Open app.brckt.io in Safari (it has to be Safari for this step).
Hit the 3 dots on the bottom right of the screen.
Tap the Share button (the square with the arrow pointing up).
Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen, then tap Add.
Open Brckt from your home screen, favorite your players, and tap Allow when it asks to send you notifications.

On Android:

Open app.brckt.io in Chrome.
Tap the three-dot menu in the top right.
Tap Add to Home screen (on some phones it says Install app), then confirm.
Open Brckt from your home screen, favorite your players, and tap Allow when it asks to send you notifications.

From there:

Go to Profile → My Profile
Click the second-to-last Subscriptions tab
Enable push notifications

With a 96-player draw playing out in Cincinnati over the next two weeks, this feature could not have landed at a better time.

Make your picks now

Cincinnati Open: The Draw Is Live

Picks close Thursday, August 13

Draw size: 96, men’s and women’s
Main draw begins: Thursday, August 13 at 11:00 AM ET

This is the last big test before New York. Same surface as the US Open, same conditions, similar summer heat. The players who peak in Cincinnati are usually the ones still standing deep into the second week at Flushing Meadows, so treat your Cincy bracket as research that pays off twice.

The National Bank Open is wrapping up this week, and if your bracket there didn’t go the way you planned, here’s your redemption arc.

Make your picks now

Do Your Research with the AI Connector

Quick reminder from last swing: Brckt has an AI connector, so you can hook your account up to Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI app that supports MCP connectors and do your bracket research right in the chat. Head-to-heads, surface splits, Brckt’s daily power ratings, and where the ratings disagree with the seedings. A 96-player draw has a lot of qualifiers you’ve never heard of, so let the AI do that homework and save your gut calls for the picks that matter.

Head to your profile in the app and open AI Connect to set it up. Free to try, with the full research toolkit on Pro.

US Open: August 30

The main event is three weeks out. The 2026 US Open main draw starts Sunday, August 30, with 128 players on each tour. Get your group sorted now, before the draw drops: create a private group for your friends, or join one of Brckt’s featured groups and take on the whole community.

Set up your group on Brckt

Hope to see you all in here!

— Keith