Hey guys. So I've spent the past few months attending several different local Store Championships, and each one seems to have a different way to pair the players. Most seem to either use Cryodex or a Magic software. Both have their limitations and problems. Magic software isn't great at handling modified wins, while Cryodex seems to break after round 3. And for people not familiar with the interface, it can be daunting to figure out.

So when I ran my own, I decided to put something together in excel to create the pairings. And that morphed into its own project. Officially, this does not adhere to the FFG pairing rules. I have designed this to pair #1 seed vs. #2 seed, and #3 seed vs. #4 seed. This is a deviation from the official rules, which state to randomly pair within the same score. Which is actually a change FFG made, one that I think is for the worse.

Anyways, I figured since I put it together, I might as well make it easy to use and distribute it to the community. It is excel based, so it is simple to use. Literally all you need to do is input your player names at the start of the tourney, print out the pairings along with the match slips for each round, and then input the points destroyed. All Margin of Victory, Strength of Schedule, Opponent Strength of Schedule, and the next round pairings are done for you.

The only additional manual input is readjusting duplicate pairings. I have it set to automatically alert the player by turning the cell orange, but I left the actual adjustment up to the TO.

Anyways, let me know if you find it useful, and anything else you'd like to see in it, or any errors you find in it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bhbjzkfeadza65v/Tourney%20Software%20by%20Khyros.xlsx?dl=0

PS: It's been a long time since I've actually put a file on the internet for public download. Is there a better place I should be putting it? Note that you can click the download button in the top right to get the actual file instead of viewing/editing it in Dropbox.

Edit: By request I have added a random pairings within the point group for version 0.9.

Now this is handy. Nice work!

Fine example of a way to help the community.

Is it possible to make one than does random pairings, for those of us who do prefer/adhere to the current official system?

Is it possible to make one than does random pairings, for those of us who do prefer/adhere to the current official system?

There is. Especially since it's this far among and available to everyone.it'll get done.

Very nice Khyros.

This is very nice.

First, I have to disagree that random pairings is a bad decision. Before random pairings, people were gaming the system to try and get a certain MOV so they got paired against certain builds. Any system that lets the players plan their opponents is detrimental in my opinion. It does make it much harder on the software and TO though.

What problems are you seeing with Cryodex? You say it breaks after round 3. I've ran 3 events in the past month going 7 rounds, 6 rounds, and 4 rounds with zero problems.

Welcome to the exciting world of tournament software. I'm not able to download your program at the moment as I'm at work, but I'll give it a look later. As a note, if you are unable to offer "by the book" pairings as well as automatic duplicate match resolution you're going to have a hard time getting TO buy in.

First, I have to disagree that random pairings is a bad decision. Before random pairings, people were gaming the system to try and get a certain MOV so they got paired against certain builds. Any system that lets the players plan their opponents is detrimental in my opinion. It does make it much harder on the software and TO though.

What problems are you seeing with Cryodex? You say it breaks after round 3. I've ran 3 events in the past month going 7 rounds, 6 rounds, and 4 rounds with zero problems.

Welcome to the exciting world of tournament software. I'm not able to download your program at the moment as I'm at work, but I'll give it a look later. As a note, if you are unable to offer "by the book" pairings as well as automatic duplicate match resolution you're going to have a hard time getting TO buy in.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly why FFG went away from the MOV paired decision. It's not a problem I ever saw occurring last year though. And I'm pretty sure intentionally losing points in order to get a worse MOV to match up against someone else is probably a bad idea.

I haven't used Cryodex in about a year, but what I found was that once you started getting duplicate pairings, the pairings it came up with were really strange. It took me several games of usage to start realizing that it was way off. It once paired a 3 win player against a 1 win player for me. I'm digging far into my memory on this, but I believe it had something to do with the 3 win had also played the 2 win player that it wanted to match it up against, as well as that player already playing the one of the other 2 win players. So instead of switching the other 3 win player around, it pushed it all the way to the 1 win player. I'm not sure if it's fixed it or not since then.

Is it possible to make one than does random pairings, for those of us who do prefer/adhere to the current official system?

I'll take a look at this. It should be relatively simple to have a toggle on the main page to allow it to do both ways.

I haven't used Cryodex in about a year, but what I found was that once you started getting duplicate pairings, the pairings it came up with were really strange. It took me several games of usage to start realizing that it was way off. It once paired a 3 win player against a 1 win player for me. I'm digging far into my memory on this, but I believe it had something to do with the 3 win had also played the 2 win player that it wanted to match it up against, as well as that player already playing the one of the other 2 win players. So instead of switching the other 3 win player around, it pushed it all the way to the 1 win player. I'm not sure if it's fixed it or not since then.

Duplicate resolution has come a long way than it was a year ago. Currently it re-randomizes within a point group and overlapping point groups (if there is an odd number in a point group). If it can't come up with a resolution that way it notifies the TO to fix it themselves. There is an exhaustive fix in the ordered version, but applying that to the random version has proved difficult.

If you haven't seen it lately, Cryodex is now open source. You're welcome to check it out and either take code chunks from it for your program or contribute to it yourself.

The only issues I've had with Cryodex has been with smaller (less than 8) tournaments, or if you go past a certain round (like run 4 rounds with 8 players, you will have a single 3-0 person after 3 rounds). It will create duplicates on occasion. You can re-pair, or you can manually adjust. I would still recommend it! I have not seen the TOME software though, I'd be curious to see that stuff.

As for the Excel, always good to have more options. Thanks!

TOME is getting better. Worlds was ran with very few issues. It has also been running a few Store Championships fairly smooth. It's bound to take over eventually. They're just having a lot of growing pains.

Is it possible to make one than does random pairings, for those of us who do prefer/adhere to the current official system?

Done.