The bracket viewer shows the current state of a game's bracket and allows the organizer to update the bracket through a simple visual interface.
While each bracket type has a different bracket viewer, the viewers themselves share many features in common. You can drag with the left mouse button to move the viewer area, or use the scroll bars to do the same, and your mouse wheel can be used to vertically scroll. You can also press Control+F and type a player's name to locate that player in the bracket, either highlighting his/her next match or exposing the pool the player belongs to.
Right-clicking on a match will expose a context menu with operations unique to the bracket type in view. These operations include clearing the result of a match, marking a match "in progress" (drawing it a different color and optionally assigning it to a station), and attaching a textual note to the match to record character/stage choices or other miscellaneous facts.
The mouse is used to update the bracket. Double-click on a player's name within a match to set that player as the winner. The mouse is also used to drag players in a single- or double-elimination bracket, allowing you to change their initial spots within the bracket.
The single-elimination bracket viewer displays the bracket in a very simple tree format, where the winner of each match progresses to the next round to face another winner from the previous round.
The first round of play is on the far left, and successive rounds progress to the right. The player who wins the match on the far right is the winner of the tournament, and the loser of that match wins second place. The size of a single-elimination bracket is twice the number of first-round matches, and equals the number of players plus first-round byes. The number of total matches in this bracket style necessary to determine a winner is equal to one less than the bracket's size. Thus, a 64-man single-elimination bracket will be finished after 63 matches.
You can single-click on a specific match to mark it as "selected", drawing it in dark red; this can help entrants visually track where they are in the bracket:
Various shortcut keys can be used to affect the selected match as well. See tips & tricks for details.
The double-elimination bracket viewer displays the bracket in a modified tree format, where the bracket is split into two: the winners' bracket, and the losers' bracket. The first round of the bracket, technically in the winners' bracket, is located in the center of the display.
Winning in the winners' bracket moves the player to the next match to the right; losing sends the player to the losers' round, to the match whose label (the letter to the right of a player's line) matches the label of the winners' round match the player lost in (this label is located between the names of the two players). Conversely, winning in the losers' bracket moves the player to the left, while losing a losers' bracket match eliminates the player.
Whoever makes it to the left-most match in the losers' bracket (often called "losers' finals") will advance to the championship round to face the winner of winners' bracket. The winner of losers' bracket must defeat the winners' bracket finalist in two consecutive sets in order to be crowned champion; the winners' bracket finalist, on the other hand, only needs to win a single set. This is because each player must lose two sets to be eliminated from the tournament; the winners' bracket finalist has yet to lose, and thus must be defeated twice in the championship round.
Right-clicking on a match will show a menu with all the options discussed above, in addition to a "Manual Swap..." entry. A director can use the manual swap option to correct any inconsistencies they detect in the losers bracket of a game. In the example above, if the director feels Champ should go to losers bracket spot B instead of A, they can right click on Champ and select Manual Swap, then select the B slot to move him there. There may be cases where doing so can save two players from facing each other a second time until one round later; it is impossible for tio to detect this manually, so a director is encouraged to use a manual swap if they feel it is for the good of the tournament. This can only happen in a bracket larger than the example above.
Matches can be selected much like the single-elimination bracket viewer.
A series of options are located at the top of the bracket viewer. These options allow you to show the names of each player on a team, the win-loss result of each completed match, or change the display style of the bracket. The display style can change between the normal view ("bracket") and a special "current matches" view which fades out all matches except those that can be played right now:
Matches with two players ready to play are drawn as normal, in blue. A match with a single player ready will be drawn in gray, but the name of that player will be black. All other matches are drawn in gray. This view can help you filter the bracket to make it easier to identify matches that can be run immediately. An option at the top of the viewer can restrict the movement of the current match selection so that it only moves among matches ready to be played; this option only affects movement through the keyboard.
Finally, you can hover your mouse over a match with only one player ready to see a summary of which matches need to be completed before the target match can commence:
In the first image, PC Chris is waiting for three matches to finish: Isai vs. Helios and Knives vs. Champ in the first round; and match between the winners of those two matches. He is therefore waiting on three individual matches across two rounds of the bracket. If a player is only waiting on one match, that set will be displayed as shown in the second image.
The "current matches" and "waiting on" features are also availabe in single-elimination brackets.
Round-robin brackets split entrants into a specified number of "pools", and each entrant must play a single set against all other players in his/her pool. Accordingly, the round-robin bracket viewer displays one pool at a time, and arranges the pool matches in a grid format, where the intersection between a row and column represents a match between the player in the row and column.
The numbers in each cell represent the result of the match between the two players. The first number is the number of wins achieved by the player whose row (horizontal) the cell belongs to; the second number is how many times that player lost. For example, the intersection between the first row (Neal) and the second column (Taj) shows Neal winning 0 games and losing 2. Accordingly, the intersection between Taj and Neal shows Taj winning 2 games and losing none.
Double-clicking on a cell will set that row's player as the winner of the set. You will be asked how many times the winning player lost; this number will be used to calculate the overall record. If you make a mistake, you can always double-click the cell again to change the winner and/or record.
The right-most column (drawn in red) shows the player's overall record in the pool. The total number of games won and lost in shown in large numbers; the smaller numbers below show the player's record in terms of matches. Above, Neal won two games and lost five; in terms of matches, though, he won a single match (2-1 against Zoap), and lost two others. Overall ranking within the pool is drawn to the far right.
Use the drop-down list to change the currently-visible pool. You will need to complete all matches in every pool to complete the bracket.
Players are ranked within their pool based on their total number of losses. A player with 6 wins and 0 losses overall will rank higher than one with 6 wins and 1 loss. When two players have identical records, a tie-breaker match will be scheduled between them. You can view tie breaks for each pool by accessing the results viewer for the bracket and selecting a pool from the list. Drag and drop players in the Ties list in the order they should be seeded in the bracket. You can also choose to ignore the tie-break match if you feel it is inconsequential to the outcome of the pool (i.e. if two players tie for last place).
Since round robin brackets do not determine a single overall winner, they are commonly used to reduce a large number of entrants to a smaller count, taking a certain number of players from each pool and creating a single- or double-elimination bracket with those players. Accordingly, tio gives you the option of advancing players from each pool upon completion of the entire bracket. See the section on round robin options for details.