Someone just asked me if there was an open thread for questions around Match Play Events. There wasn’t, but now there is!
Ask away and I’ll do my best to answer. I will also post news and updates here.
4 Likes
I love match play! Thank you so much for creating it.
Do you have any plans to output all match results from a tournament to spreadsheet? I’m a data geek, and would love for it to be easier to run stats on my tournaments.
1 Like
I hadn’t thought of it, but it can’t be that difficult. What would be included in your ideal spreadsheet? Would a JSON file with the results suffice (that would require some processing before it could go into Excel)?
1 Like
I look forward to using this nice software next month (and possibly later this month trying it out for a best-game GOT launch event).
Do you have a list of helpful hints, pointers, or lessons learned from other events posted somewhere?
Some of my initial thoughts and questions:
-
Can you grant scorekeeper status for a certain period? In a best game format, if I’ve got volunteers serving a 2-hour shift, I only want them to have ability to enter scores during their shift.
-
You may want to mention in the Sign Up / Modify Account page, that the email used to register with Match Play must be the same as IFPA. (it’s mentioned elsewhere – just not on the screen that matters: where you choose which email to use)
-
Possible improvement: Perhaps add Play Duration as a characteristic for each pin/Arena for match play or head-to-head events. And then for each round, the tourney director can choose whether to prefer long-playing or short-playing pins. Something as simple as Short/Mid/Long for three options.
-
General Pairing for Group Match Play: Is it possible to have Swiss option be similar to the Swiss option in Head-to-Head (where after placing players against “adjacent” win-loss players, it still attempts to place players against those that they haven’t played yet)? I noticed that the Swiss option does so in the Head-to-Head format, but in group Play, the Swiss option explicitly says that no attempt will be made to do this.
1 Like
I used matchplay.events for a group match play event on Saturday and it was awesome. Highly recommended to anyone who needs tournament software!
Quick question - Is there a way to clear out events in my “completed” list? I ran a bunch of test tournaments to get a feel for how some things work and I’d like to clear those out so my list only has actual past tournaments.
1 Like
You can, but it’s a bit annoying. You add the scorekeeper at the start of the 2-hour period and remove them again at the end. So there’s some manual work involved.
I do want to add “pin code” based scorekeepers so anyone who has a pincode can keep scores. That way you can have dedicated tablets for scorekeepers. You type in the pincode and they hand the device back to you when their shift is over. This would be the best solution for you, but I don’t have the feature implemented yet 
Very good point. I’ll get that added! You can change your account info at any time to match your IFPA profile, but I agree it’s easier if people know to use that email the first time around.
You’re not he first to mention this. It’s definitely on my roadmap to let people add specific properties to arenas/machines. As you can guess the arena matching algorithm gets more and more complicated with each change so it’s a balancing act for sure.
I know that TDs locally will use the arena timing information to simple deactivate longer playing machines if things are moving slowly.
Of course if you switch from “swiss” player pairings to “balanced” Match Play will let you start the next round before the current round is finished. This really helps to move things along faster.
Head-to-head and group play pairing algorithms are completely separate because… well, because they are quite different in practice. For head-to-head it was simple to attempt to match people with unplayed opponents. For group play it’s much more complicated partly because groups are harder to generate, but also because group play has fewer ties. So people would bounce all over the map as they are moved up and down the ladder for matching purposes. That’s why I haven’t looked at this for group play yet.
1 Like
Thanks for trying out Match Play! The bad news is that there’s no way for you to clear out that list right now. The good news is that you’re not the only one with this pain and I will fix it soon 
1 Like
JSON works great for me (preferred, actually)
Is there a way to change the player in a group after the round is drawn? I had a situation arise last week when a player (Player B) arrived after the matches were drawn. Another player (Player A) planned on leaving earlier, so offered Player B his spot so we didn’t have to redraw. So Player B played as Player A. I figured I could change it post hoc, but alas, I cannot.
1 Like
Even easier. I’ll get something set up for you
1 Like
There is not 
But I don’t see why there shouldn’t be. It’s not something I see happening very often, but it would be pretty simple for me to add. The only problem is time 
1 Like
Matchplay.events is the bomb. Using it again this weekend for our huge 24 hour marathon final battle. Last year 40 players managed to get in 20 3 game rounds in 24 hours. This year we have 64 players and hope with matchplay.events this time it will go even smoother we can get more rounds in!
-Jim
2 Likes
What’s better than one pinball tournament? A series of pinball tournaments!
I’m still working out the final details (displaying results on Match Play Live), but as of a couple of days ago it’s possible to organize a tournament series or league season using Match Play. I thought everyone here would enjoy the news ahead of the official announcement
The short version: You tell Match Play how many tournaments you want and Match Play will keep score and calculate the overall standings from all tournaments in your series. You can also use this to run your own pinball league!
Read all about it here: https://matchplay.events/tournaments/leagues – then go try it out for yourself.
If you have any problems email me at play@matchplay.events and we’ll work it out
4 Likes
whoa that’s awesome - will def have to try this since this is a popular format for WPPR reasons 
1 Like
Alright, to download a JSON document with all your tournament data:
- Go to your tournament
- Click the “export” tab
- Click the export button to download the file
All timestamps are UTC. It’s just a dump of the database models so some of the names might be a bit cryptic. Let me know if you have any questions
2 Likes
Is there a way to setup a double elimination tournament? I’ve been thumbing through the settings and I haven’t been able to find it if it is there 
1 Like
You can see all the tournament formats here: https://matchplay.events/tournaments
Match Play supports pretty much every tournament out there, with the exception of… Double Elimination brackets. There are two reasons for this: 1) Writing the code is tricky and 2) I’m not fond of the format so I lack the personal incentive to put the work in.
Funny anecdote: One of the reasons I made Match Play was because I was tired of always playing in double elim. tournaments and I wanted to make it easy for tournament directors to organize other kinds of formats
If many people ask me for double elimination tournaments I’ll add it. I’ve marked you down in the “yes, please” column.
1 Like
Ha! Well there ya go. Everything else looks awesome though; very clean interface and I really like the saving of previous arenas / players.
Thanks!
2 Likes
this is awesome! Thank you!
1 Like
@haugstrup any chance of having the option of running a two stage tournament. Like x rounds of swiss followed by a knockout for the top x players from the first stage.
1 Like