This thread is mainly to help people who run tournaments so they know how to run them and how long things will take. Sets take 24 minutes to complete if it is best of 3 with an 8 minute time limit.
It is very rare I go to a tournament where things actually run smoothly and there is some semblance of a schedule. SCC and FC are basically the two best run tournaments I've been to. I am holding a tournament in a week or so and I thought I'd show everyone how I'm planning to run things, if you want to view the full thread its here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=208631 but the main thing is that I've gone through and planned EXACTLY how the tournament should run given two scenarios (its a max 32 person tournament):
Schedule with 4 TVS:
-Double elimination 16 team doubles bracket
-Double elimination 32 man singles bracket
11:00AM: Doors open-registration singles and doubles begins
12:00PM: Registration closes
12:30PM: Doubles bracket - WR1 H1 (Stations 1-4)
12:54PM: Doubles bracket - WR1 H2 (Stations 1-4)
1:18PM: Doubles bracket - WR2 (Stations 1-4)
1:42PM: Doubles bracket - LR1 (Stations 1-4)
2:06PM: Doubles bracket - LR2 (Stations 1-4)
2:30PM: Doubles bracket - WR (Stations 1-2) 3 & LR3 (Stations 3-4)
2:54PM: Doubles bracket - WF (Station 1) & LR4 (Stations 2-3) - (LR5, LF, and GF occur later)
3:18PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H1
3:42PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H2
4:06PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H3
4:30PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H4
4:54PM: Singles bracket - WR2 H1
5:18PM: Singles bracket - WR2 H2
5:42PM: Singles bracket - LR1 H1
6:06PM: Singles bracket - LR1 H2
6:30PM: Singles bracket - LR2 H1
6:54PM: Singles bracket - LR2 H2
7:18PM: Singles bracket - WR3
7:42PM: Singles bracket - LR3
8: 06PM: Singles bracket - LR4
8:30PM: Singles bracket - WR4 & LR5
9:00PM: We move the tournament back to my apartment - whoever is still left and their rides are allowed to come. Everyone else will have to watch the videos when they get put up. Obviously we NEED more than just 4 set ups-but this should let everyone see the math of EXACTLY the best you can run a tournament of 32 people (and 16 team) with this many set ups. There should be 6 people left in the Singles bracket and 6 people remaining in the Doubles bracket (3 teams). Likely some of these 6 people will be in both brackets, so I'm assuming it will be roughly 9 people left in the tournament (maybe 1 or 2 less or more).
Schedule with 8 TVS
-Double elimination doubles bracket
-8 pools of 4 with 2 people advancing into a 16 person double elimination singles bracket
11:00AM: Doors open-registration for singles and doubles begins
12:00PM: Registration closes
12:30PM: Doubles bracket - WR1
12:54PM: Doubles bracket - WR2 & LR1
1:18PM: Doubles bracket - LR2 & WR3 (2 tvs available for free play)
1:42PM: Doubles bracket - WF & LR4 (5 tvs available for free play)
2:06PM: Doubles bracket - LR5, WF continue & pools 1 (2 tvs), 2(2 tvs), and 3(1 tv) start
2:30PM: Doubles bracket - LF & pools 1, 2, and 3 continue play
2:54PM: Doubles bracket - GF & pools 1, 2, and 3 finish
3:18PM: Singles pools - pools 4 (2 tvs), 5(2 tvs), 6(2 tvs), 7(1 tv), and 8(1 tv) begin play
3:42PM: Singles pools - pools 4 (2 tvs), 5(2 tvs), 6(2 tvs), 7 (1 tv), and 8 (1 tv) continue
4:06PM: Singles pools - pools 4 (2 tvs), 5(2 tvs), 6(2 tvs) finish - 7 (1 tv) and 8 (1 tv) continue
4:30PM: Singles pools - pools 7 (2 tvs) and 8 (2 tvs) finish -(4 stations available for free play)
5:00PM: Singles bracket - WR1
5:24PM: Singles bracket - WR2 & LR2
5:54PM: Singles bracket - LR2 & WR3 (2 tvs available for free play)
6:18PM: Singles bracket - WF & LR4 (5 tvs available for free play)
6: 42PM: Singles bracket - LR5 and WF continues (7 tvs available for free play)
7:06PM: Singles bracket - LF (7 tvs available for free play)
7:46PM: Singles bracket - GF (7 tvs available for free play)
8:45PM: tear down and pack up - then we can all eat dinner at wings and brew to discuss the event
*Pools will be divided by MW Circuit points (from last season) and by location
*Brackets will be seeded by pools and results, a 1st seed who was 3-0 in sets and 6-0 in games will have a higher 1st seed than one who was 3-0 insets but 6-2 in games.
