4 player group knockout using Matchplay with big screen view is fantastic! Thanks Andreas! 3 player not so much. It is either too punishing (2 strikes,) or too lenient (1 strike). It does play long, but the social benefit and the lower stress quotient (sans 3-player groups) make it my preferred knockout format.
I am curious about this round robin group format that Snailman mentioned. Is their any software that handles this?
Matchplay does round robin
But not for group play. Itās actually a really good idea because a head-to-head round robin takes forever to finish. Playing in groups would cut down the time needed significantly (machine choice becomes much more important though!).
Bumping this thread. Has anyone else tried out this format? How did it go?
I want to run a tournament lasting approximately 5 hours for 20-25 people. There are enough machines that nobody has to wait. Iād like to implement the 1 strike rule for 3-player groups but am afraid weāll be playing forever. At the same time, Iām worried some people might get knocked out in three to four rounds and not feel like they got their moneyās worth.
Howdy, we have done this on two different occasions. One with two strikes in three player group and one with one strike. Our last one had 23 players and lasted about 6 hours. We had 8 machines. Both were 3 strikes per player. If we get 15ish players we will change that to 4 strikes on the next one. Let me know if you have any questions.
6 hours sounds good to me, provided thereās a lunch break in between. Were players generally happy with the set-up or did people get burned out?
Everyone seemed to enjoy. We had several players from 2 hours away come to both so they must have enjoyed it. You have to remember that a lot of players are going to get knocked out pretty early on as well and wonāt be hanging around.
the only major issue with this tournament, using Swiss matchup especially, is the possible unbalanced time of certain games in the round. If you have 3-4 good players paired together (hopefully not on a LOTR or a SM) then their match could be 2-3x longer than other people in the roundā¦
This happens frequently with 2 player head to head knockout but is further exacerbated with 4 players knockout with Swiss paring.
Fun format though, especially when you have restricted amount of machines compare to players Qty and you have TIME 
I still like MatchPlay with Balanced paring so you control the # of rounds and avoid recurring ātop playerā paring which introduce longer downtime for other players but that is just me.
I think our issue was longer playing games, not longer playing groups of top players. Though when you got the best group on the longest playing game, it did drag a bit.
Should also mention that I think the winner of our 23 person event received 12.33 WPPRs (COMO Strikes II), with 80% TGP. It grades out decently, but not perfectly. It is great WPPR bang for the time buck.
Just ran this 4 player, 3 strike format today. Love the software! Thank you very much !
20 players , took just about 4 hours. Games were a mix of eras, set up tough but playable. Used 6 games which allows for one spare in case of a major malfunction and nobody has to wait during those first 3 rounds where everybody is in.
The matchplay software saves TONS of time. But just in case the internet went down or some other fluke, I was keeping a running tally on an eraser board.
Did you do random draws or Swiss style? Just curious how you paired people after they got strikes.
Random draws.