drneau.com

[drneau]

This thread is meant to be a discussion of all the parameters that go into a heads-up tournament. For now, please hold the discussion to heads-up only (not the compound head-up/shootout tournament that Dix was discussing).

Number of players
Ideally, the number of players in a heads-up tournament is some power of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). However, for a home tournament where people have lives, the software will have to have a way to handle no-shows or extras...which leads us to...

Byes
A "bye" is when a person gets to skip a round, like in the NFL when the best 4 teams skip the wildcard round. The software will need to handle byes for SURE when the number of players is not a power of 2...but should be able to handle them for custom brackets also. For instance, the WCHA (college hockey) has a "final five" bracket!

Seeding
How are players matched up? Randomly? Seeded based on results? A mix? The software should let you do whatever you want.

Bracket type
Single-elimination? Multiple elimination?
Let's look just at single-elimination...
Back when I played basketball in junior high school, we had single-elimination 8-team tournaments where each team was guaranteed 3 games...that meant you had a clear 1-8 finish. The 1st place team was 3-0 (WWW), the 2nd place team was 2-1 (WWL), the 3rd place team was 2-1 (WLW), the 4th place team was 1-2 (WLL), the 5th place team (consolation) was 2-1 (LWW), the 6th place team was 1-2 (LWL), the 7th place team was 1-2 (LLW) and the 8th place team was 0-3 (LLL).
The NCAA college hockey tournament is one loss and out until you get to the "Frozen Four", they have a championship game and a 3rd place game.
The NCAA basketball tournament is the classic "heads-up". One loss and you are done.
Major League Baseball...it's a heads-up tournament, but each match has a number of games you must win before you can advance.

Number of "games" per "match"
See above

Starting chip stacks
Are two people in the same match starting with the same chip stacks? Do people carry all chips forward from match to match, or are the stacks reset to a known amount for each match?

Betting schedules
Does each match use the same betting schedule? Does each match at the same *level* use the same betting schedule?

Concurrency
Do all matches at the same level run at the same time? Do matches run as soon as they are ready

Location
Where do the people play the matches. Assume you have 7 spots in your basement where a heads-up match can occur, but the first round has 8 matches? Where does each match happen? (plays into concurrency)
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Dr. Neau (not a real doctor)
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[Ranman]

I don't know how much help this will be but if each facet of my planned series is taken as a separate entity it may have relevance. I'm sorry if my explanation gets confusing, it took me awhile to get it straight in my own mind . It's going to be a long post. Sorry.

I am starting a HU Series on Nov. 11th and have been planning and tweaking the structure for some time. My main goal was to make it as fair as possible and to try and eliminate as much of the "luck" factor as possible. To this end I came up with the following plan.

I am running 4 separate, double elimination tournaments designed as "qualifiers" to a Final 4 DE match, and ultimately to the Championship, Best of 3 match. In this way it gives each player 8 chances to make the final 4 and those players 2 chances to make the championship game. I set an entry fee to be paid up front, which gains the player access to the 4 qualifying games. He/She can play as many or few as they wish. If they win a game they qualify for the final 4 and won't play any more qualifiers.

Number of Players/Byes
My goal of course was to have the "power of 2" scenario but this is proving to be difficult and becomes moot anyway depending on how the games are run, the players that show up or are left to qualify.

For example, I set the max players at 16 but as of now only have 12 paid entries and with the fact a player does not play after qualifying I end up out of that sweet spot after the first match anyway. So I found a site (Dart League) that has designed brackets for 3 to 64 teams/players. They work perfectly for my purpose as well. They are set up to deal with any byes early in the match so that by round 3 (or 4 depending on the # of players) they are gone. So I have all the brackets I may possibly need, from 9 to 16 players, on hand and ready for whatever number of players I have for a given game. I would think TM would need all these brackets available to use as needed. When designing a HU tournament there would be a field to choose the number of players and TM would use the proper bracket based on that number.

Seeding
I haven't tried it yet but I plan to use the current TM to seat my players randomly at the start of the match and on results after. Which means they will move per the bracket design (i.e. Loser to {position whatever A, B, C} on loser bracket or move to next winner bracket match). The plan is (depending on the number of players) to create the proper number of "tables" with some having 2 seats some with 1. I'll seat all randomly and if it works the 2 seat tables will start play in round 1 with the single seat tables being the round 2 spots waiting for winners from round 1 to fill the tables. This will probably require some manual "adjustments" but should work out OK.

Starting Chip Stacks/Betting schedules
The quantity is a matter of choice but I'm using the National HU stacks (which I found on the web site) and blind levels for 16, 8, 4 & 2 players. These stacks are based on a full 16 player game and I may adjust depending on how many players I end up with but my qualifier games will start with 80K in chips and this will be re-set for each round until I get to 8 players which will start with 160K until the end of the match. My final 4 will be 320K and re-set each round. The Championship will be 640K.

Concurrency
Rounds can't run concurrently until the byes are eliminated. Even if the game has the power of 2 factors going on the loser bracket won't begin until round 2. Most of the non-power of 2 brackets have the loser bracket starting in round 3 and the last winner bracket game ending at round 4 or 5 and that player will be waiting until round 7 for the loser bracket to be over to begin the final round(s) to determine the winner.

Location
I have two 10 man tables and access to a couple of smaller tables. I plan to run 3 pairs per large table (players can face each other) and 1 or 2 on the smaller tables. When I get to the final 4 they will play on one table with a dealer at each end to deal to each pair. Initially the tables will be spread around the first floor of my house but all within sight or at least earshot of the timer. With the odd number matches, there may only be need for one table at a time like when the winner bracket is waiting for the loser bracket end or when the first rounds are starting and the loser bracket isn't set yet.

The only real “problems” are my qualifiers (biggest PITA) and final 4 which shouldn’t be too bad since is a power of 2. The Championship games can be done as a normal tournament that just happens to have only 2 players (I’ll just run it 3 times).

[shoemaja]

I have played in, and run quite a few heads up tourneys for other types of games. There are a few things to think about.

1) Format - Single Elim, Double Elim, Swiss
2) # of matches per round - 1, best of 3, best of 5
3) Seeding - Random, By Registratin #, By Ranking, By some rating

And these are just the structure issues

Formats
Single Elim is obvious, one loss, your out.
Simple, to the point, but you lose and your night is over.

Double Elim, again, obvious.
Not out after the first loss, but you are after your second.
Allows people to get a little more out of their money
However, these take a really long time to finish
The person that makes it all the way through the winners bracket ends up waiting a long time on the loser's bracket, and the loser's bracket ends up play more matches to get in the money and eventually for the title

Swiss, not so obvious, most bang for your buck
This is similar to Doc's 8 team basketball tournament example
Everyone plays in every round.
First round, players are matched up randomly, or by some ranking previously determined
After the first round, players are matched up by their records. In this system the cream rises to the top. Players that win are matched together and players that have lost are matched together.
After each round, the records are compared again and like records play like records. The key here is not to play the same player more than once.
When there is only one player that has not been defeated, then the tournament is over. You compare records and award prizes accordingly.
This is the most fair, for differing levels of skill. Those that might not do well, still get a chance to play in all rounds, while those that do, will definately get a chance to play against better and better players as the tournament goes on.


Finally seeding.
Seeding can be done randomly (best for swiss)
By registration number (basically random with set order)
By league ranking or league points(probably best for SE or DE since stronger players get to start of vs weaker, and get tougher as you go)

Just my 2 cents, and doesnt take into account the poker aspect, just tournaments in general