I have finally released my baby - https://matchplay.events/ - to the public. Match Play Events is a tournament app that runs anywhere (iOS, Android, your laptop). My testers have been using it in tournaments over the past six months, and I have received tons of great feedback. Now anyone can give it a try.
The app handles seven different tournament formats:
Head-to-head match play
Group match play
Knockout (e.g. 3 strikes)
Group knockout
Single elimination brackets
Group elimination brackets (think PAPA style finals)
Pingolf
Awesome features include:
Live results and standings for players (with personalized info if players create their own user accounts)
IFPA integration (adds players using IFPA numbers)
Swiss, balanced or random player pairings
Balanced or random machine assignments
Balanced or random player orders
Play on more than one machine each round
There are both a free version and a paid version. The free version includes the most popular tournament formats and up to 32 players so you can use it in real tournaments without paying. There is also a 14-day free trial of the paid version with no credit card required so you can try everything before paying.
As a special intro offer, you can use the coupon code tiltforums for 20% on your first year, bringing the cost down to a measly $2/month.
Let me know if you give it a try. I’m committed to incorporating feedback from tournament organizers and players, and I’d love to hear from you. I’m happy to answer any questions here or at play@matchplay.events
Can anyone speak to the differences between this and PAPA?
Would also like to say that this software is really nice, and Andreas is quick to respond to any inquiries. We are using Match Play Events for the Cleveland Pinball League Season 4 Kickoff Free-play Tournament this Sunday, and I’m excited to try the group knockout format. With this format, even with only 6 or 7 games, a field of 20-40 people will almost always be in a match, and not waiting!
Just to clarify: That’s a group elimination bracket, not group match play. For group match play no player is eliminated while in a group elimination bracket two of 4 players in each group are eliminated each round.
The app requires an internet connection. If the connection is sketchy you can reload the app when you get a connection again. It’s important for me that you can use whatever device you want (if your ipad runs out of battery you can just log in from your friends Android tablet) and provides always up-to-date results for players. That means I have to store all results etc. on my server (“in the cloud” if you will).
There’s a huge difference between the brackets, and I perefer the PAPA one. Here’s why. In the CPL bracket, 4 players who qualified 9th-16th are assured of making it to the second round, while 4 players who qualified 1st-8th are assured of NOT making it through. The #8 player, for instance, is penalized by being matched against the #1 player, while the #9 player, who qualified lower, gets to play #16. Either #1 or #8 gets knocked out, while either #9 or #16 goes through. That’s really no reward for qualifying high. Normal bracketing takes the highest seed against the lowest, 2nd highest vs. 2nd lowest, etc. during each round. #1 plays #16, #2 vs. #15, etc. to #8 vs. #9. That better rewards good play during the qualifying phase of an event. There are other ways to do matchups that still reward good play, but less so than the PAPA version: for instance, #1 vs. #9, #2 vs. #10, etc. to #8 vs. #16. I’d still stick with the PAPA vesion, it was taken from what’s most common in other sports, e.g. look at the golf tour’s match play tournament pairings. PAPA does the same thing.
Everything runs in the browser so just point Safari on your ipad to https://matchplay.events/ to get started. After creating an account and signing in you can add Match Play Events to your home screen to get a nice icon to click and use.
It’s the best of both worlds: I can make an app for all platforms without having to duplicate work and you get updates at a much faster pace. E.g. I fix bugs immediate and you don’t have to wait two weeks for Apple to “approve” of my changes.
I get requests from tournament directors that needs a faster turnaround time than that. The latest example is a TD who wanted to try out a tiebreaking formula for group match play. He got in touch Sunday, I made the changes Monday and the tournament was Thursday. Having that kind of flexibility is very important to me.
Looks awesome! Can’t wait to mess around with it and try it at my next monthly. Speaking of, good thinking to make an option for a “test” tournament. However, the checkbox does not appear! Running Version Chrome 43.0.2357.130 (64-bit)
I was the TD who was mentioned by Andreas, and I just wanted to thank him publicly for making it his mission to improve how we run pinball tournaments. Match Play runs really well and every TD option is explained, which is a big plus when setting up your tournament. I also really like how you can add a player to certain tournaments after they have already started, because it happens that players show up late…over and over and over again…
Perhaps I am just misunderstanding @BMU , but I feel like you are looking at my brackets as if it is a head to head elimination bracket. It is a 4-player match play bracket, which is indicated by the color-coding. So #1 is not just playing #8. It is #1, #8, #9, and #16 playing together. They play 4 games against eachother using 5-3-2-1 scoring which is the same format as our regular season. The top 2 from each group move on. To me, this is the fairest way to make these groupings.
Used the “Group Knockout” on Sunday with great success! I posted the live link to standings on the games so players could check progress and find other info easily during the tournament, and many used this feature. Group knockout was a lot of fun, and personally I found it more enjoyable than the usual head-to-head. We had 23 players, and with 6 machines to play on, that meant everyone was in a match at all times, not waiting for one. Tournament finished up in ~4 hours. Like Brackelope, it also generates results in a format that is ready to submit to the IFPA. Very nice, @haugstrup!
I’m very excited to hear that you liked the format. It’s very important to me to offer these group formats. I hear from tournament organizers that people really enjoy playing in groups – especially for newcomers it’s great that you always have two other people to talk to while waiting for an opponent to finish playing.
My mistake, you’re pairings match PAPA. And yes, more major tournaments now use 4-player rather than head-to-head since it’s perceived as both a bit less “flukey” and more fun. When you have a limited number of machines, it reduces waiting for an open game, although when one machine takes much longer to play than the others, the wait time between rounds while everyone else waits for that group to finish is twice as long as in head-to-head. [I’ve seen plenty of that lately!]. A reminder to TDs, your tournament only runs as fast as your slowest game, and you should expect it to be picked each round just because it plays long.
I have the advantage of being responsible for the game setups at Euclid Tavern, one of the CPL locations and host to many one-off knock-outs. Another great tool in both matchplay and Brackelope is that they display average game times for each tournament. This data has proved very helpful as I make slight game set-up adjustments every week, in hopes of keeping all average game times within a few minutes of eachother. This is especially important in the pacing and balance of knock-out style tourneys.
Okay, I double-checked my group brackets and they follow the PAPA brackets. It’s all identical*. Beware that PAPA (and Match Play) sorts players by their original seed after each round has concluded.
For 16 players. I didn’t go through all variations on how three-players groups are generated. There might be differences.
Can I suggest a bit of a walkthrough/tutorial on the website? I’d like to poke around, but don’t really want to create an account just to see if it’d be useful for the league I play in.
