Hosting a tournament soon. What do I need to know?

[liets]

Within the next month or so, I'm going to be hosting a small Smash Bros. for Wii U tournament at my local movie theater. I have a meeting with the management this saturday about it, and I'm not entirely sure how to go about the whole thing. What sorts of points do I need to consider? I know that it will be pretty typical competitive rules; Omega stages and no items, timed stock matches, in a normal bracket fashion. But I still am wondering about what I need to do in terms of advertising, payment for the venue, entrant management, and general planning for the event. I'd really appreciate your help, as I'm new to this sort of thing!

 

[Raijinken]

Venue payment, you'd normally work it out with the venue owners. Depending on what kind of space it is (I've never heard of using a movie theater), they may allow free entry (unlikely), or may charge a set amount per person ("venue fee") or something like that. Entrant management, have a sign-up at the door. Remind people that if they don't show up for their match within a few minutes, they are DQ'd, no questions asked (though TO discretion may be alright). As for general planning, plan for worst-case or near it, and make sure you have help, backup, and plan ahead for problem scenarios, whatever those are likely to be.

 

[ArikadoSD]

You seem like you didn't do any planning at all which sounds like a huge mistake, honestly.

But I'm mostly making this post to reply to this particular bit:

I know that it will be pretty typical competitive rules; Omega stages and no items, timed stock matches, in a normal bracket fashion.

You don't know the typical standard competitive rules /as of now/. Literally just copy/paste the rules from paragon and that should be good enough. Use double elimination.

 

[Pazx]

@ ArikadoSD and OP

There's nothing wrong with omega stage only for a tournament in the same way that there's nothing wrong with items on 4 player free for all for a tounament, if that's what people want to play then let them. That said, it's definitely not "typical competitive rules" and if you advertise it as such people will be disappointed.

 

[liets]

@ ArikadoSD and OP

There's nothing wrong with omega stage only for a tournament in the same way that there's nothing wrong with items on 4 player free for all for a tounament, if that's what people want to play then let them. That said, it's definitely not "typical competitive rules" and if you advertise it as such people will be disappointed.

Well my bad, I don't know too much in depth into that, maybe I should say it's just some basic competitive aspects.

EDIT: Thanks for advising me to look at Paragon, considerations will be made.
Also, on account of it seeming like I've done no planning, that is not the case. I've actually worked out most of the details in my head, but seek more opinions on the matter.

 

[Steelballray]

I'm in the same place as you are and I asked a ton of experienced people and they all said I should make sure of two things:

1- Lagless TVs
2- Smooth tournament

Don't bother yourself too much with the prizes and streaming or other things. These two things are your priorty.

A bit of advice that I can give myself is to call up famous and popular people around whether they play Smash or not and tell tehm to advertise you a bit. I got my tournament advertised to all of the country pretty much and now I'm having people coming from far away cities. I never even dreamed of that.

Also, when you decide on a date and a place MAKE SURE TO NOT MAKE ANY MISTAKES TYPING IT IN THE ADS. I did so and it almsot cost me all of my previous efforts but I managed to get back and fix the issue fast.

Plan everything ahead. Don't leave anything to luck. Make sure the people who will bring the Wii Us being them. Same goes to TVs. I'm going to run my tournament on 3 setups but I'm having like five people bring theirs not even including myself.

Get people to back you up. Their has to be peoples you trust watching every match making sure everything is in order. You'd be surpsied how many people are assholes who would do mean stuff.

I think you should go with counterpicking system and not just Omega's. But that's about you and your players and you know better.

Be brave and don't fear mistakes and don't let anything discourage you. You are doing this most likely because no one else did. You are allowed to mess up a bit and you should still feel proud about going out of your way to set up the whole event even if some things go wrong.

Good luck.

 

[liets]

Lots of cool advice.

