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Hi Fellow Dakkanaughts,

I've been kicking around an idea for a tournament management system. I'm a website developer by trade and have been playing 40k for a couple of years now and have recently entered the tournament scene. Mostly just for fun - I've only ever managed to pull out best painted so far but I'm good with that. Anyway, I've noticed problems that my analytical/developer brain says "I can fix that". Here's a short list of stuff I've bumped into with solutions:

1. What? There's a tournament this weekend?
Yep, I'm starting to figure out what the local FLGS's schedules are but still wouldn't it be nice if you could subscribe to a website and say "hey, when this FLGS schedules a tournament for [game system] let me know". Then, when the FLGS sets up a tournament you would receive an email giving you all of the details and a link to go register.

2. I drove over an hour and they were already full?? What the ****!
Hasn't happened to me YET but that's because I can see it happening so I make sure to get their crazy early if I can. As mentioned in the previous bullet item the FLGS can specify a number of seats so a) the TO knows he's full and b) participants will know they may not be able to participate if all of the seats are taken but could be placed on a waiting list.

3. Me and my peeps play each other every week at the FLGS so why am I playing them at the tournament?
Happened to me at the NOVA Open last year. Great event, don't get me wrong, but my second game was against a dude I play every week. In my little necron mind I see me being able to go to my website and create a "friends" list. The tournament management system would use this list to try and make sure I don't get paired up against any of them - unless it's unavoidable of course.

4. What was the outcome of the tournament besides me not winning squat?
The larger tournaments seem to be good with this but your local FLGS may not have a place to put it on the web - or the time. I was thinking that I could go to my website and be able to see standings for any tournament in the system and easily go to the ones I've participated in.

5. Some day I may have a "tournament record"...
I think it'd be nice if something tracked things like "Best general at Adpeticon", etc so you and the whole world could see.

6. Who's in the house?
I noticed people need to check in when they show up. I could see that being automated. Plus if you have multiple tablets/laptops/phones managing the event all of the TOs would know what's going.

7. What's taking so long with the pairings?
I think for the participants it feels like hours and for the TOs it most seem like an instant. This is one area where I have no idea how TOs come up with what they do for the list. At NOVA it was groups of 10, I think, whereas in small tournaments it's just one list. Do they just list everyone in order by total battle points and pair them up that way? Dunno. This is where I'm really stuck.

8. How much time is left in this round, anyway? I need to know if I should be dumping guys out of my chimera...
Timing is everything, huh? I played in a tournament in March against a guy who had been playing for only a few months so our turns lasted realllllyyyy long. We barely finished turn 3. It would have been nice if I knew how much time was left instead of the TO yelling "10 minutes!!!" I could track that via my smart phone along with a host of other info. I guess I could also have just noted the time we started or used my smart phone stop watch but it's nice to know you're synced up with the TO.

9. Who's finished and how'd they do?
I liked being able to go around to check in with my peeps and see how they did. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at your smart phone and see who's still playing or if it's over see what the outcome was?

Anyway, that's my laundry list I've worked up so far. A lot of the mechanics on the social media side is done and now I'm starting to look at the actual tournament side of the house. Obviously a downside to this is that the TO would have to have an internet connection for any of this to work so that's sort of a gimme. Don't think that's an idea killer. Still having issues trying to figure out how pairings work though so I'd love to hear from people who are familiar with the inner workings of a tournament.

Thanx!

So a couple of possible snafus here.

1.) Not all tournaments track results the same way. Some go straight battle points for pairings, others (like NOVA) use a win path system. Some pair the top players with each other, some the biggest winner against the smallest winner etc...So unless you have lots of options (or flexibility for TOs to enter their own information) it will be tough to have a catch all tournament software.

2.) tournaments filling up and not telling people is TO or player failure in most cases. It is easy to require people to sign up ahead of time for slots, and track how many you have. If you don't and you fill up that is a failure of the TO. If you do and someone shows up unannounced and you are full, it is their fault for not signing up. Not saying assistance is bad, just superfluous in many cases.

3.) I have issue with needing to look at your phone to know the time. It actually gives an unfair (potentially unless you share it) advantage to people with smart phones and said App or whatever. IF you can check the time and I cannot then you have a big advantage because you can determine how far along we will get (unless we are going to finish).

Overall not a bad idea, and some tournament software already exists, but some stuff I think will end up being window dressing that does not really get used.

