Odd numbered tournaments

[puff..jigglypuff]

I recently set up a place for Smash fans to play locally where I come from (Scotland). Tomorrow will be the 4th week of it happening and it is very successful so far. Numbers have been so good actually that I have held small friendly tournaments on the day, but with the numbers rising as fast as it is, I'm planning on hosting a proper paid entry tournament in a month or two (just to give more time for players to build friendships etc).
From doing casual play, I've noticed one of the more awkward things to come across was odd numbered tournaments. How do you all go about this? Numbers such as 2,4,8,16 and so on all round up nicely into a bracket, but lets say I get 13 or 18 players one day. What is the best way to add these extra players into the tournament without everything getting messed up? A certain player could get a bye at the start but form the way brackets run the same player would end up getting the bye the full time and eventually this lead into an odd number at semi finals or there about where 3 players would be on an equal level. Is it best to just do a 3 player free for all or not? I don't like the idea of it as people can gang up, but I'm not sure what's best. Any of you experienced TOs got tips?

 

[Narpas_sword]

arrange byes.

FFA is a terrible idea.

or pools. and take the top 2 from each.

 

[shairn]

The amount of byes in a tournament is equal to the next highest power of two minus the number of entrants. For a tournament of 13 people, you're going to have 16 - 13 = 3 byes. These byes are going to start in winners round 2 unlike everybody else. This means that 10 players populate round 1, making 5 matches. Of these 5 matches, the winners of three of them face players with byes, while the winners of the two others face each other. This leads to winners round 2, with 8 players and 4 matches. Since you now have a power of two, the rest of the winners bracket proceeds normally.

I'm not very keen as to how losers bracket works though, so I'm not going into detail about it, but if you use a bracket building application, you shouldn't have to worry about it too much so long as you seeded your players accordingly.

 

[puff..jigglypuff]

Do you have any recommendations for bracket building software? So far I've just been manually writing it out. I don't mind doing it, but if something speeds the process up then it's welcomed. Plus I think going into losers brackets will make this really complicated.
Been doing single elimination so far, but once a serious tournament gets under way I'll be doing double elimination.

 

[shairn]

Challonge(online) or Tio Tournament Organizer(offline) are usually the preferred software.

 

[DA K1D]

Just an FYI, Pools are generally a bad idea until about 32 people.

 

[puff..jigglypuff]

Cheers guys. I'll look into that software and keep the suggestions in mind.