*Pool ties will be broken as follows:
-If set wins are tied between 2 (two) people, then whoever won the head to head match advances (or gets the higher seed)
-If set wins are tied between 3 (three) people, then whoever has the better game record continues, if two people are tied in their game record then head to head is used. Example, if P-A beats P-B 2-1, and P-B beats P-3 2-1, and P-C beats P-A 2-0, then the results would be:
P-C is the first seed
P-A is the second seed
P-B is the third seed
-If all three players are tied in sets and games then sets will need to be replayed to break the tie.
---
Anyone running a tournament, especially a large one, should go and do the math related to number of participants and set ups and plan accordingly. The tournaments running until 2am in the morning have got to stop.
You will notice that a 32 man singles and 16 team doubles tournament with 4 set ups will take LONGER than 8 hours to complete. This essentially means that a 1 tv to 8 person ratio is unrealistic if you want to complete your tournament on time. The best ratio of people to tvs is 1 tv for every 4 people, this allows you to run matches and use all of your tvs all of the time (double up on W/L brackets during the same time frame, for example). The higher the ratio the better, but I believe the ideal, realistic ratio of tv's to people should be 1/4.
At COT4 the ratio was about 1/10 - based on set ups alone you should know the tournament will run long.
Another important note is doing things in rounds instead of "next available match at next available tv". Doing things in rounds with scheduled times allows you to really manage the tournament. MLG in 2006 used a "next available match on next available station" approach and their tournaments constantly ran long. In 2007 they switched to a timed round approach and they tournament run on time, sometimes even ahead of schedule.
Assuming 24 minutes match time is probably the most reasonable bet. If you assume this max you should cover about 90% of all the real matches. Some rounds will go shorter than 24 minutes after which the next round can be called early. Some rounds will be a few minutes longer than 24 minutes and in the end it should all offset.
Pools:
If you have a pool of 4 that means that there will be 6 sets total played.
If you have a pool of 8 that means that there will be 28 sets total played.
If you have 1 tv for each pool that means that a pool of 4 can be completed in 2.4 hours. A pool of 8 will take 11.2 hours to complete.
SOOOO
If you have 8 pools of 4 and 8 tvs then your pool play will finish in:
2.4 hours
If you have 4 pools of 8 and 8 tvs (2 tvs per pool) then your pool play will finish in 5.1 hours.
The exact same number of people and the exact same number of tvs but when done in one way you save 2 and a half HOURS of time. The draw back to pools of 4 (assuming 2 make it out from each pool) is that all you have are a 1 seed and a 2 seed instead of a 1,2,3, and 4 seed. However, since time is saved, you can use that extra time to rank the 1 seeds and 2 seeds based on their pool performance (game win-loss ratio/set win-loss ratio).
Regarding registration:
If you are holding a large regional or even national tournament then you need to streamline the registration process. Preregistration is amazing, but you don't nessasarily need pre-registration to plan an event.
What you need is a team (which you should have if you are holding a large tournament) of people doing registration. At MLG events there are about 6 people with laptops checking names off of preregistration lists. They can get through 256 teams of 4 for Halo + another 100 or so split between R6V2 and GoW2 in roughly 3 hours.
If you are holding a 256 person Smash tournament with no preregistration then you need about 8 helpers. The ration should be one person for every 32 participants. The 8 helpers should be armed with sheets of paper and pens and envelopes. They collect money and write up to 10 names on a piece of paper. Once they get to 10 they hand that piece of paper to the head TO who is armed with just a computer, and whose sole responsibility is to enter the names from paper into the computer.
