tio tournament organizer

manual and readme

program version 1.1 by Neal Terrell

Overview
Event Details
Fees and Prizes
Seeding
Options
Other Actions

Overview

The event editor allows you to manage every detail of an event played at your tournament. You can add entrants, set entry fees, specify pot distributions, and seed players from this window. You can also access the entrants list, bracket viewer, results list, or metrics viewer from this window.

Event Details

You can edit the details originally specified when you created the event:

Warning: changing the bracket style or switching from Teams to Singles (or vice versa) will delete the current bracket, if there is one.

Fees and Prizes

You can set the entrance fee each player must pay to enter. This amount will be used to determine prize amounts for the winners when the bracket completes. You can also specify a flat fee or percentage of the pot that will be given to the tournament organizer; this amount might be used for tournament expenses or a side pot, and will be subtracted from the main pot before prizes are awarded.

You can also pick a method for distributing the pot to the event winners. The Pot Distribution drop-down list contains entries for common pot splits; each number represents what percentage of the pot is given to successive placings (i.e. a 60/30/10 split gives 60% to first, 30% to second, and 10% to third). Select the Custom entry to manually specify how the pot should be split if your preference is not listed:

Edit a payout in the list by double clicking it, or double click the asterisk to add a new payout. Payouts can be either percentages or currency amounts; currency amounts can be subtracted from the pot size (using the check box at the bottom), with the remainder being used for percentage payouts.

Seeding

Use the Seeding section to choose a method for seeding your entrants.

You have five options for seeding:

Random – players will be spread randomly through the bracket.
By location - players will be separated based on their Location fields. Entrants will be sorted in alphabetical order by location, and then placed in the bracket so that adjacent players will be as far from each other as possible.

Tip: location seeding can be finessed to seed players based on two location fields — for example, state and city, where players are first separated by state, then by city. To do so, give each player a Location that consists of the first field to sort on followed by the second ("California, Los Angeles"). tio will first separate everyone with "California, Los Angeles" as their location; next, "California, San Francisco" will be seeded (avoiding the Los Angeles players as long as possible); finally, "Arizona, Phoenix" will be seeded against the California players. You can seed based on even more location fields in the same manner.
By skill level – players will be seeded in descending order based on their Skill value. Ties in skill level will be broken randomly.
In order - allows you to specify the exact order players should appear in the bracket. In single- and double-elimination brackets, the first two people seeded in order will play each other first round, as will the third and fourth, etc. In a round robin, the first X people will be placed into pool one, the second X people into pool two, etc., where X is the size of each pool in the bracket. Selecting this option will expose an editor similar to the Manual editor below.
Manually – exposes a special window for seeding (shown below). This window is split into two sections:
1. Manual seeding list – players placed in this list will be seeded in the order they are arranged in, starting with seed 1 for the first player.
2. Relative skill lists – group players into these three lists based on their relative skill levels. By default, players with a skill of 8 or higher will be placed in the Expert list; of 4 to 7, in the Intermediate list; and of 3 or lower in the Beginner list. Once the players in the manual list are seeded, players from the expert list will be given the next set of seeds, followed by the intermediate and beginner lists.
The buttons in the upper right move players among the lists en masse.

After you have seeded your entrants, you can click the "Generate" button to create a bracket.

Options

The bottom-most Options section allows you to set optional parameters for your event depending on the type of bracket you are running.

Double-elimination options

Use station manager to schedule matches: use the integrated station manager to schedule matches at specific stations, keeping track of how many matches are queued at each station to maximize efficiency.
Attempt to separate players by location: tio can attempt to break up players with identical Location fields when seeding a bracket. This option only applies in Random, Manual, or Skill seeding, and only affects the relative lists in Manual seeding. This option will never significantly alter a player's seed, but will usually place players with identical locations far apart in a bracket. Manual adjustment may still be necessary.
Prompt for each match's win-loss result: upon completion of a match, you will be prompted to specify the overall win-loss result for the match. This has no effect on the bracket, and is only used for completeness.
Games per match: allows you to set the number of games in each match.
Games in championship round: allows you to set the number of games in the championship match.

Single-elimination options

Identical options and effects as double-elimination brackets.

Round-robin options

Use station manager to schedule matches: same as above.
Attempt to separate players by location: same as above, except players will be placed in different pools instead of "far apart in a bracket."
Number of pools: sets the total number of pools to split entrants into.
Games per match: sets the number of games per match in each pool. Matches can be best-of style ("best two out of three") or total-of style ("play two games total").
View/edit pool assignments: launches a window for moving players between pools after a bracket has already been generated.
Promote winners to a new bracket: use this button to advance the winners from each pool to a new bracket of your choosing. The top X finishers from each pool will be placed into a new bracket automatically. Players will be seeded in the bracket so that they do not play people from their round robin pool until several rounds into the bracket; individual results within each pool will also be respected, so the first-place finishers from each pool will have higher seeds than the lower-placing players. If you are advancing to a new round robin bracket, players will be separated so no one faces an opponent who was in their pool during the previous bracket.

Automated promotions are a very powerful tool for managing a tournament involving round robins. Make sure you take advantage!
Launch pool assignments viewer: open a new window which cycles through each pool in the bracket, showing the players assigned to that pool. This window can be placed on a second monitor or projector so players can determine their pool assignments without bothering the hosts.

Other Actions

Check the "This event is in progress" box if the game is currently running. This will affect the look of the game's web page.
Click the "Delete event" button at the top of the editor to delete the event.
You can delete the event's bracket with the "Delete" button in the Bracket section, or re-generate it with the "Recreate" button.