Yeah, you are right in that it would have to be extremely flexible and in the end the TO would need to have the ability to make what ever changes they deem necessary - didn't say that part would be easy but I don't know what all of the tournament formats are which is really what I'm in the dark the most on.

I went to one tournament that does not take registrations - you just show up. I'm sure if they had a system in place that was simple to use they would not be against an online registration system. There was another FLGS that has monthly tournaments that uses a forum to allow people to register. My problem was that there was no easy way to register with the forum (and I'm an extremely savvy computer user) so I had to ask one of my peeps to register me. Not an ideal situation.

HHhhmmmm...didn't think of the smart phone as being a form of cheating but your point is taken. I also thought of having a screen the TO could have available for everyone to see with the time in a really huge font so you could see it from across the room...dunno...have to rethink that one I guess.

What are some of the names of existing software programs that can do this? I haven't seen anything that was really geared towards Warhammer.

Not that I want to rain on your parade, because it sounds interesting, but it sounds like most of your features are attempts at technical solutions to circumvent social issues. These don't fix the underlying issue the vast majority of the time, because they still require the people involved to care enough to use those features.

 necron99 wrote:
Hi Fellow Dakkanaughts,

I've been kicking around an idea for a tournament management system. I'm a website developer by trade and have been playing 40k for a couple of years now and have recently entered the tournament scene. Mostly just for fun - I've only ever managed to pull out best painted so far but I'm good with that. Anyway, I've noticed problems that my analytical/developer brain says "I can fix that". Here's a short list of stuff I've bumped into with solutions:

1. What? There's a tournament this weekend?
Yep, I'm starting to figure out what the local FLGS's schedules are but still wouldn't it be nice if you could subscribe to a website and say "hey, when this FLGS schedules a tournament for [game system] let me know". Then, when the FLGS sets up a tournament you would receive an email giving you all of the details and a link to go register.

2. I drove over an hour and they were already full?? What the ****!
Hasn't happened to me YET but that's because I can see it happening so I make sure to get their crazy early if I can. As mentioned in the previous bullet item the FLGS can specify a number of seats so a) the TO knows he's full and b) participants will know they may not be able to participate if all of the seats are taken but could be placed on a waiting list.

3. Me and my peeps play each other every week at the FLGS so why am I playing them at the tournament?
Happened to me at the NOVA Open last year. Great event, don't get me wrong, but my second game was against a dude I play every week. In my little necron mind I see me being able to go to my website and create a "friends" list. The tournament management system would use this list to try and make sure I don't get paired up against any of them - unless it's unavoidable of course.

4. What was the outcome of the tournament besides me not winning squat?
The larger tournaments seem to be good with this but your local FLGS may not have a place to put it on the web - or the time. I was thinking that I could go to my website and be able to see standings for any tournament in the system and easily go to the ones I've participated in.

5. Some day I may have a "tournament record"...
I think it'd be nice if something tracked things like "Best general at Adpeticon", etc so you and the whole world could see.

6. Who's in the house?
I noticed people need to check in when they show up. I could see that being automated. Plus if you have multiple tablets/laptops/phones managing the event all of the TOs would know what's going.

7. What's taking so long with the pairings?
I think for the participants it feels like hours and for the TOs it most seem like an instant. This is one area where I have no idea how TOs come up with what they do for the list. At NOVA it was groups of 10, I think, whereas in small tournaments it's just one list. Do they just list everyone in order by total battle points and pair them up that way? Dunno. This is where I'm really stuck.

8. How much time is left in this round, anyway? I need to know if I should be dumping guys out of my chimera...
Timing is everything, huh? I played in a tournament in March against a guy who had been playing for only a few months so our turns lasted realllllyyyy long. We barely finished turn 3. It would have been nice if I knew how much time was left instead of the TO yelling "10 minutes!!!" I could track that via my smart phone along with a host of other info. I guess I could also have just noted the time we started or used my smart phone stop watch but it's nice to know you're synced up with the TO.

9. Who's finished and how'd they do?
I liked being able to go around to check in with my peeps and see how they did. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at your smart phone and see who's still playing or if it's over see what the outcome was?

