Critique me TO wise (people who went to MAD)

[ranmaru]

How did I do? Do you have advice/tips I may learn?

CCC is highly incouraged. I want this to be for you guys, not just me.

 

[Nø Ca$h]

the only thing that went wrong was the lack of setups and alicia losing her controller

 

[LLDL]

1. For one, the venue was the perfect size for the turnout that we had. Good choice. You wouldn't/shouldn't go with anything less than the one we played. So keep note, and use that Ben Franklin room as a base to compare when you are selecting new venues. Take note, that if we really would have gotten 40+ people, instead of the 30 that showed up, it would've been cramped.
   
   
2. You also did very well with the printouts and attendance list, and the envelopes. Very organized attitude. Always use those. You guys seemed to just be a tad unorganized with the collecting entrants and the money lol. Just take your time writing the names down, the event they are playing in, and the corresponding amount. This way, there won't be an extra $10 and you have to figure out who's it is.
   
   
3. Setups are key. I know this wasn't possible since you guys take the train or something like that. However, you should at least try to get 3 tvs to the venue on your own. If that's too much, I understand, but the minimum would be two TV's of your own to bring to the venue. If they are not yours, then it'd have to be someone that is traveling with you or is guaranteed to be at the venue before the other smashers arrive.
4. Relying on players to bring tvs is a bad idea in general. Three of the tvs were Eggm's and one was Stric's. If our car hadn't come at the last second, the tournament would have flopped. 2mto 3 tvs is a solid amount on your own to have, plus the additional tvs that other smashers bring will be sufficient to run a comfortable and more enjoyable tournament. I'm not saying not to tell people to bring tvs. Encouraging, reiterating, and almost forcing them to bring tvs is a good idea. Once they get the message that you NEED tvs, they'll throw one in their trunk.
   
   
5. Pools versus straight to singles bracket. I finally know where you were coming from with this. During this tournament we ran pools and went into a 16 man bracket instead of a 32 man bracket. At first I thought that you thought this would make the tournament run more quickly, when in reality it made it run longer. But that's no problem. Your idea was that this was several people's first tournament, and you wanted them to have the complete experience. If we would have ran straight to bracket, the lower level players would have gotten 2-0'd by the 1st seeds. Then it's like "thanks for coming, see you next time." You wanted them to have the complete experience their first time around. I liked that, and It actually went pretty smoothly.
   
   
6. Please keep in mind that pools make the event run longer, and if you get even more attendance, we don't really have time for that. We finished slightly short of the time that they would kick us out of the room. Also, the purpose of pools is just to weed out the lower players so that average to good players make bracket. The players who didn't win a single match in pools may also feel like they had no chance to make bracket, pushing their enthusiasm even further away. It's really a good idea to just go straight to bracket for both singles and doubles with attendance under 48 people. If you get a huge 50 man tournament one day, pools will definitely be necessary, but for 25 people, go straight into bracket. You will then have time afterward, assuming that there are enough setups, for friendlies, crew battle, all go out to get something to eat, the best parts of the tournament
   
   
7. Also, I'm not questioning your knowledge of our EC scene, but just do a little research on players so you can seed properly. If you go straight into bracket, there is no results to seed people in. You have to seed by eye. Basically, the top players and most well known players that place high in tournaments get first seed. The people that you have never heard of before and are new to the scene get third seed. (Please ask around if those players are 1 or 2 seed material. You may not know who they are but they could be a well placing or top Kentucky smasher, visiting out of state smasher or something lol, in which case you need to give them a better seed) You space out the 1st seeds completely evenly throughout the bracket. The TOP 2 players go on opposite ends of the bracket. Like if mango and m2k showed up, you put mango at the farthest he can go at the top, and m2k at the farthest at the bottom. Or you can do that vice versa. Usually they will get a bye. Then the 2nd seeds fight the 3rd seeds. Or if you don't have room for bye's, the first seeds fight the 3rd seeds, and the seconds seeds fight each other. You have to do this all by knowledge, and possibly get a smasher who knows his stuff to help you with seeding. It's pretty easy, just open tio and do an imaginary tournament by yourself. Go to a results thread, enter all the players who entered tournament, then don't look at the bracket. Seed and make the bracket yourself, then compare to how they seeded. You'll get better at it with practice.
   
