Chompy
Active Member
How to Host an Online Tournament Guide
By Wugaza(Ricky Berliant)
Date: 5/11/11
By Wugaza(Ricky Berliant)
Date: 5/11/11
a. Introduction
i. Myself
ii. Purpose of reading the guide
b. Signups
i. Number of players
ii. Everyone having different schedules
iii. Deadlines
iv. Rules of the tournament
v. Organize a list of names
vi. Substitutes
c. Pairings
i. Observing whos active and whos not active
ii. Skill Level
iii. Time Zones
iv. Announce to the contestants that “Round ___” is up. Round “___” is almost over.
v. Disputes
vi. Link to the description on where to get the program
d. Closing the tournament
i. When is it a good time to close the tournament?
e. Conclusion
i. Point of reading the guide
a. Introduction
i. Myself
Welcome everyone, my name is Wugaza (aka Ricky), I’m a competitive TCG player as well as a Brawl player. I’ve been playing Pokemon TCG since 2001, which is a long time lol. As far as Brawl goes, I’ve been playing the game since the game came out and I took a break on playing it for a year, due to school work.
ii. Purpose of reading the guide
For those of you who are interested in hosting tournaments, please read my guide called “How to Host an Tournament Guide”. I hope everyone will enjoy reading the guide and get something out of this. The whole point of this guide is to properly host tournaments, not only get them done quicker, more importantly have everything run smoothly and so everyone will have good experience. It also builds your reputation when your hosting tournaments, so more people will want to join your tournaments when they realize how good of a job you did.
b. Signups
i. Number of players
The more players join, the better, right? Not always. Expecting a big number of players isn't always a good thing because a host tends to have high hopes of getting a big turn out and you’re never going to gather that many players in a certain amount of time. If you came to a situation where your expecting 32 players to sign up for your tournament and all of a sudden only 5 players sign up and its only 3 days away from the deadline. Then you may as well cancel it with only 5 players when it’s going to go by quick. A minimum amount of players that a host should have is 8 (or more) and no less. If the tournament had 26 players instead of a full 32 players, that is acceptable.
Don’t pressure random players to join your tournament, just so you can get more people to join, unless you know that person is into that game. Also, make sure everyone that’s in the tournament has PokeGym account, so they’ll have a way of contacting any member that signs up for that tournament.
ii. Everyone having different schedules
Let’s face it, everyone has busy schedules in their daily lives, such as school work, jobs, chores, taking your boyfriend/girlfriend out on a date, workout at gym, watching a movie, homework, etc. The point is that people should not only give out their time zones, but they should also tell the opponent when it’s a good time to play the match and actually play the match. It’s very easy to forget when a person has so many other commitments in their everyday life and the last thing they have in mind is a online tournament, and it doesn't hurt to remind them every 2 days or so.
iii. Deadlines
Deadlines for signups ends whenever the host feels it should be the time to start the tournament. Try to make it a 2 week deadline, giving players enough time to sign up. If you delay it for too long, too many players will forget that they signed up for the tournament and they might want to drop out when it gets close to the deadline. Speaking of dropping out, when it gets close to the deadline and players drop out, just be sure to update the member roster list on the front page for everyone to read and inform players that there are some spaces left for the tournament. After when the deadline ends, round 1 should start a day or two after the deadline for signups. Again, PM everyone that the deadline is over to remind players that they are still in the tournament and the tournament is still going on.
iv. Rules of the tournament
If you don’t know what the official rules are for a certain game, be sure to ask one of the PokeGym members for some help. They will be more than glad to give you some ideas of what the standard rules for the tournaments. Be sure to explain the rules simple and clear, so everyone is on the same page.
v. Organize a list of names
Always keep a player member roster list on the front page, so members will know if they have joined the tournament or not. Be sure to include information on there like their username, gamer tag, friend codes, time zone, and their preferred contact.
vi. Substitutes
Sometimes, a tournament may come across a situation where if an extra member wants to join, add their name under “Substitutes”, just in case if one of the players dropped out of the tournament. Another thing I would like to point out is some people will have this excuse, like “I can’t play because I’m going on vacation" or "I have too much homework" etc. What you do to handle that situation is have a sub take your place until that player comes back to the tournament.
