When Will Tournament Directors Enter This Decade

I'd like to add a few notes from my own limited experience in trying to use these programs for brackets.

Brackelope

- You can't report the score of a match; you can only indicate who won and lost.

-Blake

Thanks for the nice writeup. I think you're wrong on this point above, however. For example, you can go here: http://live.brackelope.com/t/j6yt7 and see that there are scores reported, both on the bracket and the results.
 
Wait, you post brackets before a Calcutta? I've never seen that before. We do calcutta's before the brackets just to avoid reason #1.

And the programs they are referring to aren't on your laptop or tablet, they are hosted by a website that you just access from your computer. Anyone with any smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC can go to that website and see the brackets.


Of course you don't draw the bracket before the calcutta. That's not what Ray meant. But every tournament I've attended that has a calcutta has a crowd of people checking the brackets to see how their horses are doing and who they're playing next, as well as spectators wanting to see how the draw came out, or generally checking progress.

Two of the three programs listed host the data online. The third is indeed stored on the local computer hard drive.

-Blake
 
I'll admit I've only ran about 60 tournaments on 64 man boards and I have only been involved in about 150 128 man boards.

Here's the issues.

1. If the event has a calcutta the buyers,corporations, partners and potential partners will be studying the boards the entire event. It's part of the fun for them.

2. If the computer crashes during the event, then what? Must be ran from the cloud? Blue screen, virus', malware

3. We are ready for the technology and it's coming whether we like it or not but if the people funding the event want paper brackets, they are getting paper brackets. It's that simple.







Ray

Yes Ray - the buyers, players, grandmothers, sisters, wives, mistresses can all sweat the action on their computer or smart phone. Your family can keep up with your action while you concentrate on the tournament.

I have only run 23 tournaments on a computer and never had a computer crash. Even had a full beer spilled into my laptop. I suppose anything could happen. A smoker could catch the paper tournament board on fire as well.

The people funding the events don't know how to promote or make money from their events. That is painfully obvious to me the past 20 years. I turn a profit at every event I have run - for me and the bar.
 
Yes Ray - the buyers, players, grandmothers, sisters, wives, mistresses can all sweat the action on their computer or smart phone. Your family can keep up with your action while you concentrate on the tournament.

I have only run 23 tournaments on a computer and never had a computer crash. Even had a full beer spilled into my laptop. I suppose anything could happen. A smoker could catch the paper tournament board on fire as well.

The people funding the events don't know how to promote or make money from their events. That is painfully obvious to me the past 20 years. I turn a profit at every event I have run - for me and the bar.

This is easy to say for someone who has embraced technology and has experience with it, but for someone who is out here...in the trenches.....dealing with people who I need to embrace technology for me to survive, I am sharing the cold hard facts.

There is a plethora of pool fans from past generations supporting pool who can't even get an email. Many who barely have a flip phone. Some that can't even turn on a computer and don't care to.

Sure we all know how great it would be for them if they would just embrace what going on. The fact remains that it will take another generation of players to be retired from playing and just watching, buying players, putting horses in action etc to bring your vision to pass.

Ray
 
Gotta agree with Ray. Pushin 30, I can tell I'm one of the younger guys on here. The older generations have not embraced technology so easily. My grandmother has a phone with a full keyboard, still has trouble texting, and mostly uses her computer for email and to play games. Smart phone? Apps? Fugheddaboutit
 
And then you have people like Billy Incardona, Keith, Jimmy Reid and others that are definitely 'old school' but have learned how to embrace the world of computers.

If you aren't moving forward, you are falling behind. Pool is so far behind, it is laughable. Hell even Nascar which you simply need to follow along on who is turning left has a ton of computer assisted coverage in their broadcasts these days.

There are bigger things coming Ray for pool and the use of technology that will blow your mind. I wish I could tell you about them but you will have to simply wait and see. Hopefully you, as some think of as a leader in the game, will embrace it and show it to others to help them improve their experience.

Ask a player if he would rather sit there for 45 minutes after the Calcutta while the TD does the draw the old school way or wait 2 seconds, then look on his phone to see who he plays and get on with the tournament. I bet he is the first to tear up that paper bracket.
 
I have ran over 100 events on the Bud Tour program. Many times I would run 8 or 10 in one day.

I personally don't trust the draw system it has. and where there is big money at stake I don't think anyone wants the draw done by a computer randomizer. There are many features about it I like such as match timers, color coding and the wheel spinners feature are all great.