I really appreciate the effort put into this list, it helps a lot! Quick question though: what kind of area to you live in? I live in central Minnesota in a town of two-thousand-some people, and there aren't many larger cities nearby. I wouldn't know where to find a "famous" or "popular" person :/

 

[Steelballray]

I really appreciate the effort put into this list, it helps a lot! Quick question though: what kind of area to you live in? I live in central Minnesota in a town of two-thousand-some people, and there aren't many larger cities nearby. I wouldn't know where to find a "famous" or "popular" person :/

I live in the most populated city of my country (Saudi Arabia)

Social medias. Find anyone who lives in your state and has above 2k followers in twitter or lots of friends in Facebook. Also if you search around you'll find a couple of Facebook groups for Smash in the US or even your region which would be better even. Do some digging. These things exist. And you'll be bringing lots of extra numbers thanks to them.

 

[T-Rex Games]

I would start by asking around in your area and see if there are any experienced TO's in your area. They might be willing to help. There have be a couple of people in my area who tried to get tournaments started, but scheduled on top of mine. its really hard to compete with a well known tournament in the area. For double elim brackets you want to run the first 2 rounds of winners, then run losers as the matches become available. losers takes twice as long as winner because there are more matches. if there is a loser's bracket match open run it.

 

[liets]

I would start by asking around in your area and see if there are any experienced TO's in your area. They might be willing to help. There have be a couple of people in my area who tried to get tournaments started, but scheduled on top of mine. its really hard to compete with a well known tournament in the area. For double elim brackets you want to run the first 2 rounds of winners, then run losers as the matches become available. losers takes twice as long as winner because there are more matches. if there is a loser's bracket match open run it.

My area is sparcely populated and as such I've never heard of tournaments around here. Sadly I don't think we have the time or space to run the losers through another bracket... Thanks for the suggestions though! :D

Anyway, an update on the situation:
I talked to the manager... things went fantastic!
We have a date and time
2 stock 5 minute matches
omega stages
no items
no customs
single character the whole tournament
prizes will be from the pot
entrance fees at $5
3 theaters will be in use at a time, sub-brackets will be split as such
probable 48 player entrant cap

Keep in mind that the restrictions placed are to make things run as smooth as possible, and not for any reason of preference.

 

[Skarfelt]

Bear in mind that your ruleset differs rather drastically to the standard ruleset. There's a few problems with this.

1. Alienation of a competitive audience. If there is a competitive scene where you live or nearby that you want to attract, tey're unlikely to come to a tournament that runs with improper ruling.
2. 5 minutes actually ends up longer than 6 minutes. It's much easier to run the clock down and time people out in a 5 minute game than a 6 minute game so you'll potentially see more timeouts. From the sounds of it this is most people's first tourney so that won't be much of a problem but that brings me to the next point.
3. Unrealistic expectations of the competitive scene. If you get new players now, they may think that all of competitive is a single character, only omegas and all the rest. This makes it harder to change in the future.

I understand you're running an extremely simplistic ruleset to try and make everything run on time (may I ask how much time you do have?) but I don't think it's for the better. If your players don't understand how stage striking works, they will just go to Battlefield or Smashville and save time anyway. If your players do understand, they're going to be mad frustrated that every game is on Omega when it's like the least common starter to end up on in the 5 stage list. And I don't really understand the single character throughout a tournament thing at all. I play Fox but I struggle a lot against some characters. Now for most of them I stay Fox but I believe that my Link has an easier time against Luigi than my Fox would so I change to Link. Under this ruleset, I could end up against a Luigi round 2, be unable to change and then be out of the entire tournament - not just put into Losers.

Basically, in an attempt to make the ruleset simple and invite more people, I think the opposite has happened. You may get quite a few people, sure, but I'm skeptical as to whether you can grow a scene off this. From the sounds of it your scene is lacking consistent events so this is a great way to kickstart the scene into getting bigger and better.

I mean it might be that your tournament is just running over like two hours or something in which case gooooood luck because that's impossible but meh. If your time constraints are so severe that you need to do it this way then that's fine I guess, just be aware of the problems that comes with that.