c. Pairings
i. Observing whos active and whos not active
During the rounds, you begin to notice who’s active in the tournament and who’s not active. For example: If player A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H all entered in the tournament. Let’s pretend it was B vs. G and they haven’t played their match and it’s getting close to the deadline while everyone else played their matches (very common in tournament play). The player that’s more active should be the one to advance. How do you determine that you may ask? By looking at the amount of posts that player made on that topic thread. Again, let’s say B made 8 posts on there and G made 16 posts, that means G would win by default if neither of them advanced. A lot of players will say “I tried to contact this person, but didn’t respond”. Handle it by determining who actually had the most posts as well as considering who made the initiative to setup the match. Even though you’ll hear tons of complaints from some people who didn’t play their matches, they will have to deal with it and it’s just a lesson to them that they need to be more active.
ii. Skill Level
Ah, Skill Level pairings, one of the trickiest parts of hosting the tournaments. Often times, you’ll hear a lot of people complaining about the pairings because “their opponent is too hard” or “how come he/she got an easy opponent and I got a hard opponent round 1”. Should the members complain about this? Yes. If the best player in the tournament squares off against the second best player in the tournament. If the second best player lost in round 1, that means the second best player will be able to bulldoze his or her way through the losers bracket easily, giving the lower ranked players a chance of winning the tournament. Also, the results turn out to be inaccurate because the lower ranked player did not deserve to make it that far when you pair them up against easy players. If you’re not sure where their skill level is at, ask one of your peers and they can give you an idea of where their skill levels are at. It may not be a bad idea to have a Power Ranking thread to make it easier for the host to pair up the brackets.
iii. Time Zones
Time zones are important because it gives both players an idea of when it’s a good time to setup the matches. Sometimes, a player may come across a situation where both players can’t play each other because of completely different time zones. For example, it could be 5:00 AM in Player A’s time zone while it’s 2:00 PM in player B’s time zone, meaning that both players could never play against each other because of the opposite time zones. Therefore, you might want to reconsider pairing up different players.
iv. Announce to the contestants that “Round ___” is up. Round “___” is almost over
Often times, members can forget that they signed up for the tournament. The host should always send a PM to EVERY single member signed up that “Round ___” started and include the link in there, just in case they can’t find the page. Don’t harass the members that haven’t played their match. Otherwise, players will want to drop out of the tournament and they will have a bad experience. When the round gets close to the deadline, PM the members who haven’t played their match that “Round ___” is almost over to remind them that their matches still need to be played.
v. Disputes
The biggest challenge when it comes to hosting tournaments is handling disputes. Let’s pretend Player A said “I beat Player D” and player D said “I beat Player A”. Now how are you going to handle this situation? There are 3 different approaches of how can handle the situation and where it can take place.
1) Ask them if either of them have proof of who won. (Video or picture)
2) If not, then ask them what happened during the match and find similar common points from both spectrums
3) Use your judgment to determine who is the more honest person.
After you have determined the player who faked the result of the matches, the player that decided to be dishonest should be DQ all together from the tournament. You may want to make a list of players that are in the “Dishonest/Disputer” category to keep these players on their toes. Don’t be harsh by not letting them join another tournament, give them a second chance by letting them join the next tournament. Hopefully by then, that person has realized that it’s not a good idea to dispute matches.
vi. Link to the description on where to get the program
For those of you who want to be hosts, click on the link below to download the bracket organizer.
http://allisbrawl.com/tio/
d. Closing the Tournament
i. When is it a good time to close the tournament?
Often times, the host will come across a situation where most of the players don’t play their matches by the deadline. For example, 3 matches have been played. Yet, all 13 other matches haven’t been played. Either players are so busy with their everyday lives that they forgot about the tournament, or they completely lost interest in the tournament for whatever reason. In other words, the host should close down the tournament, since it’s not worth having a tournament with only 6 players active. There will be times when it’s dead, so you may want to keep on bumping up the thread for people to notice. Again, if it’s dead and no one plays their match, then close the tournament.
e. Conclusion
i. Point of reading the guide
The whole point of writing this article is to educate players who are interested in hosting tournaments. I know that so many players have made mistakes and didn’t have the slightest clue on how to handle certain situations, which is why I provided this guide to you in the first place. Hopefully, we can get tournaments to run more smoothly and quickly. I hope everyone enjoyed reading my article and a click of the “Thank you” button wouldn’t hurt
! ~Wugaza~
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