Does anyone feel they have good organization for a Tournament Director’s Kit? I’m trying to get a bit more organized and in thinking about the last set of larger/smaller events I’ve run, I usually schlep a bunch of stuff in a used box and call it a day, but it’s often fairly disorganized.
As I’m thinking about it, I feel like it breaks down into three categories: Paper, Small Things, Big Things
Paper / Flat Things - Could fit into an accordion file
Name Tags
Envelopes
Scorecard Printouts
Rules Documents
The nifty two-page helper PDF for rulings
Paper Brackets
Machines Settings Checklist
Machine Signage (i.e. “Play Extra Balls”, “Plunge Extra Balls”, Machine Setting Notes, etc.)
What do others do? I’m trying to get to a point where I have a “grab and go” bag for weekly evening events, and more robust options for larger all-day or multi-day events.
I have a laptop bag I take to all my tournaments I run. It has in it:
A laptop (with charger as it’s that old it has no battery life)
Printouts of scoresheets
Printouts of rules
A LOT of pens
I also have a spare wallet so I can keep all monies separate from mine if need be, but I usually consolidate it all anyway and work out how much I have to pay-out based on actual numbers registered
That’s it.
Larger tournaments
I’ll take my toolbox which has long-nose curved artery forceps (ideal for reaching round orbits, or picking up smaller items which have become lodged somewhere they shouldn’t) and a magnetic stick, but there’s usually plenty of others to actually work on machines if things need fixing.
Following up on this to share what I’ve put together across the past few weeks. Thanks to those who replied with some additions to make. I got a cheap backpack with a handful of pockets, plus some storage items to assist in organization.
Paper / Flat Things - Using an zippable accordion file - Amazon.com
Name Tags
Envelopes
Scorecard Printouts
Rules Documents
The nifty two-page helper PDF for rulings
Paper Brackets
Machines Settings Checklist
Machine Signage (i.e. “Play Extra Balls”, “Plunge Extra Balls”, Machine Setting Notes, etc.)
Small Prizes (Keychains, Stern Army Dog Tags, Broken Pinball Parts, Pins)
Other Things For The Backpack
Cheap Laptop for MatchPlay.events logging
HDMI Cord
Wireless Mouse
Bag of Pens that you don’t mind people stealing
Clipboard
Money Bank Bag (w/Envelopes)
Larger Things - I’m still working on storage for the “Larger Things” category but this will be at-home storage with the ability to grab-and-go what I need for larger events.
Maybe I’m the odd one out but I would prefer some sort of playoff for a tiebreaker, even if it’s one ball instead of a full game. I prefer to keep much skill in a tournament as possible and it would not sit well with me as a player to lose a pinball tournament literally “on a roll of dice”.
If you use Match Play I can recommend the new-and-improved randomizer built right in to the software. It can flip coins, pick numbers and arenas. See it in action:
For me, I try to lay out within the rules document the conditions for actual tiebreakers vs automatic tiebreakers.
Full day event? More likely to be a proper tiebreaker.
Four-round two-hour weeknight event? More likely to be automatic.
I have found that often the dice get used for seeding among tied playoff qualifiers for weeknight events. If seed 6 and 7 have the same record and no other way to differentiate, then the dice come out.
I have most often been using the dice for random prize giveaways. We’ve been giving away Stern Army swag and restaurant gift cards that way to non-Finals qualifiers.
I noticed that I have to redo the process after it gives me a random arena. Can you leave the button active so I can keep producing more random arenas if I want? Sometimes I need to do it again if a game is being used or if it doesn’t produce the game type I want.
@chuckwurt I added an “Again!” button but because computers are hard it was easiest for me to make it go back to the previous step. So you still have to click twice, but better than having to close the dialog completely.
