I’d be happy with having an option for manual pairing. That would help with any weird bracket formats people want to do.
The amount of time required to implement that kind of bracket compared to the number of people who would use the feature makes it a non-starter
@haugstrup First of all, Happy birthday!
I was wondering if it has been brought up before or if its not an “issue”/concern people have, but we have noticed on several occasions that when Matchplay is dividing players into groups for group matchplay, it is always the players on the bottom that gets put in 3 player groups. This seems not so fair, as there is a perception that it makes it harder for the players in the bottom to get up, as you are rewarded less for a second place than a 4 player group. The fact that there is one player less to beat does not really make up for this feeling. Also if you by some reason get in the tournament at a later round, you are often “stuck” in 3 player groups for a while.
I wonder, how would you evaluate the difficulty of adding a “random” selection of the 3 player groups to matchplay? Either random or balanced, but I would guess random is somewhat easier, less factors to take into account. The idea would be that through the course of a matchplay tournament, fewer players, especially the ones not so good, would be stuck in 3 player groups. It would also create less waiting time for these players, as 3 player groups usually with lesser skilled players (or just damn unlucky ones) takes much shorter time to finish.
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Thank you 
The three-player groups are handled differently depending on the pairing choice. For swiss pairings three-player groups are given to the players at the bottom of the standings to avoid having them play spoiler to the players at the very top. I can easily imagine the emails I would be getting from all the people who needed a 2nd place to win/advance to playoffs but they were placed in a three-player group for their final match…
For balanced pairing the three-player group assigned is also balanced. So if you feel strongly about this topic play with balanced pairings instead of swiss pairings!
Seems like a good incentive to show up on time 
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Yeah the “coming at a later round” was more an edge case when a leftover starts but after a main round players can join etc
Alright, I guess why we often have noticed this in our bigger group matchplay is because we do tiered swiss. So in a sense, when uneven number, playing better and getting in a higher position, and thereby a four player group is sortof an incentive on its own, for not meddling in the bottom mud
Thanks for clarification, and I interpret this as a “not bothering with this” idea 
and thats fair.
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Has anyone had issues with displaying Matchplay as a browser source from OBS?
I am on a pretty old version of OBS Studio (still on Windows 7 
) so maybe that’s my issue? I can get next.matchplay.events to display, but not any tournament page beyond that.
windows 7?!?
you fired!
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Unfortunately this is an issue with your old OBS version, so you may be out of luck until you upgrade – Matchplay Next uses some modern JS features that the Chromium in older OBS versions doesn’t support.
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Question on balanced pairing in a group match play tournament.
We recently hosted a 6 round group match play tournament with 21 players. Balanced player pairings were used. Based on the description of pairing players with previously unfaced opponents I would assume that each player would play all others at least once with these numbers. But one player brought up to me that he didn’t play 7 other players at all, which is one third of the field.
Is there other criteria the balanced player pairing looks at, or does the order in which players are assigned to a game affect the match making?
Just looking for an answer for one of my players. Thanks for your help!
It’s always nice to see the actual tournament data (so drop a link), but with 21 players you don’t have very many groups each round so a number of repeats is to be expected. If you want a better distribution you can play 12 rounds of head-to-head – that’ll give the balancing algorithm more flexibility to do it’s thing.
The balancing algorithm for group match play looks at previous opponents and number of three-player groups. More weight is put on balancing the number of three-player groups than the number of repeat opponents (so 21 players is a though starting point due to the number of three-player groups).
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Here’s the tournament:
https://next.matchplay.events/tournaments/120412
The player who brought it to my attention is Tom Bentley.
Balancing three player groups first makes sense and I know with a smaller # of players exacerbates that issue. With that in mind I looked at the number of three player games each player had and realized they would only face max 16 opponents in a six round tournament of 21 players. So no matter what he wasn’t going to play at least 5 people.
Thank you the explanation!
Looking at the number of repeat opponents the distribution here looks pretty good. Go to the player stats and scroll down to the last table: Match Play Events
Tom was the “worst” in the sense that he had a couple of repeat opponents, but the differences here are really small and he’s definitely no outlier.
Similarly, on the topic of Balanced Grouping, if I set a 16 player, 5 round tournament, there are arrangements in which you get a true round robin in the sense of each player grouped with every other player a single time. (16 player 5 rounds is just one player-round setup that allows this, there are various others). Would this set up on a group matchplay tournament on Match Play Events correctly end up at the round robin result? or, should I test it myself to find out how consistent it might be with this?
And, if it won’t calculate those groups on its own, would you consider hard-coding it if the player-round formula fits:
4 player groups ( (players-1)/3=rounds) -
28 players, 9 rounds
40 players, 13 rounds
52 players, 17 rounds
64 players, 21 rounds
3 player groups ( (players-1)/2=rounds) -
9 players, 4 rounds
15 players, 7 rounds
21 players, 10 rounds
27 players, 13 rounds
There’s no guarantee that you’ll end up with a perfect round robin. My gut feeling is that you’re more likely to not. Hard coding a special treatment for this specific schedule is not something that’ll happen.
If you’re looking to play a round robin I recommend the Max Match Play tournament format. As a bonus it’ll play faster than a group tournament.
Thanks for the response.
That’s true, but with a small number of machines, 4 player groups reduce the perception of time spent not playing.
This “perception of time spent not playing” idea confuses me.
Is this something we should care about and/or spend effort mitigating?
Our group plays at a barcade on a weeknight, 8 machines, 30 players. I just think people would think the night was longer if it was all two player games.
I have a feature request. It’d be really cool to follow a location/set of locations, and see everything happening there within a single filter. I could add the half dozen or so comp spots near me and easily see what’s going on at those places when I’m not in a tournament there at any given time, versus searching for the venue or tournament name, or using the tournaments near me meature (for example, when I’m traveling). Low priority request, but it’d be cool to have all of my “favorite” locations present in a given spot.
@arenapoutine I’m working on something right now that I think will scratch this itch for you. Keep an eye on the “next generation” topic for updates: Match Play Events: The Next Generation
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I was trying to get a arena preferred for my tournament this Saturday its a launch party but it doesn’t seem like i can plz help.