Run the tournament

Starting the tournament creates the first matches. After that, most of the session follows the same short cycle:

1. Let the matches finish and players report their winners.
2. Check that every active court has an effective result.
3. Update the ranking.
4. Create the next matches.

You can run that cycle from two pages. Matches shows only the courts and the bench and does steps 3 and 4 with one button; it is described below. Ranking shows the full ranking and has a button for each step.

Run a round from the Matches page

Matches is visible to admins only, and it is where you land after Start Tournament. It never shows the ranking.

• The courts are headed with the round being played and the number of rounds, such as Round 4 of 7.
• Each court shows its two teams, the blue team above the yellow one. Select Results and tap the team that won, or Aborted. You return to the courts, and the court turns grey with a check beside the winners. Select Change to correct it.
• A disputed court says so on its result screen. Choosing a team decides it.
• The players who sit out are listed under Bench.
• Update Ranking and Create Matches stays at the bottom of the screen. It is unavailable until every court has a result, and it says how many courts are still open. When you select it, the ranking is updated and the next matches are searched for; the button says Finding the best assignment… until they appear.
• If no matches are in play and at least four players are free, the button reads Create Matches instead.
• If players arrive while courts are in play, at least four are free and a court is open, Create Matches appears under the bench. It seats them on the open courts without waiting for the round to end. Nothing is seated until you select it.
• On the last round the button reads Update Ranking and End Tournament: its press completes the round and ends the tournament. If someone is waiting to be let in, it reads Update Ranking and says the tournament will not end; deal with the request on Ranking and end the tournament there.
• From the last round on, Play another round under the button adds one round to the Number of rounds. Select it again for each further round.
• Requests to join appear as a link to Ranking, where you accept or decline them.

Run a round from the Ranking page

Create Matches keeps active courts in place and fills open courts from the available players. Waiting players remain visible on the bench at their Tournament Rank. Court numbers refer to fixed physical courts and are reused.

If you reorder players, or a player joins or leaves, after the matches were created, the button becomes Recreate Matches. It asks first, then replaces every current match from the new order. It never throws away a result: while a court has a result, the button stays disabled until you undo that court with Undo court assignment.

Match results and ranking updates

A player opinion can establish a provisional winner. Matching opinions keep that winner; conflicting opinions create a dispute. An admin's opinion decides the result unless admins disagree with each other.

Update Ranking stays visible but unavailable until every active court has an effective result. It applies the normal Batman and Robin update to those courts. A court whose dispute an admin decided counts as having a result. The Standings page shows the current order; the Ranking page shows which recorded results have not yet been applied to Tournament Rank.

If the latest ranking change was wrong, open More board actions and use Ranking history. Undo restores the previous Tournament Rank without removing real matches or later court assignments. You can then Redo the unchanged update, or correct an archived court result and select Apply corrected. Creating new matches is paused until you restore or replace the undone ranking change.

Less common actions

Open More board actions for less common choices:

• Create one match manually… lets an admin choose four available players, their teams, and an open court.
• Reorder players can move available bench players while courts are active; players currently on court stay locked. Reorder together is available only between court assignments, so process every active result or undo the assignments first. You choose who takes part (admins are ticked by default; tick others to include them); the others keep the normal Ranking page and see a banner. Only you finish or cancel it.

These actions affect this tournament only. They do not update club TrueSkill or club Glicko-2. Publishing an ended tournament's eligible results to the club ratings is a separate, optional admin action.

Player names

Every player in your club needs their own name, ignoring capital letters and extra spaces, whichever tournament of the club they join. When you add or rename a player and the name is already taken, the form says so under the field and keeps what you typed. A tournament created before this rule can still contain two players with one name; its Start Tournament button stays disabled until you rename or remove one of them.

Player changes during play

A player who joins late sees on their Me page that they are waiting for your approval; accept them in the Lobby. Once accepted, they join at a club-relative Tournament Rank calculated from one current club TrueSkill snapshot and wait on the bench; existing ranks keep their relative order and active courts do not change.

An unavailable player is excluded from future assignments but keeps their tournament identity, history, and existing Tournament Rank. Changing availability does not remove someone from a current match: they still play it and can record its result.

An admin-only organizer has no Tournament Rank and is never assigned to a court.

Decide when to turn courts over

You control the pace. You can refill one processed court while other courts keep playing, or wait and fill several open courts together. Automatic assignment chooses from all available players; use manual creation when you need one exact lineup.

The tournament ends by itself once the Number of rounds you set have been played, never while a court is still in play or someone is waiting to be let in. To finish before that, select End tournament in the Lobby's settings panel and confirm. Do not rely on simply closing the browser.