Anyway, that's my laundry list I've worked up so far. A lot of the mechanics on the social media side is done and now I'm starting to look at the actual tournament side of the house. Obviously a downside to this is that the TO would have to have an internet connection for any of this to work so that's sort of a gimme. Don't think that's an idea killer. Still having issues trying to figure out how pairings work though so I'd love to hear from people who are familiar with the inner workings of a tournament.

Thanx!

Can help with a couple ...

#3 - The NOVA's software already addresses creating groupings that will prevent those players from facing each other. Pairings at NOVA are done on win-path (closest to a fair way to do it, since the delta between opponents being random prevents margin of victory from being a meaningful pairing criteria). Local friends / etc. are excepted, as long as that is a known fact ... you can address this by letting us know who your regular gaming buddies are. This obviously will cease to function after a set # of rounds, if your records align.

#5 - Rankings HQ tracks this; you will see a new tournament software released in the near future that handles this sort of tracking and player stats more robustly in the near future (nothing I have anything directly to do with, just can't release info about it ahead of the company doing it)

#7 - Pairings at NOVA were spit out more or less the moment the last results were plugged in. That's often the cause for delay. Sometimes technical difficulties also can get in the way (this happened for a round or two for us). As mentioned already, pairings are on win-path for the first 4 rounds at NOVA; Rounds 5-8 are bracketed by sets of 16 on record, with seed determined by margin.

Tracking timing on smart phones is a cool idea; in re: the seeing how everyone is doing component, the above-mentioned professional software soon to be released that I at least personally cannot quite chat about yet should address that by live-tracking on the web all of the various pairings and results and armies and other things going on at a tournament using the software at all times, "live." Should help.

Only answering the questions that are relevant for me ... and hoping to help clarify some of what happens at NOVA since you had some Q's there about it!

- Mike

#3 - that's good to hear. I just thought it was pretty funny I got hooked up with one of the 5 other guys who came with me that's all (out of a couple hundred that attended).

#5 - Ah, yep I just looked these people up based on what you just wrote. Thanx!

#7 - Oh yeah, with a 100+ games to log in to your system I can see that. I'm ok with however long it takes - gives me a chance to use the bathroom, etc. I'm just looking to see if there are ways to streamline the system as it were.

Figures someone else has already started something like this. Any idea when they'll be making the big announcement? That would help me to decide if it's worth pursuing this further.

Looking forward to NOVA this year - can definitely give last year's two thumbs up. Me and most of my peeps have already registered (I missed out on the VIP bag).

The new software is pretty radical; it'll be tested in advance of, and live by, NOVA. AFAIK it'll be broadly available to and customizeable for any'/all tournaments of any/all sizes out there. Should link into some pretty innovative global records keeping type stuff as well. Don't want to steal anyone's thunder though

NOVA just happens to be where it will get its unveil (mostly due to timing/etc.), not the owner or originator. Looking forward to having you back! We'll definitely have more VIP's next year ... the VIP suite w/ cheap cocktails and beer, + the lifetime KR discount associated w/ getting one, seemed to push them all out the door in under a month this year. /offtopic

Tabletoptournaments.net has most of the features you are looking after, and are also providing a free pairing program called GOEPP.

Feel free to check it out. If you'd like to help develop, I'm sure Matthias (Blackhawk) would be happy to discuss potential partnership/whatnot. Sure he could use the hand!

@MVB

#3 - The NOVA's software already addresses creating groupings that will prevent those players from facing each other. Pairings at NOVA are done on win-path (closest to a fair way to do it, since the delta between opponents being random prevents margin of victory from being a meaningful pairing criteria). Local friends / etc. are excepted, as long as that is a known fact ... you can address this by letting us know who your regular gaming buddies are. This obviously will cease to function after a set # of rounds, if your records align.

Not to be a fly in the ointment or anything but...actually this one I gave a lot of thought to and drove my concepts in a different direction from what I originally envisioned. Are participants going to send you a list ahead of time about who there buddies are that will be attending or will they submit it at the registration desk? That would work but could still be a bureaucratic nightmare I would think. In either case let's say out of 250 participants 125 claims to have peeps in attendance and let's say on average there are three peeps who don't want to play that person for at least the first round. That's 375 entries you'd have to plugin to make the connections between each individual (125 x 3). Let's say it takes a minute to make each connection in your software it could take as long as 6 man hours to do the data entry. Depending on how smart the program is it could cut down on some of that by automatically creating a link from the peep to the participant. If it's a multi-user program on a network with several computers you could drive that number down.

