How to run a tournament? - at least some pointers

[Pokealjovin]

We are about to have our first tournament in our league. We are not an official league, so I don't have access to the application for the TO from Pokémon.com.

So here is my concerns:
- I want to have 3 (maybe 2) groups, Junior, Senior and Masters (or Seniors and Masters, if we don't have enough players).

How do you run it in a Swiss-type tournament? Do you run it as 2 separate tournaments? (pairing Juniors together, Masters together)?

What if you have only a couple of Juniors (say 3-4?) not enough for a separate listing, no? Do you pair them with Masters? If so, how do you pair them?

I'm expecting more Masters than Juniors, hopefully a couple of Seniors as well.

 

[bullados]

If you're doing everything unofficial, then just use www.challonge.com. They've got a good Swiss pairing system that works mostly right. If you have the numbers, run separate tourneys for the Jr/Sr and Ma guys. If not, try doing seeding, giving the Masters really, really high seedings and the Jr/Srs really, really low seedings. That should ensure that you keep the kids reasonably separate.

 

[Pokealjovin]

What would be the minimum to run separate tournaments 8 players per group? I've registered with Challonge, and tried it a bit, however, I haven't seen how I can change seedings?

How many rounds should I plan?

up to 16 players : 4 rounds?
up to 32 players : 5 rounds?

If I can have enough Jr and enough Sr. to have their own group, then that would be great!

 

[pokeMATHter]

You can run a small swiss tournament pretty easy. All you need are different types of energy cards.

If you have 8 players, take two grass energy, two fire energy, two water energy and two lightening energy, turn them upside down and mix them up. Have each player pick a face down card. Those that have the matching colors are your first round pairings and they play each other.

You then take 4 energy cards, two grass and two fire, mix them up. Have the four people who won each pick a card. Again, matching colors means they play each other. Then repeat with the 4 players who lost.

For the third round, you should have two undefeated players. They play each other. You also have two players who have not won. They play each other. Then do the card thing with 4 players who are 1-1. You may have to manipulate this group a little bit, and break the pairings if players end up paired again with their earlier opponents. If this happens, use the matching card procedure again to match one player with someone they have not played yet.

At the end of this round you will have one undefeated player - the winner of the tournament. Calculating who is second takes some work, but I think you would be OK just recognizing the winner.

If you have an odd number of players in the tournament, add a single energy card of a different color to the pool. If the player picks that card, they get a bye. If you have an odd number of undefeated players, again add the single energy of a different color to the pool. The player who picks that card gets "paired down" against one of the players with one loss.