Bracket Setup
As tournaments get more entrants, you and your attendees may experience hindered performance when trying to access the bracket. It is highly recommended that you break up your tournament into groups/pools one you reach 64+ entrants in a bracket.
You can find more info on how to setup pools/groups here. Don't forget to set up progressions into a final bracket phase! Info on progression setup can be found here.
Round Times
An optimally run tournament has every match, especially losers, play whenever available (unless matches are scheduled for the stream or other reasons). Round times play an important part as they indicate when players should be available for their match.
Example:
Game: Melee
Duration: 10 minutes
Auto-DQ Timer: 5 minutes
Winners Round Times
Unless the number of entrants is close or equal to a perfect bracket size (e.g. 4, 8, 16, 32, etc), there will be a number of players or even matches starting in winners round 2. If so, we recommend the following to ensure that matches can be played immediately:
Setting WR2 to start at the same time as WR1 + auto-DQ timer. This ensures matches in WR2 happen immediately when a player advances from WR1 due to an auto-DQ.
Setting WR3 to its original time or the time it would've been if WR2 was normal. Even though there's an early WR2, matches should adjust back to schedule by WR3.
Recommended durations by game:
Losers Round Times
Since losers bracket has more rounds than winners, it takes longer and is generally the bottleneck of the tournament. As a result, the following is recommended to allow matches to be immediately played when available:
Setting LR1 to WR1 start time + auto-DQ timer and LR2 to LR1 + auto-DQ timer. This ensures matches in LR1 and LR2 with disqualified players or players who advanced due to a disqualification happen immediately.
Setting LR3 to its original time or the time it would've been if LR2 was normal. Even though there's an early LR2, matches should adjust back to schedule by LR3.
Reducing auto-DQ timers in LR3 and on.
Round Timers
Round timers include auto-DQ and min/max verify timers. These should be adjusted to the game accordingly to ensure fair but fast bracket progression. In general, the following is recommended:
Minimum verify timer: 3 minutes
Maximum verify timer: Duration time
Auto-DQ timers = half the set duration of a Bo3 or up to 10 minutes:
Moderation
Another reason for bottlenecking is not having enough staff or moderators to manage potential issues or disputes. In general, we recommend:
Number of moderators:number of matches = 1:64.