Organizing a small dorm tournament

[NewWaveBossaNova]

My dorm house is planning a melee tournament for just our house. I was reading over stuff and I thought a double elimination format would be good since there's not a lot of us. After thinking about it, I found the problem is matchmaking since we'd have at most 6 people competing. This would make the brackets all funky with three competitors in each bracket after the first round. We'll have at most 6 people, and possibly 4 at the least (although it could be lower depending on interest and if people have exams to study for, though we'll try to plan around that).

Edit: Also, I'm thinking it might have to be single elimination since we only have one TV and having a best of three matches plus double elimination will take too long, even with our amount of people. The housing assistant is also planning to have 1v1 as well as a FFA portion, so actually, I don't think we're going to go with the double elimination.

In the event we have a non power-of-two amount of competitors, what do you recommend we do?

PS: I can't find the delete thread option, please tell me for future reference.

 

[TheManaLord]

Well, with six people it's not really a tournament, is it?

I say just do a round robin.

 

[AlphaZealot]

For 6 people, just set up an 8 man bracket and give 2 players (the best 2 people usually) byes in the first round (IE they fight no one).

 

[NewWaveBossaNova]

Well, with six people it's not really a tournament, is it?

I say just do a round robin.

It's just that, it's an official house tournament because the housing assistant is giving prizes to the top players.

This is all planned to be done in one night. We don't have too much time to do it and we all have classes to study for. There's also the FFA portion although I could care less for what the HA does for those rules, though that can take a while too.

If we were to change it to round-robin with just one match per pair of competitors, it'll still take a while. 15 matches, 4 stock/8 minutes... Estimating the matches to be 4 minutes in duration... close to two hours, maybe longer...

Single elimination, six people, best of three matches, final battle being best of five... Worst case scenario is all three matches are played per set... still estimating four minutes per match... after the first round it's 36 minutes, and subsequent rounds can only be shorter except for possibly the final.

For 6 people, just set up an 8 man bracket and give 2 players (the best 2 people usually) byes in the first round (IE they fight no one).

Thanks, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. I think I'll go with that then.

 

[UMBC Super Smasher]

You only have one tv for this tournament? Two would make things flow much better. Single elimination sucks. Go with Double Elimination if you can.

Nealdt's Tournament Organizer software is good.

 

[darkatma]

yes, please get Tio tournament organizer, it'll help you TONS with any type of tournament.
It's in the regional forums, click pacific west, and it should be at the top in one of the stickies.