For round robin tournaments the player order depends on two factors: Whether or not you’re using WCS-style groups and what the seeding setting it set to.
Thanks for the quick response!
In the examples above WCS style groups were not used, according to tournament details of each tournament. Is the player order really random in those tournaments? In all of them there is one player who starts every single match. This player is always the one listed as the first player in the first match in all of the per round match listings.
Not sure if I’m understanding the concept of WCS style groups right. Would it have been better for this specific ECS tournament example that the entire 64 player field would have been put into one big 64 player Round Robin tournament with correct seedings, and then use 16-player WCS style groups?
Hi and good morning. I’ve now had breakfast and been able to read my own code correctly.
When I said “random” above what I really meant is that players are assigned a random seed. In other words the player order will be stable for each game, but players are randomly assigned a seeding position. So the same player (randomly assigned seed #1) will be player 1 for all their matches.
I don’t know exactly what it is you wanted with your tournament, but it sure looks WCS-style groups would’ve been what you wanted. There’s a description with example in the handbook: Welcome - Match Play Handbook
World Cup Soccer (WCS) style groups
WCS-style groups is a variant of a full round robin that is best used as a qualifying format. When using WCS-style groups, the field of players is first divided into smaller groups. (The size of these groups is chosen by the organizer.) A round robin is then played only among the players in each group. Players still each one point per match won. This matches the group stage format used at the FIFA World Cup, hence the name.
Players are divided into the small groups based on their seeding. For example, with 16 players and groups of four players, the following groups will be created:
Group 1 Seed #1, Seed #8, Seed #12, Seed #16 Group 2 Seed #2, Seed #7, Seed #11, Seed #15 Group 3 Seed #3, Seed #6, Seed #10, Seed #14 Group 4 Seed #4, Seed #5, Seed #9, Seed #13
Thanks. I’m still a little confused. Wouldn’t this random seed thing mean that in a round robin group of 16 players, the one with lowest seed is in super disadvantageous situation where he needs to start each game, but there is also someone with the best seed and gets to go second on every game?
I went manually through the first of the aforementioned groups of 16. It seems that for all other players the starting order balance works fine: all other players in the group start exactly 7 matches. But there is this one unlucky one starting each and every one of the 15 games.
Does this have something to do with odd number of rounds? No-one can start exacty 7,5 times, so it’s 7 for all but one and this unlucky one then balances everything out by starting all. Where the better balanced way would be to half of the field starting 7 times and half starting 8 times.
The implication here is that unless you are using WCS group and your tournament has a seeding of “IFPA” or “manual” then you should not use the player order in MP as the actual play order on the machine. There are a few tournament formats that are like this. I recommend flipping a coin or something similar (or play a double round robin to each player can play each position)
For the love of god, I cannot figure our how to use the grouped banks feature in order to run my tournament. Here is what I am trying to do.
Group Match Play, 7 Rounds, 20 arenas
I split the arenas in Modern bank 10 machines, and Classics bank in 10 machines thus creating two banks.
In round 1, I want to be able to select Modern Bank
In round 2, I want to be able to select Classics Bank
Round 3 - Modern
Round 4 - Classics
Round 5 - Modern
Round 6 - Classics
Round 7 - Modern
For some reason in a test environment when I try this, it doesn’t give me a selection to pick a bank, it only gives me a selection to:
Draw from all active banks
Don’t Draw Arenas (not recommended)
I must be doing something wrong or haven’t setup the banks properly any help would be appreciated so i don’t have to do this manually for every round.
The machines are spaced 3ft apart and we can only play every second machine in the facility so we have placed the machines in a certain order so every second machine is a modern or classics. That way we can utilize all the machines in the facility for our league and have a maximum of 40 players in the tournament.
How did you assign the banks? I think you need to go into the games, select edit and put them in a bank. Then that bank should show up on the drop down when you runt he round.
EDIT - I see what you did. Don’t do banks do balanced draws like a normal tournament.
You create “banks” by assigning the games a category. That is done by going into your list of arenas and editing them.
This screen is outside of the event you’re creating. It’s in your main lobby of all the events you currently have setup.
Select edit and change their category.
Ah okay i will try a balanced draw and see what that does.
Dude, super helpful man!!! Thanks for your reply works like a charm. Thanks for the Pinburgh format advice as well, I have the machine setup exactly in Pinburgh banks (5 banks), so we will be running a Pinburgh tournament hopefully in July and that advice will help when I create those banks.
Np. Your lineup of games is right up my alley too. Haha. I ran a tournament just like this in December 2019. I had to limit the number of players so I could do it, but it was fun having the crowd switch from new to old games each round.
Thanks still looking for an Alien Star thou 
I built the facility making sure we had the ability to hold major league / tournaments upstairs, so with 23 games, we can still do a 40 people tournament with the restrictions. Hopefully once we get back to some normalcy our league can handle up to 80 with the current setup. It will be nice to start playing again starting on Thursday so really appreciate your help.
man i miss those 2x4!
Got a set of 2x6‘s under Getaway right now in the arcade just for old times lol.
Question that just came up about tiebreakers. We had our first round of a 6 week league last night. There was a question about tiebreakers for grouping going into the 2nd week. Steve Baker and Robbie Howerton were tied 25 pts, each with 2 wins, 1 2nd. What method was used to determine Steve goes into group 1 and Robbie goes into group 2?
That depends on your tournament configuration (link to your tournament?), but it’s likely the answer is “random” from the Match Play side of things
Thanks. We thought it was probably random. Here is a link to the tourney, Thanks again!
Yup, you’ll have to break that tie yourself somehow
It’s all good. One of the players just questioned why he was in group 1 rather than group 2. Random it is!
