Tournament Length - training TOs

[Overswarm]

While people are talking about holding giant events like APEX and Big House with multiple games and running into time issues (forcing them to lower the stock count), I've seen reports of some local tournaments -- whether Melee/PM or Smash 4 or any combination of them -- that have run into time issues.

I think it'd be in the community's best interests if we made a simplified "how to run a tournament" mini-guide that focuses less on overall tournament running and more on "finishing quickly". A 16 man tournament can be done in under 4 hours easily, but somehow I've seen 32 man brackets after pools take up to 8. This shouldn't be the norm.

To structure the list as simply as possible, I'm putting it in a numbered list format that just tells them what to do rather than explaining things in detail. If you have something that happens at your tournaments or SHOULD happen at your tournaments, post here so I can add it to the list. Eventually I can put it into a short article or video to spread around because TOs suck now and they need to not do so.

How to make your tournament end on time:

1. Schedule your tournament to have an extra two hours at the end. This solves most problems because you have a two hour buffer. If you expect finals to be played half an hour before closing time, you'll run into conflicts even if things go right.
2. Know your limits. If your venue closes at midnight and the tournament can't start until 8 p.m., you should have a cap on entrants. Make the cap a multiple of 4 (16, 20, 24, 28, 32...) so both brackets and pools work out.
3. Host an appropriate amount of games. This is generally one game. The biggest offender for poorly organized tournaments is running multiple games. Run just one and most of your problems are solved. If you can run multiple that's great, but most can't -- even if they think they can.
4. Get setups. Charge a venue fee even if the venue is free and waive the venue fee for people who bring setups. More setups = faster tournament. The most you'll ever need is ( Total Entrants / 2 ), so for a 32 man tournament you'd need 16 TVs for maximum efficiency and 8 TVs for a decently fast tournament.
5. Have two registration windows. Register for doubles and singles first and then have a later registration available for singles only. This allows you to have strict windows in which players who are late to the tournament for doubles don't hold up the rest of the bracket, but can still enter. This also guarantees the TO will be available during two distinct times.
6. Leave only an hour for registration. Players who do not register in this hour might be shoved into the bracket later, but also might not be able to do so. If they miss Doubles, they can still enter singles. If they miss Singles, they're out of luck. Smashers are consistently late and this delays tournaments -- don't let them push registration time back another half hour -- or more.
7. Have someone help with registration. You take the money, someone else writes them down. Goes twice as fast. This also helps if you need to hand-make pool sheets.
8. Separate the money into envelopes and have change on hand. Go to the bank and ask for at least $100 -- $80 in 5s and $20 in 1s. You might need more depending on the event size. The majority of players will come in with a $20 bill to enter a $5 tournament ($5 venue, singles, doubles) and will need a $5 in change. You somehow need to magically split this into three ways later (venue, singles, doubles money) and somehow later need to split a $35 prize between two people in doubles, so you'll need singles. Make sure to have three separate envelopes -- Venue, Singles, Doubles -- and keep the money organized in all three. This makes paying out at the end really easy and limits mistakes -- most TOs have paid out first and second and then realized they made a math mistake and are missing some of the money due to 3rd and 4th place!
9. Start Doubles First. If doing doubles, start it first and start it quickly. This allows the game to "get started" and prevents friendlies from delaying registration.
   
10. Call out "on deck" matches. You won't have enough setups, so call out the first bracket matches and then call out the NEXT bracket matches.
11. DQ players who are consistently late. If you call an 'on deck' match or a regular match and they don't immediately play their set, DQ them and give their opponent a win for that round immediately. Don't treat anyone special, whether they are 1st seed or last seed. If a player doesn't respect your rules and the other players, they're bringing a worse tournament experience for everyone else to benefit themselves -- that's selfish!
12. When Doubles is in semi-finals, start making singles pool/bracket. You should be finished by winner's finals.
13. When Doubles is in Winner's Finals, start singles pool/bracket. The end of a tournament typically has a bottleneck -- doubles from winner's finals on could take an hour or more if the matches are close because you can only play so many matches at once and often other teams need to just wait on deck! Starting singles by Winner's Finals (or earlier) allows you to gain a lot of time!
14. No friendlies on these setups. Just a great rule! You can calculate how many setups you need. If you have 8 players still in the tournament, you can only use 4 at once. Say "no friendlies on these 4" and let the other ones be for friendlies.
15. If using pools, have pool captains. Train your pool captains to call out matches to be "on deck" in their pools and make sure players don't leave their pool area.
16. If you are low on setups and using pools, split your pools into "heats". If you have 6 pools of 4 and only 6 TVs, that's a recipe for a snails pace tournament. 6 TVs means 12 people (6 matches) can play at once while you have 24 people entered. The very nature of this means you will encounter a natural bottleneck that will slow your tournament. Instead, run "heats". Say "pools 1 through 3 play your matches and give them two setups each. This will allow the first two pools to quickly finish. In the meantime, pools 4 through 6 can eat lunch and return for when the other pools are done.
17. Tell them when they can eat. Find "downtime" in the tournament and make that your eating time. Not every venue can have food, so make sure players know that they should go get food after they are eliminated from doubles -- don't wait for singles to start. Many players will want to play friendlies, so you'll have to encourage them to go eat early! The only players who should get special treatment are those that were still in doubles until the end.
18. Don't let them see the bracket until its already started. People will find a problem with every bracket you create because they want a favorable bracket for them and only them. There will always be conflicts. You don't have to be perfect, but follow basic seeding rules (separate by rank in pools, then separate by location) and then stick to your results. They'll live. Mistakes will happen, but it's better to spend only 10 - 15 minutes at most making a bracket rather than spending an hour arguing with people. The tournament comes first!
19. No side events for people in bracket. This one is a no-brainer. You shouldn't ever have the possibility of someone needing to be in two places at once -- this is why you should only run one game, and that includes side events. If you want to run Smash Run or "Falcon Only" events, make it so it is only enterable by people not currently in the tournament.
20. Don't slack off. People have a tendency to only work as hard as they need to. This means if you're halfway through the tournament you might stop calling "on deck" matches or being lax on friendlies or delays between sets. Don't do this! Finish early and then have a smash party afterwards. It's WAY more fun when your tournaments end at 8 p.m. instead of midnight.