I did have a power supply go out that was connected to my laptop once, during a tournament! I didn't realize it until the computer shut off with all the data lost.....or so I thought. We had to put the tournament on hold, pieced the remaining bracket together on paper, sent someone to get a replacement power supply and did it all at the same time. When the power supply showed up and we turned the computer back on, Bud Tour had saved everything!! We had already got things back underway but it was a relief none the less.

Another thing about a nice "Old School" bracket on major events is sometimes the winner would like to own the brackets as a momento. Regarding the person who mentioned a spill on the brackets.....Brackets should always be placed on a wall for bigger events. Especially when there is an auction involved.

If anyone would like to see a very nice job on brackets...stop by the Big Tyme event this next week. I will also be posting pictures on my Facebook feed which is live on the home page of PoolActionTV also. Brent Thomas and Ming Ng do a great job!

Ray
 
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Brackelope also allows seeding now,too. And I only paid $5 for the full version,so the price has gone down.

[EDIT - sorry for the huge picture, I was on my iPhone]

Hmm, still wants to charge me $9.99:

sytadyme.jpg


And, not that many tournaments are seeded, but I don't see any options for that. All I can do is click "Start Tournament" and the matches are randomly set up...

-Blake
 
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Hmm, still wants to charge me $9.99:

sytadyme.jpg


And, not that many tournaments are seeded, but I don't see any options for that. All I can do is click "Start Tournament" and the matches are randomly set up...

-Blake

Under the full version, under style, click elimination. Immediately blow style is a seeding option, for random seeding or seeded placement.
 
Thanks for the nice writeup. I think you're wrong on this point above, however. For example, you can go here: http://live.brackelope.com/t/j6yt7 and see that there are scores reported, both on the bracket and the results.

[EDIT AGAIN - OK , you have to click OPTIONS, then you can input the scores. Disregard the below post. Sorry. :) ]

Thanks for pointing that out. I see the scores on that link, but don't see a way to input them from the app. This is what I see if I want to mark a match as complete:

y4e4y8ys.jpg


Maybe the pro version allows match scores...

-Blake
 
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Yeah,the pro version allows more options. Ran my last two tournaments on it. Works great for smaller tournaments.
 
Yeah,the pro version allows more options. Ran my last two tournaments on it. Works great for smaller tournaments.

Yeah, I see that I haven't fully explored this app. It might be worth $10 for me to upgrade to the full version, just to explore its full capabilities.

Thanks for your help.

-Blake
 
One of the more interesting things I find about people that complain how things aren't done to their specifications, is their ability to justify the expense of the project without putting forth any real effort or money.
Also there is a lack of concern on how a particular skill set might not be in the targeted peoples lives, and lack of care of how much THEY might not care.

I like the old school brackets, I like the idea of keeping the game simple, I do not need huge amounts of technology to make me comfortable. I do not need some little control box dictating my life around a predetermined schedule that was digitally crafted by little 1's and 0's.

"All you have to do is," is easy to say when in reality you have to spend money, get contracts, appease all peoples preferences, spell names right, advertise, dedicate a person to do it, etc and so on."

Of course if it is so simple ... why has it not been done already?I am sure it is simply because it is an original thought by a genius? LOL no.
 

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ur right

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
u r right, i know people who do grocery shopping online. i dont see why not, it would cut down on expenses too, all that money saved could go to tournaments purses and stuff, its the old school guys who think their kids might get sexually harrased if they use the internet.
 
One of the more interesting things I find about people that complain how things aren't done to their specifications, is their ability to justify the expense of the project without putting forth any real effort or money.
Also there is a lack of concern on how a particular skill set might not be in the targeted peoples lives, and lack of care of how much THEY might not care.

I like the old school brackets, I like the idea of keeping the game simple, I do not need huge amounts of technology to make me comfortable. I do not need some little control box dictating my life around a predetermined schedule that was digitally crafted by little 1's and 0's.

"All you have to do is," is easy to say when in reality you have to spend money, get contracts, appease all peoples preferences, spell names right, advertise, dedicate a person to do it, etc and so on."

Of course if it is so simple ... why has it not been done already?I am sure it is simply because it is an original thought by a genius? LOL no.
he said it was free, resistance kills progress. i clock in and out of work online, for free.
and this doesn't keep the game simple, its the exact oppsite, you are just confortable with it so you think its good. good luck expanding the game when an advertising agency or newspaper wants to sere your paperwork and the 24 year old kid whos doing the story loses interst immediatlley bc he doesnt even know what hes looking at, get with the times.
 
As much money as they are making at this event, you would think streaming would be a no-brainer. And as much attention this receives in the pool world, you would think online brackets would make sense. What do I know? I drove three hours to watch this event (loved it).
 
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