Help Topic: Tournaments

Notifications

Be sure to go to your forum's My Settings page and enable notifications for this app, if you wish to receive notifications for such things as team invites, tournament start reminders, and more!

My Profile

This is the part of the app where all of your teams, tournaments, challenges, matches, etc... are listed. This is a way to keep track of everything you are involved with in the tournaments app.

Teams

Before joining tournaments, you must first be on a qualifiying team. Depending on settings for the tournament you wish to join, you must be on a team whose number of members is within certain guidelines. Each team has a leader and can also have a co-leader.

Note: If you join a team while on a tournament page, it is NOT automatically registering you for that tournament. Teams are created independantly.

Create Your Own Team

If you see a button for creating a team, then you are allowed to create your own team. Fill in the settings for how many people, including yourself will be on the team. If your site uses a point system, you may enter a point total which must be paid by a member who joins the team. These points will then be used to join tournaments which may cost points to join.

Team Invitations

Once a team is created, the leader or co-leader can invite members to the team. There will be a button on their team page which is used to go to a page to invite them. If you have been invited to a team, simply go to your tournament profile page to accept or decline the invite.

Joining an Existing Team

You can also click the browse teams link to view teams and find one to apply to. The leader or co-leader must then accept or decline your application.

Tournaments

Once you are on a team, it's time to find a tournament to join! Click the Current Tournaments link to see which tournaments are still open for registration. Only leaders and co-leaders can join the tournaments for their teams. Tournaments may have many restrictions, so pay close attention. For instance, it may state that you cannot change the team once the tournament is underway. This means, even for other tournaments, you won't be able to change your team until this tournament is completed. So you could lock yourself into not being able to add or remove members.

Joining a Tournament

Once you have found the tournament you wish to join, simply click the join button and then select which of your teams you wish to join it with.

Tournament Invitations

The person who created the tournament can invite teams to it. In fact, that person can even make it where the ONLY way to join the tournament is to be invited. If you are invited, you can go to your tournaments profile to respond to the invitation!

Tournament Types

There are several types of tournaments and multiple types of styles within them. The main general types are ladders, single/double elimination brackets, and round robin style tournaments.

Ladders

In a ladder, all of the teams in the tournament are ranked on a ladder. Based on how the teams do in their matches they move up or down on the ladder until the end time of the lader, at which the top team is declared the winner. If the ladder uses the swap method, you swap places with the team you beat, if you are the lower ranked team. If it uses the simple method, you receive standings points for wins and losses and the team with the most standings points is ranked at the top. If the ELO method is used, a more complicated formula is used, based on wins, losses, and experience levels. The manual method is sometimes used if the admin wants to use a style other than these others. In this case, the admin will move you around on the ladder, rather than it being done automatically.

Brackets

In brackets, teams are paired up and move through a bracket of 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 teams. In single eliination, once a team loses, they are out of the bracket. In double elimination, if you lose once you will get another chance in the loser's bracket. You will still win the tournament, if you never lose a second time. Sometimes "bye teams" are added where teams ranked near the top in the pre-rankings can receive byes.

Round Robin

This is somewhat like a league, in that each team plays every other team in the tournament a certain number of times. The team with the most wins ends up winning the tournament. If there is a tie in the number of wins, the admin can add an extra match as a tie breaker at the end of the tournament.

Matches

For bracket and round robin styles, your matches are created for you. For ladders, you must click a link on the tournament information page which is located by the team you wish to challenge. Based on the tournament rules, you can only challenge certain teams. If you are a team leader or co-leader for a team in a tournament, you can go to your tournaments profile page to find the links to submit scores. BOTH teams must confirm the same scores before it is finalized and the winning team is credited with the win. If you can not agree on the scores, you must select the dispute option from the dropdown or you could PM the appropriate person to complain about the situation.

Notes

Here are some explanations of various features in the app

points vs. weight- Win points and loss points are only used if you are using a forum points system. They are unrelated to the standings themselves. Win weight and loss weight are standings points in simple ladders and are what are used to rank the winners and losers.

start points- This is the number of standings points each team begins with in a simple or ELO ladder. It really does not matter what you use. It would usually be 0, 100, or 1,000. It is basically just preference of an admin.

drop per and drop max- These stats are basically telling how far and how many times the coefficient drops in the ELO method. If you do not understand them, don't worry. It's just information as to how the formula is set up.

challenge restrictions- The above number is how many places above you on the ladder you can challenge. The below number is how many places below.

pending time- This is how long a new member must wait before being active on their new team and eligible in the tournament. Also, a leader or co-leader must activate them, so it could take longer.

team type- This is how many members at a time must be actively used in the tournament.

open slots- The number of open spaces left for teams to join in a tournament.

registration and tournament times- You must join a tournament between the registration start and finish. The tournament then lasts between the tournament start and finish times listed.

point totals- Some sites will use a forum points system with this app. If so, you will see various totals of points which will be rewarded to tournament champs or which must be paid to join tournaments.

match times- Match times are basically when the match is suppsoed to take place. Sometiems, your times are forced by an admin. Also, sometimes, you have a deadline by which you MUST report the scores. Otherwise, you will have until the tournament end time to report them. In some tournaments, you will not be able to participate in more than one match at a time in a tournament.

leaving tournaments- Sometimes, you can leave a tournament and receive any points (where applicable) back and, sometimes, especially if after the tournament has begun, you will lose any points you originally gave. You cannot re-join the tournament ever again, if you leave or are kicked out, however.

streak- This is the number of wins or losses in a row you currently have for the given tournament.

editing- Some settings for teams or tournaments cannot be edited after certain points in ongoing tournaments.

entry limits- There are limits per tournament as to how many times a member or ip address can join. So if you are already in for that number of times, a team, which includes you, will be disallowed from joining.

groups- There are many per group permissions in the system, such as ability to create teams, join teams, join tournaments, comment, etc...