That's when I started thinking about how to mitigate that issue. My proposed system is more of a social network program that also happens to run tournaments. Kind of like facebook for wargamers. You create an account and setup a profile. Part of your profile is a list of other users on the system that you play with on a regular basis - it's completely up to the user to maintain his own peeps list. So any tournament that utilizes my system would auto-magically know "who-would-not-want-to-play-who-if-possible".

My $.02 from a lot of time seeing it happen in the professional world ... any kind of tool that requires user participation to function correctly is a tool that will end up letting down on its expectations.

 necron99 wrote:

3. Me and my peeps play each other every week at the FLGS so why am I playing them at the tournament?
Happened to me at the NOVA Open last year. Great event, don't get me wrong, but my second game was against a dude I play every week. In my little necron mind I see me being able to go to my website and create a "friends" list. The tournament management system would use this list to try and make sure I don't get paired up against any of them - unless it's unavoidable of course.

As someone who runs sports tournament brackets for school events using tourney software, I am constantly driven nuts by people who expect this type of request and don't realize how insanely hard this becomes to deal with.

The second you move someone in a bracket or ranking, *SOMEONE* is then playing someone who is easier/harder than they deserve to be playing. And those people then complain "Why was I supposed to be facing a 2-6 record and now I am facing a 4-4 record?"

My favorite is when we seed by record and then some coach who brings like 6 kids for one weight-class says 'put my kids on different ends of the bracket so they won't face off in round 1 or 2. And then I spend the next 30 minutes with angry parents complaining why their kid who had a BYE now has an opponent or why their kid who is the 5th seed in a 64 bracket is not facing a total scrub in round one? Some even take the brackets, then recalculate the bracket based upon seed and record then write the newspaper on how a coach cheated their kid out of winning by moving it so they don't wrestle their teammates in round 1.

If you go to a tourney with your crew... of all the things to accommodate, "not playing your little friend" is not one of them. Especially after round 1 when it begins to be based off record and power rankings... you have to accept it if you and your friends end up in similar rankings and face off.

The thing is - what we do is we simply bracket by states in the randomized pairing of the first round. If someone lets us know a cross-state buddy and them always play all the time, we'll accommodate that as well. Doing it in advance in this way generally is quite easy, and we don't adjust brackets once they are set.

What we generally do NOT do, is accommodate requests not to play some buddy from the other side of the country. Chances are they don't play together all that often anyway, and you want to avoid people sneaking around trickier matches early while others have to randomly face them.

necron99 wrote:Hi Fellow Dakkanaughts,

I've been kicking around an idea for a tournament management system. I'm a website developer by trade and have been playing 40k for a couple of years now and have recently entered the tournament scene. Mostly just for fun - I've only ever managed to pull out best painted so far but I'm good with that. Anyway, I've noticed problems that my analytical/developer brain says "I can fix that".

I like the idea, where there's a need there always steps up someone to fix it. I wish I had more time to do something similar but I'll gladly offer inputs to help you along your way. A little background for me is that I'm not someone who typically plays in 40k tournaments but I play in Magic: the Gathering tournaments all the time and work hand-in-hand with many Tournament Organizers (TOs) for the game so offering my input from that side of the fence may be interesting to you.

1. What? There's a tournament this weekend?
Yep, I'm starting to figure out what the local FLGS's schedules are but still wouldn't it be nice if you could subscribe to a website and say "hey, when this FLGS schedules a tournament for [game system] let me know". Then, when the FLGS sets up a tournament you would receive an email giving you all of the details and a link to go register.

2. I drove over an hour and they were already full?? What the ****!
Hasn't happened to me YET but that's because I can see it happening so I make sure to get their crazy early if I can. As mentioned in the previous bullet item the FLGS can specify a number of seats so a) the TO knows he's full and b) participants will know they may not be able to participate if all of the seats are taken but could be placed on a waiting list.

Good ideas, but I'm wondering if you're trying to do too much here. The trend is that local stores are realizing this for themselves and are taking to social media to advertise their tournaments. I know my local Magic community definitely does this to make sure the players know whats happening where. Magic Prereleases are also a limited seats affair, meaning that if you properly announce it in advance, you will know how many players you can support and begin to take pre-registration. I personally feel that advertising to bring in players as well as making sure that signups and player space are taken care of properly should be in the hands of the TO themselves and relying on a third party program only would lead to issues.