   
8. Also, yeah Alicia losing her controller sucks. I know you can't do this for everyone. But please be aware of everything that you and your friends bring. We want to trust everyone in the smash community, which is natural, but not everyone is trust worthy unfortunately. If you see someone taking a memory card out of a cube, picking up something that you know is someone else's, please politely tell them to put it back. If they refuses, and you are absolutely sure that it is not theirs, please make the person who owns the it aware.
   
   
9. Other than that, you were friendly, provided a GREAT atmosphere for the tournament, and things didn't run past the tournament, everyone got to leave at a nice and early 10 o clock. Very nice job. It was the most fun local that I'd gone to on EC besides Tunes, and that's saying something considering we also have no johns and stuff.
   
   
10. Free sandwiches and Arizona also got me hyped! But lol don't sweat it if they're not that generous anymore lol.

 

[AlphaZealot]

Please keep in mind that pools make the event run longer, and if you get even more attendance, we don't really have time for that. We finished slightly short of the time that they would kick us out of the room. Also, the purpose of pools is just to weed out the lower players so that average to good players make bracket. The players who didn't win a single match in pools may also feel like they had no chance to make bracket, pushing their enthusiasm even further away. It's really a good idea to just go straight to bracket for both singles and doubles with attendance under 48 people. If you get a huge 50 man tournament one day, pools will definitely be necessary, but for 25 people, go straight into bracket. You will then have time afterward, assuming that there are enough setups, for friendlies, crew battle, all go out to get something to eat, the best parts of the tournament

If you have the time to do pools you should always do pools. What is a worse experience for a new player, paying $10 and going 0-2 or paying $10 and going 0-6? Chances are to that if, say, you have 8 new people, that if you ran bracket they would all go 0-2, but if you ran pools at least some of them might get a set win over other new players.

 

[LLDL]

That's assuming he wants to cater towards brand new players every single time, which we did this time. I acknowledged what you said for that reason, the last sentence of that paragraph. The thing is, chances are we won't be having ample time like that each time.

 

[CT Chia]

Even for not-new players having pools is really awesome. You get more matches, more worth for the dollar, and more results to go off of coming out of the tournament.

 

[-Ran]

Pools are great, if you can get the set ups for it, and everyone being on the same page to run the pools quickly and efficiently. If you don't have time for pools, try to do a bottom half of the bracket / non Power Ranked bracket for the players that typically don't do well, so they can at least get their entry back.

 

[ranmaru]

Ah ok, thank you everyone. I will keep this in mind.

Also -Ran, what do you mean by bottom half of the bracket? (As in a buy back?)

 

[Rubyiris]

AZ is silly. Most of our player base, specifically the lower tier of players prefer no pools and straight into bracket.

Our high tier players like pools tho.

 

[Tee ay eye]

i think they're embarrassed about not making it out of pools

 

[Dark Hart]

I'm a low tier player

and I love pools

I wish it was a tourney standard

 

[AlphaZealot]

I'd really like to see someone who goes 0-2 in bracket say they would prefer doing that than pools. In 5-6 years I have yet to see it.

 

[-Ran]

Ah ok, thank you everyone. I will keep this in mind.

Also -Ran, what do you mean by bottom half of the bracket? (As in a buy back?)

Let's say you have 16 people. Of which, you know that in the case, we had 8 players that were within the realm of the same competitive spectrum at the top of the placings. By having a bottom of the bracket side event, you allow the 8 people that where 0-2, or 1-2 to have a chance to play extra matches against players of their own calibers. When doing this, make sure that Power Ranked players aren't allowed into it, since that's defeating the purpose.

You can either do a randomly seeded Single elimination bracket, or you can have a best of 3 [finals, etc] and 2 stock/six minutes for them.

 

[ranmaru]

Ah, very interesting. I will keep that in mind, since I will try bracket next time. : D