(live) tournament failed due to players not appearing

[juve-nile]

ok I hosted my first tournament today, a bit over 80 players registered. setiings 9 players per table desired, 8 minimum. on all tables it seem people were missing so that not 8 players were there to start. then it seems no game was carried out and everyone got randomly eliminated or progressed without playing.

is there really no protecting mechanism to start tournament games even if the low player number is not reached?
should be very easy. for example combine tables where players are missing so the new ones have enough (in this case 9) players all available.

[Meeplelowda]

ok I hosted my first tournament today, a bit over 80 players registered. setiings 9 players per table desired, 8 minimum. on all tables it seem people were missing so that not 8 players were there to start. then it seems no game was carried out and everyone got randomly eliminated or progressed without playing.

is there really no protecting mechanism to start tournament games even if the low player number is not reached?
should be very easy. for example combine tables where players are missing so the new ones have enough (in this case 9) players all available.

Tournaments don't have a "confirm" feature that expels people who aren't present at the beginning of the tournament, and shuffles players around to fit the seating requirements.

So the issue is live tournaments in general. They are fragile because people being human means they frequently don't pay close attention to tournament settings. The more restrictive the time settings a tournament has, the more likely that someone through inattention will sign up for something they can't actually commit to. And live tournaments are the most restrictive time settings that exist, so the problem is the worst for them.

I tried finding a recent example of a live tournament that was successful, i.e. didn't have tons of games that were incomplete due to no shows or ended without finishing the game due to the round times being set too fast. I couldn't find one.

My advice is to filter the tournament page for completed real-time tournaments of the game you want to run and see if any actually went well. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.. Then copy those settings.

[mrdoctor]

Assume that in a real-time tournament, about 30% at most of those who registered will actually turn up at the start-time ready to play. BGA will create tables, and if they can't meet the minimum number needed for a table, then that game is skipped. Real-time elimination tournaments can basically end without a single game ever being played if BGA can never successfully create a table with the required minimum and everything just gets skipped. It's best to try and use the lowest-minimum and highest maximum player count available for the game to have best chance of some games actually being able to start.

I've set up a few, always under the "one-day tournaments" name. I've generally posted a comment on the tournament wall to explain how real-time tournaments work, (see example on the link below) and if I remember on the day I try and message the tournament-chat to remind people to be online for the start. Here's a completed real-time Catan tournament - https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=330288 - 117 sign-ups, about 25 were online at the start, 13 stayed to the 3rd game, and 7 completed the tournament.