When Will Tournament Directors Enter This Decade

[allen_jr]

I just saw that someone posted the picture of the handwritten brackets for the SBE Open.

Why is it that this tournament - and many many others for that matter - don't have their brackets online? It is 2014. If they don't have the savy to create an online bracket themself and post to their website (if they had a website), there are plenty of free to use brackets online.

http://challonge.com/ is just one example.

It just astonishes me. There are tournaments all over - not just some small $5 entry fee bar tournamnent - but tournaments that are apart of a tour that still sit there and write out the entire bracket by hand. They draw the players to their matches the old school way by drawing out playing cards to match the player. This kills about 45 minutes when the tournament could be running.

Then you have 20 people crowded around a tournament bracket wanting to see who plays who. All they would need to do is complete it online and everyone use their smart phone.

I have a bracket that was created by a friend of mine using Excel - just enter the player names on a list, click a button and in 2 seconds the bracket is populated. Click the winner of each match and it moves the winner and loser to the appropriate next position on the bracket. It also calculates payouts, etc.
This is a backup for when the internet fails.

It is not that hard.

Watchez is the teacher

I don't have time to read this whole thread - but brackets have been online since before the event started - as of midnight Wednesday you could see the brackets here:

http://www.superbilliardsexpo.com/brackets.html

There is a link on our homepage, under the picture slider that takes you to the brackets page, it's about 5 inches wide and says:
"NEW! 2014 Tournament Brackets - Click here"
http://www.superbilliardsexpo.com/index.html (look under the pictures)

The URL is also printed on the front of every scorecard that a player receives.

The directors also explain this to players as well.

I do appreciate people sharing good sources for automating the bracket process. I would love to find a better more modern solution. The few I've researched couldn't accommodate an event of our size - but I'll look into the ones suggested here when I have more time.

 

[watchez]

Thanks Allen - hopefully AZ home page gets this info so people that didn't have this info will have it now.

 

[Fast Lenny]

I agree that using an online bracket like challonge makes sense. I have messed with it over a year ago and thought it would be perfect for when I stream a tournament so I can share the link and people can follow along with the monthly one pocket I would stream. I have no problem with events having a handwritten board at the venue but if it is streamed or people are interested in it such as a pro event, get something online better then some fans cell phone picture even though that is appreciated. :smile:

 

[DetroitLarry]

So I figured I'll throw my two cents in on this. I have been running weekly tournaments for a few years now, mostly in the 20-40 player range but some bigger ones as well. Tonight will be my 188th tournament as TD. I wrote and actively maintain a website called NomadPool.com to help make my tournaments run smooth. Maybe it can help yours too.

My tournaments have all of this going for them...

- Live online brackets, of course
- SMS (txt msg) invites to remind players (if I skip sending invites, attendance suffers)
- Players can reply to the invite text message to accept and join the signup list
- SMS (txt msg) to alert players when they're up (and on which table and who they play)
- Leaderboards that keep track of everyone's ranking
- Venue specific leaderboards so you see how you match up locally
- Achievements on player profiles (Ex. 2nd place, 5x wins in a row, ran a tourney, etc.)
- Live stream tab(s) are integrated right into the tournament page alongside the brackets
- Live stream utilizes ustream, justintv, or tvmike.tv, you just link your channel
- Table assignments are handled by the app
- You can prioritize the tables however you want so the better tables are used longer and the crappy ones are given back first
- It knows which table(s) are being streamed and to which channel
- TD can pin any match to a given table if needed (Ex. pin top players to the stream table)
- TD can "deputize" other users so they can help report matches or do any other TD task
- TV-out page shows the ordered waiting list (I *never* get asked "when do I play next?")

If you're interested at checking it out, I'm running my weekly Blind Draw Scotch Doubles tournament tonight at 7:30pm Pacific time (10:30pm Eastern)

You can check out the stream (no audio yet, sorry) and the online brackets here...

http://nomadpool.com/tournaments/455

You can see who's signed up early right now, and as people pay, you can see them become confirmed. When I hit start later tonight, the partners will be randomly chosen and the bracket will be automatically drawn. This part takes just a couple seconds instead of 30-60 minutes like I've seen at some other tournaments.

If you have any questions about my tournaments or the NomadPool system in general, please let me know. Anyone can use NomadPool for free to run their own tournaments! I'd love to see other TDs embrace it and I know it can help other tournaments run smoothly and gain exposure. Let me know if you're interested. You can send me a PM here on AZ or shoot me an email to ldamman@nomadpool.com.

-Larry

 

[SloMoHolic]

I wrote and actively maintain a website called NomadPool.com to help make my tournaments run smooth. Maybe it can help yours too.


...


-Larry

Now that's what I'm talking about! I will definitely be checking this one out. Thanks for sharing your work!

-Blake