If you assume it takes 1 minute to register 1 person, then a 256 person tournament with 1 person registering people will take about 4 hours to get through the line. If you have 8 people taking names, then you can get through things in about 40 minutes. HUGE TIME SAVER.
In addition to this, doubles parters should stay in line together and doubles team names should be restricted to "player 1 + player 2" instead of a team name like "my parents are dead" because when that team name gets called and no one knows who is on it then you just delayed the tournament.
---
If you are running a tournament and any single game in any single part of the bracket gets delayed then the tournament was just delayed that amount of time. Does that make sense? Here is an example: at Season Beatings III Justin Wong was entered in multiple tournaments, including an All-Brawl tournament. Justin, being entered in multiple games, had to delay his losers bracket match, a delay that was approximately 2 hours. Every other match that could be played was played before Justin came back, and now everyone had to wait 2 extra hours for that one segment of the bracket to catch up with everyone else.
If you go for food for 20 minutes when your match is called then you just delayed the tournament 20 minutes for everyone. If you decide to take a few extra minutes talking to people or playing a friendly before your tournament match then you just delayed the tournament that amount of time. The single decisions of just 1 person can effect the entire playing field. This is why if you are running a large (or even small) tournament that you should be STRICT on DQ rules. You cannot have a part of the bracket fall behind the rest.
This is one of the reasons that you should call matches in rounds instead of the "next available match at next available station", if the players know delaying their game will have a real chance of getting them DQ'd (since there is a legitimate schedule you are following and all matches were called at the same time) then they will be more prone to playing their matches. In the "next available match at next available station" method you will frequently have delays as people run down who they are playing or struggle to find an open station to play. If you have a 256 person bracket you are talking about roughly 10 rounds of play. If in one part of the bracket there is a 10 minute delay between the start and finish of a match then that adds up quickly to an extra hour-hour and a half of delayed time.
---
I'll update this post with more thoughts and stuff later/I'll sexify it into a guide at some point.
It is very rare I go to a tournament where things actually run smoothly and there is some semblance of a schedule. SCC and FC are basically the two best run tournaments I've been to. I am holding a tournament in a week or so and I thought I'd show everyone how I'm planning to run things, if you want to view the full thread its here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=208631 but the main thing is that I've gone through and planned EXACTLY how the tournament should run given two scenarios (its a max 32 person tournament):
Schedule with 4 TVS:
-Double elimination 16 team doubles bracket
-Double elimination 32 man singles bracket
11:00AM: Doors open-registration singles and doubles begins
12:00PM: Registration closes
12:30PM: Doubles bracket - WR1 H1 (Stations 1-4)
12:54PM: Doubles bracket - WR1 H2 (Stations 1-4)
1:18PM: Doubles bracket - WR2 (Stations 1-4)
1:42PM: Doubles bracket - LR1 (Stations 1-4)
2:06PM: Doubles bracket - LR2 (Stations 1-4)
2:30PM: Doubles bracket - WR (Stations 1-2) 3 & LR3 (Stations 3-4)
2:54PM: Doubles bracket - WF (Station 1) & LR4 (Stations 2-3) - (LR5, LF, and GF occur later)
3:18PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H1
3:42PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H2
4:06PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H3
4:30PM: Singles bracket - WR1 H4
4:54PM: Singles bracket - WR2 H1
5:18PM: Singles bracket - WR2 H2
5:42PM: Singles bracket - LR1 H1
6:06PM: Singles bracket - LR1 H2
6:30PM: Singles bracket - LR2 H1
6:54PM: Singles bracket - LR2 H2
7:18PM: Singles bracket - WR3
7:42PM: Singles bracket - LR3
8: 06PM: Singles bracket - LR4
8:30PM: Singles bracket - WR4 & LR5
9:00PM: We move the tournament back to my apartment - whoever is still left and their rides are allowed to come. Everyone else will have to watch the videos when they get put up. Obviously we NEED more than just 4 set ups-but this should let everyone see the math of EXACTLY the best you can run a tournament of 32 people (and 16 team) with this many set ups. There should be 6 people left in the Singles bracket and 6 people remaining in the Doubles bracket (3 teams). Likely some of these 6 people will be in both brackets, so I'm assuming it will be roughly 9 people left in the tournament (maybe 1 or 2 less or more).
