I’m just gonna save Andreas some time and say
This is a perfect suggestion to submit to https://matchplay.uservoice.com/
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From the MP perspective the main problem is that you don’t have enough machines to cover all groups. MP’s arena selection approach will ever assign the same machine more than once (except when you manually double up with banks like you have) because the absolute vast majority of tournaments are best served by this approach.
The problem is not choosing one game from each era as arenas are assigned, the problem is that you want to change this base assumption and have arenas be duplicated.
By creating banks for each possible combination you risk having MP assign the same machines disproportionally. It’ll essentially become a random distribution because you have far more banks than you need. Because you have so many duplicates of each machine you can end up with specific machines being selected far more often than others.
Have you run a test tournament with roughly 50 players? I’m curious to see how the banks are distributed – I fear it’ll be sub-optimal.
In my humble opinion I think you won’t see any difference in “fun” if you just create 5 banks (keep one 90s machine as a spare) and it’ll save you a bunch of headaches. Players are likely to repeat a bank during the tournament, but that’s going to happen with any approach.
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Adding players to tournaments has changed
There’s more coming here, but since I pushed out the big change I thought I should update this thread.
One of the things I always see people struggle with is adding players to their tournaments. The “Players” and “Add players” pages look so similar that it’s impossible at a glance to know whether you’re looking at the list of players already in your tournament or a list of previously used players you can add to your tournament.
All that is gone now. There’s just a list of players in the tournament and an “Add players” button. Clicking the button will open a dialog where you can add players to your tournament.
There’s a checkbox in the dialog so you can add many players without having to re-open the dialog all the time.
I’ve tried to make it harder to create duplicate players. When you enter a name for a new player, MP will search your previous players as well as IFPA to find suggestions for you.
If you add players by entering their IFPA number there’s now a confirmation step so you’re not stuck with a random player in your tournament if you get a number wrong.
Finally the “Batch” functionality will now accept both IFPA numbers as well as names. Yes, you can actually paste a list of names from somewhere else and add all players in one go!
Draw random arena
It’s been requested a few times. The Arenas page now has a tab called “randomizer” where you can have MP pick a random arena for you. Good for picking a tiebreaker game or similar where you just need a random machine picked.
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Edit players and arenas from your tournament
Forgot to mention that you can now edit player/arena names directly from your tournament. No need to “back out” to the global list of all your players anymore!
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Scan QR codes to add players / initiate a challenge match
Every player now has a Player Card. It includes a personal QR code as well as their Match Play and IFPA ID numbers. Mine is here.
You can find yours by clicking the button on the Match Play Live home page or by expanding the dropdown menu by clicking the “person” icon in the top right.
Tournament directors can scan the QR code to add you to a tournament (by switching to the “Scan code” tab). This is the most foolproof method to add players to tournaments. No risk of a typo in a name or adding the other player in the IFPA database that shares your name.
You can also scan player cards when initiating a challenge match.
I have more plan for scanning these types of codes in the future (like scorekeeping in Best Game tournaments or adding scores in selfie leagues). I’d love to hear any feedback around their reliability so I can make sure the scanner is as good as it gets.
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That is awesome, I really need to try using that feature. Thank You
Does the TGP calculator work for progressive strikes events? I’m not seeing anything. I’m not sure how TGP works for those.
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We don’t have progressive strikes on our TGP Guide (paging Dave Stewart if he wants to update the guide) 
For IFPA submissions just use the actual number of rounds played (counting the 1.5X or 2X multiplier where appropriate depending on the round). I would include the link to those Match Play results in your comments section so we can easily review/approve them.
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I haven’t updated the TGP calculate since 2015 so it doesn’t include progressive strikes. I won’t be spending time updating it (too many projects, too little time). The code is available for anyone to grab here if they want to take it over: https://github.com/haugstrup/IfpaTgpCalculator
I’ll happily setup a redirect from my domain to any new location someone wants to host this at.
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Heard. Thanks sir.
Question on Finals format “Group Elimination Bracket / PAPA Finals” in Matchplay…
Does player order on each game just go off of the seed submitted when the finals tournament began? I was thinking it would switch up so that one person is not stuck going first every time.
Here is the link to our tournament yesterday, if that helps clarify:
Thanks!
-Jeremy
That just puts them in the order they were seeded. Then you can have the players choose what order they want to go in and manually change it.
Also if you change the player order setting from seed to balanced for the playoffs that should reorder people so you don’t have to let the players choose.
This goes for game choice too. You can manually let the players choose or let the software decide.
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FWIW Many folks I know let the first match choice of order go by seeding, and then subsequent games go in reverse finish order. so the top seed picks order on the first game, then 2nd seed, etc.
For game #2, the person who took last place picks order first, then next-to-last, etc…
That makes sense. We have a lot of new people entering the tournaments, so we have been relying on the order of what is on the screen to dictate order. I don’t see though in the “Elimination Bracket / Group Elimination Bracket / PAPA Finals” format where you can change the player order setting…but I like the idea to allow the players to dictate the order in finals.
Qualifying we do have it set to balanced, so that is nice.
Thanks for the info!
@genex that makes a ton of sense and I have played in several like that…not sure why I just didn’t think to do it that way lol.
Thanks for the help!
Yeah, the player order setting is removed specifically for the “group bracket” format to make it match exactly how a PAPA finals bracket is run. Players are always shown in order of seed so players knows who has choice of order (since top seed always has first choice).
I would like to provide a bit more freedom there but haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
No worries! I think it is fine the way you have it really. Matchplay really does rock. Thanks for developing it!
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Tiered Swiss format: can I have a tourney that is 14 rounds instead of the current maximum of 13 rounds? Yes, I’m playing single game rounds.
Not without a lot work from me to generate tiers. If you want to play 14 rounds you’ll be best off playing regular swiss. 
13 rounds it is!!
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