Tournament Director 101 – Common Tournament Terminology
Welcome to Tournament Director 101!
In this series of posts, I will outline some common mistakes I see tournament directors make with results submissions. The goal is to make that process smoother for all involved.
Today I wanted to talk about something simple: terminology. A lot of mistakes in TGP (Tournament Grading Percentage) happen as a result of a miscommunication based on the terminology of a tournament.
So let’s define some of those and start simply with a “round.”
A lot of the time, TDs will use a phrase like this:
“9 rounds of qualifying”
The above isn’t super meaningful because a round can be represented by any number of games. As an example, with Pinburgh, each round has 4 games in it, whereas the IFPA WC has rounds of 3 games each. So when referencing a round of an individual event, I need to know exactly how many games are played each round. Otherwise, I have to assume it was only 1 game, head to head. Also, whether those games were played head to head or in groups of 3 or 4 is important toward TGP.
Here’s an expanded version of that earlier statement:
“9 rounds of qualifying, 1 game each round in groups of 4”
Simply adding that information makes the tournament format perfectly clear with what each round included. That saves time for all involved because it removes the need for any follow-up clarification.
Hopefully this was a helpful explanation! Thanks for reading.
#TD101
I am glad you are doing this; I know I struggled what I started and pinball is growing a lot. Keep up the good work!
TD101 – Great idea for a series of posts. I hope you’ll include some examples of how to make good game malfunction decisions too. You could model it after the old NFL “You make the call” segments.
Thanks for the post. A quick question.
Why is the ladder structure built the way it is now where a 4-player ladder only worth 2 games and a 5-player ladder is worth 4 (for TGP)? I really like the crucible effect of running a 4-7 player single game ladder finals, dropping the bottom player each game. The entire ladder structure for TGP seems a little light, completely discounting the last 2 games (one 3-player match and the final head to head game).
Why would a 4-player ladder not be worth 3.5 (or round it down to 3) games towards TGP?
Just curious, this is not a complaint.
I love the recent updates to the guide and the rules – keep up the great work!
The TGP Guide lists the following for the ladder format:
“assumes 1 game for final 4”
So in a 4-player ladder it would just be 1 game played, valued at 2X for a 4-player game.
I am a relatively new tournament director, and I can say that learning what TGP is and how to calculate it was something I had to learn, and is the part that most people probably don’t get right if I had to guess. So I just imagine Adam sitting around in an office, filing cabinets everywhere, just manually looking through everyone’s submissions and correcting TGPs.
Instead of burying the TGP guide in the tenth drop down selection of the Resources button, build something into the results submission page that helps the user submit a correct TGP by entering in a couple of details about the tournament (3 strike group, 0/0/1, etc). This spits out a suggested TGP, and then if you think it should be something different from that, enter that in and give a reason why.
We are getting more and more tournaments all the time in my area, and I think it’s going to get to a point where Adam is overwhelmed as the number of new tournament directors grows.
Josh Sharpe,
Thanks for the reply. I’ll be sure to specify in my tournament results submissions that we are playing more than the assumed one game (which would be 2 games for TGP).
When I’m running a straight 4-player ladder finals it always consists of one 4-player game, one 3-player game, and the top 2 remaining battling it out for the top spot in a third game.
I greatly appreciate the clarification!
This is a great series idea. I am eagerly looking forward to the next one.