Tournament Software Help

WWJ 2017-04-18 08:57:40 UTC #1

I'm hoping to run a tournament in the UK more like the US style tournaments, quite similar to how I see PAPA tournaments used to be ran. Just to see how the format is accepted.

Specifically:

From a bank of 10 games, you play 5 games on your ticket and these scores are ranked per machine and then totalled producing your final score. Players can buy as many entries as they wish in the qualifying period (8 hrs). players scores will remain in the system and contribute to the ranking - but, obviously, only the players highest finishing position will be used for final rankings.

After the qualifying period the top 16 players will then go through to the Q-Finals and play in 4 groups of 4 over 3 games, PAPA style scoring, with the top 2 from each group progressing to SF, where the format is repeated to give a final 4.

Now, I can write an excel spreadsheet (the limit of my programming ability ) to cope with this format, but was wondering if this was already out there and available for use by anyone?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Ta

KCB 2017-04-18 09:18:39 UTC #2

If you could successfully write an Excel spreadsheet that would handle this I would bow down to you as a god of Excel, but luckily there is actually good software out there so you don't have to touch the dangerous world of Excel VB. Check out the Drains Tournament Manager written by @kdeangelo (ping him for more info).

Snailman 2017-04-18 12:31:07 UTC #3

I believe these two statements are in conflict. Before approaching Karl for using DTM or @haugstrup for using MatchPlay, you'll want to determine and specify if you want qualifying similar to (a) how PAPA world championships used to be run, or (b) how PAPA is run now, as of PAPA20.

In (a), it's a ticket-based qualification, and every players' non-voided tickets (all 5 pin scores) do in fact get used in each pin's ranking table. But only a player's best ticket aggregate ranking score determines their qualification position.

In (b), each machine is treated separately, and only a player's highest score on each machine is listed on each pin's ranking table. This is called the Herb format or Best Game Unlimited Entry.

WWJ 2017-04-18 12:37:57 UTC #4

Sorry I didn't phrase the second quoted comment precisely enough.

All ticket entry scores count towards individual machine rankings, even multiple attempts from one person.
However only that person's best FINAL ranking counts. If they have 2 entries and qualify in 1st and 2nd place they don't get 2 places in the QFs. I have seen this format used in other comps for multiple high score comps used on different tables. (Effectively meaning if you qualify on 2 machines you get a guaranteed bye into the next round)

So that would be scenario (a) then?

haugstrup 2017-04-18 14:17:13 UTC #5

This is called "Card best game" in Match Play Events language

This is called "Best game" in Match Play Events language (with MP having several configuration options so you can run many variations on the format)

This is called "Group elimination bracket" in Match Play Events language.

You can try out everything MP offers at https://matchplay.events/ -- pay special attention to how queues work if those are important to you. Karl's DTM software is the gold standard of queueing and MP's implementation is not nearly as good (MP has individual queues per tournament versus DTM's shared queue between multiple tournaments; MP doesn't support queueing at all for card based best game and generally speaking queueing is more clunky).

keefer 2017-04-18 14:17:51 UTC #6

I have no doubt that I or someone else could do it, but this is definitely more of a database application than a spreadsheet application. I get the appeal, but it kind of makes my head hurt.

haugstrup 2017-04-18 14:19:07 UTC #7

I've seen some very impressive spreadsheets for card based best game out of Germany, but it's hard to present data to players in a meaningful way

WWJ 2017-04-18 14:40:59 UTC #8

I've used excel spreadsheets for all of my previous tournaments with no issues, just using simple cell based calculations, so no need for macros, although not an elegant solution it's very simple to understand the route taken to get the calculations and does the job. They even provide a perfect submission sheet to just be copy and pasted onto the IFPA site for submission.

The only thing I am having trouble with in this instance is dealing with multiple entries from the same person, as generally we don't use that format in the UK at all. The only way I can think of dealing with it is to name each entry as a slightly different person i.e. Wayne, Wayne2, Wayne3 etc. and then at the end simply remove the duplicates, but that seems a bit messy and confusing to display on the screen for people to see where they are.

Not wanting to complicate things with an electronic queuing system - The thing that Brits are well known for being able to do well is stand in a queue

Thanks for the help so far, I'll check out the options available

fletchtb 2017-04-18 16:17:33 UTC #9

If you want to stick it out with a spreadsheet, I run a monthly tournament using a Google Form/Sheet to enter and track results. I have a hacky method for adding a unique identifier to every result.

I add a column in my sheet to store a very small decimal like 0.00000001 and add 0.00000001 to every row in the column (0.00000001, 0.00000002, 0.00000003, etc.)
I then add that decimal to the score for the ticket/entry and then round the result to the nearest integer.

This gives me a unique score/identifier for every player and entry.

LOTR_breath 2017-04-18 20:44:35 UTC #10

There is also the @Adam Pinball Tournament Manager he created for RMPS. It works very well and if you wanted live results players could follow on their smartphones Adam could probably set you up on his server.

haugstrup 2017-04-18 21:38:22 UTC #11

So many options these days! I love it!