3. Me and my peeps play each other every week at the FLGS so why am I playing them at the tournament?
Happened to me at the NOVA Open last year. Great event, don't get me wrong, but my second game was against a dude I play every week. In my little necron mind I see me being able to go to my website and create a "friends" list. The tournament management system would use this list to try and make sure I don't get paired up against any of them - unless it's unavoidable of course.

I know this feeling and it's even worse in the Magic community when you and your crew playtested for days beforehand then drove 6+ hours for the Pro Tour Qualifier only to find that two people in your group are paired in the early rounds. The tournament reporter for Magic doesn't care and can't really adjust that so it's just a fact of life for this game. However, I support this idea really hard for tabletop games like 40k because the games are much longer. I would definitely give it the first round, and the second variant on the size/length of the tournament. After that, it becomes really tough and would have to go based off of points records.

4. What was the outcome of the tournament besides me not winning squat?
The larger tournaments seem to be good with this but your local FLGS may not have a place to put it on the web - or the time. I was thinking that I could go to my website and be able to see standings for any tournament in the system and easily go to the ones I've participated in.

5. Some day I may have a "tournament record"...
I think it'd be nice if something tracked things like "Best general at Adpeticon", etc so you and the whole world could see.

Magic has a system like this in place already called "Planeswalker Points" where they can keep track of how you do in tournaments and allows you to compare yourself to other players in the local area/region/country/world. I think that something like this in the tabletop scene exclusively for larger events like NOVA and Adepticon would be rather nice. (Also, prevents spoofing for people who just have to win "measuring" contests)

6. Who's in the house?
I noticed people need to check in when they show up. I could see that being automated. Plus if you have multiple tablets/laptops/phones managing the event all of the TOs would know what's going.

Not so sure about this one, if you want something like this you can provide an accessible list of all tournament participants as soon as the tournament launches. After that, is it useful to the tournament or is it just useless social media tagging?

7. What's taking so long with the pairings?
I think for the participants it feels like hours and for the TOs it most seem like an instant. This is one area where I have no idea how TOs come up with what they do for the list. At NOVA it was groups of 10, I think, whereas in small tournaments it's just one list. Do they just list everyone in order by total battle points and pair them up that way? Dunno. This is where I'm really stuck.

THIS is where I saw "issues" with my few 40k tournies I've played in. Everything seems so difficult to figure out and varies from event to event on how the TO determines who gets paired and why. This is the area that I would love to fix.

If you've never played magic before, it's all done through an offical Wizards program that helps structure the tournament for you. However, the basics are this:
- In the first round, players are paired pretty much randomly
- Scores are reported and plugged into the system. Magic tournaments are a best of three, so for example you just click a button for that pairing that says one player beat the other 2-1.
- As soon as all scores are reported, new round is created and new pairings are printed. Given a 25-30 man event, it's definitely not unreasonable to have the next round out as soon as the last match ends in the previous round. (Given time for printing and posting, at most 2-3 minutes, if you go to a Grand Prix, which are 1000+, you can have 5-10 after the last result is input)
- Players are given 3 points for a round win, 1 point for a round tie and 0 points for a loss. Ties are broken by Opponent Game Win%, or how well your opponents did, then your GW% (I may have that backwards, there's also a third but it rarely comes up)

Now here's where I'm finding it challenging when relating to tabletop games because it isn't as simple as "Win/Loss/Draw" to rack and stack players. You also have some tournaments that use sportsmanship, others that use painting/theme, and rarely is it just a straight win/loss for the actual game itself as you also have points earned by objectives. This one will definitely require some thought.

8. How much time is left in this round, anyway? I need to know if I should be dumping guys out of my chimera...
Timing is everything, huh? I played in a tournament in March against a guy who had been playing for only a few months so our turns lasted realllllyyyy long. We barely finished turn 3. It would have been nice if I knew how much time was left instead of the TO yelling "10 minutes!!!" I could track that via my smart phone along with a host of other info. I guess I could also have just noted the time we started or used my smart phone stop watch but it's nice to know you're synced up with the TO.

