So TPF had lots of tournament scoring issues that seemed to be based on the software being used. Could I get some pointers on best software to use for a large tournament or tournaments being run simultaneously to help point them in the right direction. Thanks.
-Tommy Skinner
Seems like for unlimited qualifying, they could use Karl DeAngelo’s stuff @kdeangelo or Adam Lefkoff’s stuff @Adam without much trouble. I don’t know the details of how to set up the software. The software would have to be modified to handle the “two day, add the point totals from each day” format TPF used to squeeze more WPPRs.
When I was at TPF there was maybe a 2- or 3-hour delay between playing a game and seeing the results, so anything that can improve that turnaround would probably help.
From what I heard about the weekend, they also need improvement in matchup management for their finals, especially in being able to tell players when they are expected to be ready. A format change would help greatly with this: when there are seven levels of byes, it’s not real surprising that some people won’t be ready when they’re needed, while others will sit around waiting for a round that won’t come for a long time.
Thanks Bowen that sounds great.
Cleveland Pinball Collective has used @Adam’s software numerous times with no issue. Adam was also very helpful about how to properly program it, which has a little it of a learning curve. Not sure how we’d do what we do without the Brackelope software by @iscrz (Isaac), league management software by @joe, and Adam’s qualifying software.
I have to leave a small plug for my own project here. I’m getting close to being able to let in a larger group of users on the tournament app I’ve been working hard on since December. I finally got around to programming the signup part. You can signup on the early access list at http://matchplay.events/
The app is meant to fill the gap among the several great apps out there (Karl’s Drains Tournament Manager and Isaac’s Brackelope are the ones I’m most familiar with). That means various forms on non-elimination match play formats (head-to-head or group play, swiss style pairing or not). My motivation is that I like playing non-elimination tournaments so I want to make it easy to run them. Especially pairing groups can be a pain without an app.
And since I’m a web guy it’s a web app (i.e. it works on an iPad, Android and a regular old computer).
I’ve been working with some tournament directors in the SF Bay Area that have been providing great feedback on the tournaments they’ve run on the app since January. I’d love to get more people providing feedback.
So yeah, sign up http://matchplay.events/ for early access and if anyone have suggestions on what to name my app I’d love to hear those as well 
Thanks I just signed up on the website.
People should totally sign up for this!
I have been lucky to get to use @haugstrup’s app in a couple of tournaments so far (and using it again in a few weeks) and it is an absolute godsend. I prefer to run non-elimination tournaments, but didn’t do them that often before because it’s such a pain to do it by hand. The MatchPlay software is extremely intuitive and easy to use, works very smoothly, and addresses a lot of the little frustrations I’ve had with other tournament software. It’s clear when you use it that it’s been designed with a great deal of thought about how to make the tournament director’s task easier. Can’t recommend it enough!
Can it do 4-player or is it 2-player only?
I just added 4 player support two weeks ago. There are also a couple of different pairing methods:
I also have automatic seeding based on IFPA ranking. It was pretty cool to have a TD just add people using their IFPA number (name and current rank are fetched in the background) and then have everyone be seeded for the first round automatically.
The biggest missing feature when is comes to tournament formats (tons of other missing features) is no support for playing banks of machines (i.e. each round the same group of people play multiple machines and the round total is the sum of the results). Once I get that nailed you would be able to run mini-Pinburghs with a couple of clicks.
wow this sounds awesome
Really excited about this. One of the biggest challenges of getting casual players into playing events is figuring out formats that lets people play lots of games regardless of performance, without having to drop a ton of $.
it’s great that there’s management software for all these formats. I’m interested in finding out if anyone has management software that works offline as I’d like to reduce the amount of single-points-of-failure such as when the network is spotty in some areas.
The team who runs the 24-hour Sanctum Battle would love to hear about this. Their event isn’t until the fall.
Brackelope stores its data locally and has the option to push results online. The tournament is unaffected if you lose your Internet connection midway through - you simply stop seeing updates on the live.brackelope.com site.
Is there a way to move a brackelope tournament to a different device, especially from live.brackelope? My understanding was no.
We’ve had panicked moments when the single ipad we’re running on ran low on batteries…
It’s not possible that I know of. A typical choice when building an app is between offline support and sync between different devices - you get to pick one, but not the other. You can do both but it’s a rather big pain in the butt to do, so it’s not typically a feature you see in non-expensive non-business apps.
I’d start carrying a charging cable or just charge your iPad ahead of time since they hold power for so long 
Nailed it.
I’ve been considering at least syncing player & arena names with iCloud, but it would probably be better to do a web based service anyway.
That said. Brackelope 2.3 should be avilable by the end of the week. It’s got the new Balanced and Swiss KO rules. I’m allocating more time to it these days so updates should come at a faster pace.
I know a lot of people that are looking forward to 2.3 and beyond