The IFPA server that Match Play communicates with to validate IFPA numbers is currently not responding. This has resulted in a ton of not-very-helpful error messages. Getting the IFPA server back online is beyond my control, but I have fixed the error messages to be more useful.
You can still add players by IFPA number if it’s a player already known to Match Play, but you cannot add a player by IFPA number if that player has never played in any Match Play tournament before.
If you are using IFPA seeding for your tournament player rankings for existing players cannot currently be updated. Match Play will use the player ranking from the last time it could successfully update the ranking. Completely new players cannot be added by IFPA number (see above) and will receive the lowest seeding possible.
I’m sorry for all this trouble. It’s out of my control
Adjust the number of strikes awarded in group knockout tournaments. You can choose if each four-player group is awarded 1, 2 or 3 strikes
When creating/editing a tournament you can write a short (250 characters max.) description of your tournament (or a message to players or whatever). This description is displayed in a yellow highlighted box on the “Info” page on Match Play Live
I tried searching but couldn’t find an answer in this thread.
In best game, where do scorekeepers go to approve player-submitted scores? As TD, I only ever use the organizer interface and I’m only now trying to enlist some extra scorekeepers.
Scorekeepers access the scorekeeper section by going to the “Info” page on Match Play Live for your tournament. At the bottom of that page there’s a blue “Open Scorekeeper” button.
Now for the bad news: If you’re doing a selfie tournament, only the tournament organizer can approve scores. I ran out of time when implementing the selfie stuff and never made it possible for scorekeepers to approve scores
Now that selfie tournaments are about to be nerfed in next year’s WPPR system I’m playing wait and see before implementing more selfie features. I suspect there will be a lot fewer selfie tournaments next year
The location that I run tournaments at are trying to move to running them on matchplay.events, and we had our first live test on Tuesday. One thing that made it difficult is we normally have people come in a few minutes late. Is there any plans on making it easier to add players after the first round has started?
Other than that, the SMS features and the ease of running every kind of tournament makes it so much better than Brackelope for me.
What tournament format are you running? On standard group matchplay you can add players at any time. You can even delete a round if someone happens to arrive right as a round is drawn (I have used this feature several times)
Still not a problem, but it’s a three-step process:
Add the late players, they will be included in the second round
Use the “Adjust strikes” feature to manually give each of the late players an extra strike
Tell the late players to show up on time to avoid an automatic strike for round one
If you want to be exceptionally nice you can tell the late players to play each other and only adjust strikes for the loser(s) of that extra game. I don’t usually recommend that solution because you’ll have players show up late forever, the automatic strike for showing up late is a teachable moment.
Speaking of Match Play Events: I’m working on a pingolf bracket format this weekend (like the IFPA Pinmasters finals brackets). I’m currently cursing @pinwizj and “direct play” requirements.
Time permitting the next format will be “card”-based Best Game tournaments. Think PAPA world champions or some of the Super League formats out there.
After-weekend update: No card-based best game tournaments, yet but two other features done this weekend:
Pingolf finals
This is the finals formats used by IFPA Pinmasters. In Match Play it’s called a “Pingolf elimination bracket” because that’s exactly what it is. Just like a group elimination bracket, but you enter points manually for each game and the two people with the lowest point totals advance in the bracket.
I also changed things so you can now only start a pingolf/group elimination bracket if you have exactly the required amount of players. E.g. for a 16 player bracket you need exactly 16 players to start the tournament.
This solves bugs where three-player groups would only have a single player advancing and the amount of byes for the first round could be calculated wrong in certain cases.
If you don’t have the precise amount of players, you should create “dummy” players until you have the right amount. Give these dummy players all last places and they function sort of like byes.
Match Play API access (in beta)
If you can write computer code and wished that you could get data out of Match Play… well, now you can. Match Play will pass 2,000 tournaments this week and there are over 100,000 match play results and 60,000 single player games (for best game/selfie/pingolf tournaments) to query. If you’re good with stats I would love to see what you can get out of all of this.
A small feature request: Any chance you’d consider updating the app manifest (/manifest.json) to include:
"display":"standalone"
and
"start_url":"/live"
This would allow folks to add a shortcut to MatchPlay, so it’s treated more alike a ‘native’ app, similar to the way Tilt Forums are set up. I’m someone who tends to keep 80 different chrome tabs open on my phone, so it would be nifty if MatchPlay behaved more like a native app, and didn’t get mixed in with other tabs.
I can do that. I had this enabled for iOS a long time ago, but had to remove it because Mobile Safari really handles these “fake” native apps really poorly
Group brackets with byes
You can now create some group bracket tournaments with byes. The following bye structures are supported:
12 players: 4 byes
24 players: 8 byes
28 players: 4 byes
Printable scoresheets
Next to the header of an active round there’s a “print scoresheets” link. Click that, then hit print in your browser.
If your tournament has more than one game per round it’s one group per sheet of paper with space for player signatures at the bottom. If you have only one game each round the sheets are more condensed and you need to get out some scissors.
Thank you! I’ve been meaning to ask for this. The monthly I run is usually 16 qualifiers but sometimes it’s 12 if attendance dips, so this is actually very helpful for me.
You’re welcome! It has been virtually impossible for me to do in the past, but when I forced these tournaments to have the exact number of players (see pingolf bracket announcement above) it also gave me the option to introduce proper byes.
