World of Card Games

Here's how you set up a Spades tournament using MyLeague's TD admin page. Use this link to get instructions for setting up tourneys at World of Card Games. Once you finish this page, you might want to take a look at this supplemental material on running tourneys with more than 8 players.

When you become a MyLeague tournament director, you should first do some training exercises to get the hang of running tournaments. Here's a link to their training page: http://www.myleague.com/tdtraining/ ... it lets you run fake tournaments with a fake TD username, and a whole slew of fake players. It's tedious, because you have to register 8 players. But you really should do this to get a feel for running a tournament before it happens in real life.

First, from the admin page, click the link to "create" a tournament. Schedule it for whenever is convenient.

Next, you're given a drop-down menu which defaults to "Bracket Style (Single-Elim)". Just leave this drop-down set to the default, and hit the submit button.

choose tournament format

You are then treated to a rather large and complicated form. Set the name of the tournament to something creative, if desired.

These items are required:

• Game - choose "Spades" from the drop-down menu
• Number of Rounds - the drop-down should default to "2". Leave that as-is.
• Minutes between Round Start Times - I set this to 30
• Number of Players per Team - set this to 2. It's very important!
• Teams Competing per match - this drop-down defaults to 2, and I leave it that way. Make sure it's set to 2!
• Random Team Partners? - check this box
• Ladder Stats Tournament? make sure the box is checked
• LADDERBUX SETTINGS - I sometimes forget but I like to set the middle radio button "No entry fee; LadderBux to top finishers". I don't know who cares about LadderBux but there's no harm in giving them.

You will also want to make sure that "Ladder Stats Tournament" is checked (it should be by default).

Here's a screenshot of what the create-tournament page looks like (in the screenshot the minutes between rounds is set to 5, which is incorrect - use 30):

settings to create a 2 vs 2 match

Hit the "Create Tournament" button.

At this point your tournament is created! You can customize the layout using other admin tools... I usually add an image and customize the page color. Tip: if you want to add an image to your tournament page, you will need to use an image hosting site. If you search for "free image hosting" you will find an abundance of websites willing to do this for you. I recommend http://postimage.org/ based on the fact that they are not cluttered with ads.

To verify that your tournament is set up correctly, try registering (you can de-register immediately afterwards). Here's a sample registration form - it should look like this if the tournament was set up correctly:

registration form

As players check in, you should see the check-in screen look like this:

teams / check-in form

After everyone is checked in, you can close the registration and start the tournament.... but wait! When you try to start the tourney you will see a message:

tournament expansion option (???)

Leave the radio button selected to "expand your tournament", and hit the Submit button. When you go back to administer the tournament, you will see that the pairings are up:

pairings are up

At this point, it's really important that you see players teamed up together. As you can see in the above screenshot, we have Brazil & Sweden vs Australia and Spain in the first round, for example. This is standard for Spades tournaments - there will be a team of 2 players vs another team of 2 players. If you do not see this format, something has gone wrong. It's probably better to delete the tournament and start over.

For future reference, this is the text that is seen in the Tourney Administration "Info" area. As you can see, you have a max of 4 teams, there are 2 rounds, and the match format is 2 vs 2. Look for this when after creating your tourney.

Tournament Name: Test222random
Tourney Jump #: 1611371
TD Name: Wales
Path: tdtraining
Tournament Date: 4/27/2015
Tournament Time: 9:30 pm
Current Status: Registration / Check-In
Registered Teams: 0
Checked-In Teams: 0
Auto-Team Locator Total: 0
Max Teams: 4
Rounds: 2
Match Format: 2 vs 2
Format: Standard
Type: Bracket (Single-Elim)
Entry Fee: 0
Bux Donation: 0