Schedule with 8 TVS
-Double elimination doubles bracket
-8 pools of 4 with 2 people advancing into a 16 person double elimination singles bracket
11:00AM: Doors open-registration for singles and doubles begins
12:00PM: Registration closes
12:30PM: Doubles bracket - WR1
12:54PM: Doubles bracket - WR2 & LR1
1:18PM: Doubles bracket - LR2 & WR3 (2 tvs available for free play)
1:42PM: Doubles bracket - WF & LR4 (5 tvs available for free play)
2:06PM: Doubles bracket - LR5, WF continue & pools 1 (2 tvs), 2(2 tvs), and 3(1 tv) start
2:30PM: Doubles bracket - LF & pools 1, 2, and 3 continue play
2:54PM: Doubles bracket - GF & pools 1, 2, and 3 finish
3:18PM: Singles pools - pools 4 (2 tvs), 5(2 tvs), 6(2 tvs), 7(1 tv), and 8(1 tv) begin play
3:42PM: Singles pools - pools 4 (2 tvs), 5(2 tvs), 6(2 tvs), 7 (1 tv), and 8 (1 tv) continue
4:06PM: Singles pools - pools 4 (2 tvs), 5(2 tvs), 6(2 tvs) finish - 7 (1 tv) and 8 (1 tv) continue
4:30PM: Singles pools - pools 7 (2 tvs) and 8 (2 tvs) finish -(4 stations available for free play)
5:00PM: Singles bracket - WR1
5:24PM: Singles bracket - WR2 & LR2
5:54PM: Singles bracket - LR2 & WR3 (2 tvs available for free play)
6:18PM: Singles bracket - WF & LR4 (5 tvs available for free play)
6: 42PM: Singles bracket - LR5 and WF continues (7 tvs available for free play)
7:06PM: Singles bracket - LF (7 tvs available for free play)
7:46PM: Singles bracket - GF (7 tvs available for free play)
8:45PM: tear down and pack up - then we can all eat dinner at wings and brew to discuss the event
*Pools will be divided by MW Circuit points (from last season) and by location
*Brackets will be seeded by pools and results, a 1st seed who was 3-0 in sets and 6-0 in games will have a higher 1st seed than one who was 3-0 insets but 6-2 in games.
*Pool ties will be broken as follows:
-If set wins are tied between 2 (two) people, then whoever won the head to head match advances (or gets the higher seed)
-If set wins are tied between 3 (three) people, then whoever has the better game record continues, if two people are tied in their game record then head to head is used. Example, if P-A beats P-B 2-1, and P-B beats P-3 2-1, and P-C beats P-A 2-0, then the results would be:
P-C is the first seed
P-A is the second seed
P-B is the third seed
-If all three players are tied in sets and games then sets will need to be replayed to break the tie.
---
Anyone running a tournament, especially a large one, should go and do the math related to number of participants and set ups and plan accordingly. The tournaments running until 2am in the morning have got to stop.
You will notice that a 32 man singles and 16 team doubles tournament with 4 set ups will take LONGER than 8 hours to complete. This essentially means that a 1 tv to 8 person ratio is unrealistic if you want to complete your tournament on time. The best ratio of people to tvs is 1 tv for every 4 people, this allows you to run matches and use all of your tvs all of the time (double up on W/L brackets during the same time frame, for example). The higher the ratio the better, but I believe the ideal, realistic ratio of tv's to people should be 1/4.
At COT4 the ratio was about 1/10 - based on set ups alone you should know the tournament will run long.
Another important note is doing things in rounds instead of "next available match at next available tv". Doing things in rounds with scheduled times allows you to really manage the tournament. MLG in 2006 used a "next available match on next available station" approach and their tournaments constantly ran long. In 2007 they switched to a timed round approach and they tournament run on time, sometimes even ahead of schedule.