Very simple solution here, the TO should have a display clock. Magic tournaments run 50min rounds and having a clock display counting down helps keep track of the time left. My FLGS just obtained a large, countdown timer hung up on the wall and can be used for both Magic and 40k, when the timer runs out the buzzer rings and the round is over. Overtime occurs at this point and whatever happens in overtime (limited extra turns in Magic) occurs to finish the round. Large magic tournaments always have this and allows for people to know how much time before they can expect the next round to begin. I remember this past weekend I walked in on a 40k tournament just beginning and they were amazed at the idea of using the large clock to keep track of their time.

9. Who's finished and how'd they do?
I liked being able to go around to check in with my peeps and see how they did. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at your smart phone and see who's still playing or if it's over see what the outcome was?

Even in the largest Magic tournaments, they don't do this at real-time. They can only report once the round ends and the next round starts, then the previous round's results are typically uploaded for people to see. Real-time isn't impossible, but can cause problems if there is an error on entry. Not sure how I feel about implementing something like this.

I really think there is a strong need here and am happy to see someone stepping up to take a stab at it. I'd be glad to help to sanity check ideas you may have. My biggest recommendation is to make sure you don't try to do too much and solve one issue at a time. That way you can actually make a difference.

We use a program called Swiss perfect, it's Chess tournament software, but it works well for 40K. You might want to take a look at it.

Good luck with the project!

I used to run some smaller tournaments and did a perl script to handle the pairing. They can be found from

http://iki.fi/hena/gw/tournament/scripts/

Dunno if that helps any.
The script could be easily modified to use DB backend. It can handle the table selection as well. If needed I can update them to handle required things. Essentially this could handle points 4, 7 and 9 (it generates a simple web page with the current situation and final result). Though you would need a web server to handle the showing of pages.

@YotsubaSnake

Funny you mention MTG. When I started thinking about this I also started looking at it as a generic system that could handle multiple game systems. MTG, FoW and chess were the two big ones but since I play 40K I was going to start there but keep other game systems in mind while building this. Figures they've already got something for MTG. I see there's some chess tournament programs out there, too, but are lacking in the functionality I'm considering.

#1 & #2: My feelings are to always shoot for the moon. It's easier to throttle back With the system I'm envisioning it's almost like linked-in, facebook, myspace, etc. Let's say you're new to the area and you don't know all of the clubs, FLGS, etc yet. When you move into your new place just change your address in your profile and you'll be alerted to any tournaments within X miles of your address - no need for trolling.

#3: Yeah, definitely the first round. That would be easy enough. The rest of the rounds is questionable only because I don't know what the standards are for parings. My feeling is that there is no standard as I have not seen any documentation on the net about it.

#4 & #5: Earlier on in this thread there was a reference to a website that does maintaining of rankings for all kinds of stuff. This one I'll need to noodle a bit because if peoples stats only applied to tournaments played via my system then certainly not every stat would get reported since not every tournament would use my system and would make my stats not as useful. So I may need to come up with a way for stats to be reported without the tournament being played via my system.

#6: Could be useless social media tagging. My thought process here is that participants have already registered via the system (unless they are walk-ins). If someone doesn't show up they need to be taken out so no matter what you have to acknowledge who the participants are prior to pairing. Also when they show up they could specify their army. I'd love to figure out how to get their list in there but that might be asking too much. I could do it from a technological standpoint just not so sure how that would go over knowing that participants would need to upload a file with their army list (notepad or pdf) into the system. Wouldn't have to be done at the time of registration just any time prior to the tournament. On the plus side that would give the TOs time to mull over everyone's list to make sure they were legal.

#7: Like I said - I haven't seen anything resembling standards for pairings yet. Looks like everyone just sort of does their own thing.

#8: Yep, that's what I was thinking of doing too via a PC monitor facing the participants. Then I started thinking about possibly making an App for that.

#9: Hhhhmmmm....yeah, if someone makes a data entry error then you could get some erroneous reporting. Worst case then results wouldn't be viewable until the next round started.

Sanity checks are always welcome. Suggestions and information from alternate universes are always welcome as well



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Reecius wrote:
We use a program called Swiss perfect, it's Chess tournament software, but it works well for 40K. You might want to take a look at it.

Good luck with the project!

