Tournament time limits

[danielvictor]

Sorry,I hadn't quite understood what you meant by that. So they are the ones running the tournament ?

[Meeplelowda]

Sorry,I hadn't quite understood what you meant by that. So they are the ones running the tournament ?

OK. For some reason using the word "create" instead of "run" seems to be causing confusion. Let me restate it: The problem is that anyone with a premium account can run a tournament. You can't assume they know what they are doing.

[Kayvon]

Sorry,I hadn't quite understood what you meant by that. So they are the ones running the tournament ?

Go back and reread everything he has written and you'll find it's pretty clear. No one "runs" the tournament because tournaments are completely automated by BGA once they are started. Someone just needs to create a tournament and decide which settings it will have, which practically anyone can do.

As Meeplelowda has indicated repeatedly, just because almost anyone can create a tournament doesn't mean that they know what they're doing. Before you join a tournament, make sure you agree with the settings first. If you don't, wait for another one or create one yourself.

[danielvictor]

Okay,thanks,Meeplelowda,thanks,Kayvon.I apologise. I'd sort of assumed that people from BGA ran the tournaments on BGA. Also,48 hours per player seemed as if it might be enough time,until I tried it and discovered that it wasn't.

[Meeplelowda]

I'd sort of assumed that people from BGA ran the tournaments on BGA.

I can see why you might think that. But when you first joined BGA it was basically two guys. It's not much bigger now. There are currently multiple 100s of active tournaments. Having someone from BGA "running" all of them would be infeasible.

[danielvictor]

I am a premium member. I haven't explored all of the options. 'Start a game' is pretty prominent. Is ''start a tournament'' there too ? How much work does it entail ?

[Meeplelowda]

I am a premium member. I haven't explored all of the options. 'Start a game' is pretty prominent. Is ''start a tournament'' there too ? How much work does it entail ?

There may be another way to do it, but I only use the Play Now page (see my signature). On the Play Now page, the left option will either show "Simple Game" or "Arena." Change that option to "Tournaments," then click the blue button that says "Create a new tournament."

But before you do, consider these suggestions from BananaHarambe in this thread:

Recommendations for good tournaments:

-High reputation requirement
-Keep signup window limited to 1-2 months to avoid inactive players.
-Lower player count (number of players per game) in tournaments are more reliable in general, be aware of that when choosing player count
-Keep the player count and number of rounds low to begin with, then expand over time for future tournaments
-Avoid the "try to prevent duplicate pairings" option for Swiss tournaments with high round number and/or 3+ player games
-Consider the affect of skipping a player on tournament outcome. Multi elimination tournaments have issues with skipping causing some non-skipped players to be eliminated. For example a 4 player tournament with 2 players from each game advancing will have issues with skipping because if one player is skipped, one other player will need to be eliminated as well as per how the tournaments work. The way it works on BGA is that the remaining players with the longest account ages will stay and the newer accounts will get eliminated (to the frustration of many players).

I would add that until you are sure a tournament can operate at a shorter time setting, choose a conservative (15 or 30 days) setting for the "Game maximum duration" setting.

It is also probably a good idea to peruse the Tournaments sub-forum to get an idea of the kinds of issues that keep coming up in tournaments so that you don't repeat the same mistakes.

[danielvictor]

Thanks. Query on not-trying to avoid repeat pairings. Won't that prevent any effort to avoid repeat pairings ?

[Meeplelowda]

Thanks. Query on not-trying to avoid repeat pairings. Won't that prevent any effort to avoid repeat pairings ?

Yes, but the system can literally break otherwise. That admonition doesn't apply to two-person games for which the Swiss system was actually designed. When you try to apply Swiss to multi-player games, things get wonky. I neither create nor participate in tournaments with multi-player games because of these and similar issues.

Once again, I suggest you read the tournaments forum.

[danielvictor]

I did read the tournaments forum.It starts with a lot of people complaining about repeat matches.Then somebody points out that the organiser set too many rounds of swiss with too few players so repeat matches were bound to happen. Says the program is trying to avoid repeat matches,but can't.The implication there is that with a reasonably large number of players,and not too many rounds,most repeat matches could be avoided.And the players seem to want that.But if you don't ask the program to avoid repeat matches where possible,it will simply keep selecting people with similar rankings - leading to many repeat matches.