Assuming 24 minutes match time is probably the most reasonable bet. If you assume this max you should cover about 90% of all the real matches. Some rounds will go shorter than 24 minutes after which the next round can be called early. Some rounds will be a few minutes longer than 24 minutes and in the end it should all offset.
Pools:
If you have a pool of 4 that means that there will be 6 sets total played.
If you have a pool of 8 that means that there will be 28 sets total played.
If you have 1 tv for each pool that means that a pool of 4 can be completed in 2.4 hours. A pool of 8 will take 11.2 hours to complete.
SOOOO
If you have 8 pools of 4 and 8 tvs then your pool play will finish in:
2.4 hours
If you have 4 pools of 8 and 8 tvs (2 tvs per pool) then your pool play will finish in 5.1 hours.
The exact same number of people and the exact same number of tvs but when done in one way you save 2 and a half HOURS of time. The draw back to pools of 4 (assuming 2 make it out from each pool) is that all you have are a 1 seed and a 2 seed instead of a 1,2,3, and 4 seed. However, since time is saved, you can use that extra time to rank the 1 seeds and 2 seeds based on their pool performance (game win-loss ratio/set win-loss ratio).
Regarding registration:
If you are holding a large regional or even national tournament then you need to streamline the registration process. Preregistration is amazing, but you don't nessasarily need pre-registration to plan an event.
What you need is a team (which you should have if you are holding a large tournament) of people doing registration. At MLG events there are about 6 people with laptops checking names off of preregistration lists. They can get through 256 teams of 4 for Halo + another 100 or so split between R6V2 and GoW2 in roughly 3 hours.
If you are holding a 256 person Smash tournament with no preregistration then you need about 8 helpers. The ration should be one person for every 32 participants. The 8 helpers should be armed with sheets of paper and pens and envelopes. They collect money and write up to 10 names on a piece of paper. Once they get to 10 they hand that piece of paper to the head TO who is armed with just a computer, and whose sole responsibility is to enter the names from paper into the computer.
If you assume it takes 1 minute to register 1 person, then a 256 person tournament with 1 person registering people will take about 4 hours to get through the line. If you have 8 people taking names, then you can get through things in about 40 minutes. HUGE TIME SAVER.
In addition to this, doubles parters should stay in line together and doubles team names should be restricted to "player 1 + player 2" instead of a team name like "my parents are dead" because when that team name gets called and no one knows who is on it then you just delayed the tournament.
---
If you are running a tournament and any single game in any single part of the bracket gets delayed then the tournament was just delayed that amount of time. Does that make sense? Here is an example: at Season Beatings III Justin Wong was entered in multiple tournaments, including an All-Brawl tournament. Justin, being entered in multiple games, had to delay his losers bracket match, a delay that was approximately 2 hours. Every other match that could be played was played before Justin came back, and now everyone had to wait 2 extra hours for that one segment of the bracket to catch up with everyone else.
If you go for food for 20 minutes when your match is called then you just delayed the tournament 20 minutes for everyone. If you decide to take a few extra minutes talking to people or playing a friendly before your tournament match then you just delayed the tournament that amount of time. The single decisions of just 1 person can effect the entire playing field. This is why if you are running a large (or even small) tournament that you should be STRICT on DQ rules. You cannot have a part of the bracket fall behind the rest.
This is one of the reasons that you should call matches in rounds instead of the "next available match at next available station", if the players know delaying their game will have a real chance of getting them DQ'd (since there is a legitimate schedule you are following and all matches were called at the same time) then they will be more prone to playing their matches. In the "next available match at next available station" method you will frequently have delays as people run down who they are playing or struggle to find an open station to play. If you have a 256 person bracket you are talking about roughly 10 rounds of play. If in one part of the bracket there is a 10 minute delay between the start and finish of a match then that adds up quickly to an extra hour-hour and a half of delayed time.
---
I'll update this post with more thoughts and stuff later/I'll sexify it into a guide at some point.