Hhhmmm...that's interesting. I was looking at this software to see how chess could be handled within my system. How do you utilize Swiss Perfect for your tournaments? Which paring system do you use?

 necron99 wrote:
@YotsubaSnake

Funny you mention MTG. When I started thinking about this I also started looking at it as a generic system that could handle multiple game systems. MTG, FoW and chess were the two big ones but since I play 40K I was going to start there but keep other game systems in mind while building this. Figures they've already got something for MTG. I see there's some chess tournament programs out there, too, but are lacking in the functionality I'm considering.

yeah, I would just write off doing one for MTG because the game has it's own official system and there is absolutely no benifit to using a third party system because you lack the advantages of gaining points and whatnot. Keep it focused on Tabletop games like 40k and you'll be fine there.

#3: Yeah, definitely the first round. That would be easy enough. The rest of the rounds is questionable only because I don't know what the standards are for parings. My feeling is that there is no standard as I have not seen any documentation on the net about it.

If you pursue this, then you have to consider how people are avoiding the first round pairing. Putting the potential social media aside, I would say if two friends show up to the tournament, they could, when registering, sign somewhere on the slip that they do not want to play each other the first round. I'm thinking this because then you could prevent people just showing up and there's a certain player nobody wants to play with and majority end up saying "I don't want to play against player X first round" in order to pick and choose their matchups favorably, instead of two friends trying to not play each other early.

#6: .....On the plus side that would give the TOs time to mull over everyone's list to make sure they were legal.

I love the idea that you could turn in the list early, but I'm concerned about players wanting to change their list beforehand (could cause issues if a list doesn't get updated in time and they show up with the wrong one). I'm also concerned about lists getting leaked beforehand, allowing other players to create an advantage through scouting. There are also probably a few others, but those are the main two I'm thinking of.

Again, having worked on all sides of the MTG scene (both staff and player) it's pretty much nailed down really well. Players, upon registering, are given a form to fill out their decklist. Card names and quantities are listed on these for the main deck as well as the sideboard and are turned in all at once prior to the tournament starting. This gives time for the TO to go over the tournament that is about to happen and reminders for players (Format, rules reminders, any other annoucements) Then, the players are paired up and begin their first round. While the first round is happening, all the lists are being checked by the staff for any registration errors (Incorrect number of cards, illegal cards, etc)
Once all the lists are checked and errors identified, penalties are issued the very next round. Usually this is round 2, but larger tournaments could take until round 3. I think GP Charlotte, I got a registration error Round 4, but that was the biggest GP ever at 2693 players. The penalty issued is a game loss for majority of the errors, making the best of 3 match into two games with the penalized player at a disadvantage. If the error is an illegal card, then actions are taken to bring the decklist into legality. This usually means adding basic lands in place of the offending cards. But this doesn't come up much in the frequently played formats as Standard rarely has bannings and Modern/Legacy the bannings are very well known.

When I think about how to apply something similar to a Tabletop tournament, I would probably give a "points penalty" for a list registration error, notified to the player at the start of the round following the discovery of the error. A set number of points should be established and applied to the final score. If the player's list turns out to be illegal (they brought too many points) then an action should be taken to correct it. Though I'm not sure, I would make it so that a whole unit is removed from his list and unable to be used in the event. I'd love to bring this into discussion if there are any established methods but this is getting off track.

#8: Yep, that's what I was thinking of doing too via a PC monitor facing the participants. Then I started thinking about possibly making an App for that.

I highly suggest a the PC monitor option, because that way everyone can see the same time and it makes it less likely for something to crop up.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Reecius wrote:
We use a program called Swiss perfect, it's Chess tournament software, but it works well for 40K. You might want to take a look at it.

Good luck with the project!

Hhhmmm...that's interesting. I was looking at this software to see how chess could be handled within my system. How do you utilize Swiss Perfect for your tournaments? Which paring system do you use?

Chess and MTG use swiss style pairings. I've seen some work for this on the 40k tournaments I played against but I didn't feel it was done very accurately.

for your reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament

In particular, after skimming that article I found the sub section on eSports interesting for pairings in the first round for players that are on a team. This could be helpful for our "avoiding friends first round" issue.

We use Swiss perfect for all of our events (we are the most active tournament organizers on the West Coast of the USA, and I believe the country, actually) and here are our experiences with that particular software after having run literally dozens of events, some with hundreds of players:

It is easy to use, already bug free, and accessible.

It is cheap.

It handles pairings almost instantaneously and uses 3 systems of strength of schedule tie-breakers which also helps with final standings.

You can avoid friends playing each other first round by inputting their club association.

It keeps records of round by round pairings and results.

You can input your own data for things such as battle points, although it requires you to get a bit creative with the system.

It is flexible enough to adapt to a variety of formats.

If you want to create your own spreadsheet/pairing software for 40K, by all means go for it and if it is better than what is out there now, we would happily pick it up. I would just suggest taking a look at that particular program first as you may see that it suits your needs and saves you a lot of work.

For a "universal" 40K pairing software I believe you would have some trouble as the only real limitation to formats is the TO's imagination. A system that could do Swiss, Battle Points and Hybrid systems would be the baseline as those are the most common formats.

Good luck, let us know how you progress. Also, hit up Neil from the 11th company podcast, I believe he has built a spreadsheet for pairings in 40K already, might be something you would want to look into for inspiration?

Wow, excellent input, gentlemen!

Let's see where I reply here:

Yep, forget about even looking at MTG. Sounds like MTG's publisher/manufacturer must have some input or control over that software.

#3 - developing a friends list to avoid bad pairings would work a lot like it does on facebook. I could try to 'friend' Mr. Brandt via my profile page because I know he would kick my butt (if I were a less scrupulous player - which I am not) but he would have to confirm being my 'friend' thus preventing a rash of people from erroneously becoming Mr. Brandt's friend. Where as at my club where Mr. Smith and I probably play each other at least once a month he would confirm being a 'friend' thus preventing any friend- shenanigans

#6 - Yeah, if you're like me still tweaking your list the night before. But then I know some of my peeps who have their list down to a science. So it could save some time or no time at all. In order for lists to get leaked out then I'd say you have a very dishonest TO as that would be about the only way anyone else would know what you submitted. Unfortunately all the advanced AI in the world can't prevent that...or maybe it could...hhmmmm...and I will call it SkyNet....

I don't know about penalizing people for illegal lists. I was at a tournament where a kid managed to get an ork list past the TO with something like 500 points to many. It wasn't discovered until the start of the second round. The kid was like 14 and I don't think they adjusted his first round game.

#8 - True enough. I started getting carried away with the whole app thing...

@ Reecuis

I went to their website. The software was only $50 or something. Very cheap. When I get to that point in the program I may just buy it so I can learn it's pairing secrets and reverse engineer it.

I agree you can't come up with a universal system or a tournament format for every occasion as it would a list a mile long. To start I would do what you suggested which would be more of a baseline and add as needed/suggested based on what makes sense.

Thanx for all of the very useful advice - will definitely keep you posted as I progress.

MVBrandt wrote:
My $.02 from a lot of time seeing it happen in the professional world ... any kind of tool that requires user participation to function correctly is a tool that will end up letting down on its expectations.

There's no doubt I'm going to NOVA in a couple of weeks - can't wait! Now about your two cents there Mr. Brandt...looks to me like the automated system, TorrentOfFire - which by the way is exactly what I was concocting except mine had a little more of FaceBook twist to it, does exactly what you're saying will be an issue. What if you don't have a smart phone/tablet with wifi? What happens when I realize I forgot to charge my cell phone the night before? I'm definitely bringing an extension cord and power strip to this event!

Don't get me wrong I think it will be at least as AWESOME as it was last year. Did I think there were some quarks here and there in 2012? Yes, but nothing that size is going to run 100% smoothly but from what I saw you guys were hitting the 99% smoothness rating.

Manual / tournament organizer / judge scoring is normal as usual; so, if you have any issues with your smart phone, or simply don't have one, you just bring it up like any other event.

And I am looking forward to seeing you! You should go check out the Torrent of Fire booth while you're there, and shoot the breeze with them ... you guys may be able to get some great brainstorming in.

The only thing more nerdy than two 40k guys shooting the breeze is two 40k programmer guys debating the finer points of software development

Yeah, I kinda figured you'd still be supporting the manual turn in of stuff. It would probably be helpful if TOF opened it's doors a week before NOVA so everyone can familiarize themselves with the app and make sure it's installed, etc. I've been following TOF's website/emails and am very excited to see what it will do.

Already done! app.torrentoffire.com

Ah, ok, so it's not a true app like what you would download onto your phone from the app store. Is everything being run through the website? If so I'll need to bring my iPad 'cause my iPhone screen is too small for us older folks to spend a lot of time on surfing the interweb.