World of Card Games

World of Card Games has an admin panel for running Spades tournaments. In theory, it might be used for other 4-player games. However, I've only tried it for Spades.

Anyone can run a tournament at World of Card Games. You can set up your own league and run tournaments at pretty much any game site. I've already posted instructions for setting up Spades tourneys at MyLeague.

To access the World of Card Games tournament admin panel, however, you need to be approved. Once you get approval, when you log in, you'll see a new "td" link up there next to your name:

tournament director link

When you click on the link, a panel opens. It looks like this:

TD admin panel at World of Card Games

It's relatively uncomplicated. There's a text input field for the game ("spades") and the number of players "4". Always set those the same way. Then there are 4 text inputs for 4 players at a single tournament table. How to set those?

Let's look at the MyLeague pairings again. Notice that Brazil & Sweden are playing against Australia & Spain in the first match:

MyLeague pairings

So you will want to set up your first table the same way. Under Team 1, Player 1, enter Brazil, and for Player 2 enter Sweden. Under Team 2, Player 3 enter Australia, and for Player 4 enter Spain. This is how it should look:

Setting the TD admin panel correctly at World of Card Games

Once you hit the "create" button, it causes an alert to be sent out to those 4 players. The alert shows up as a big red T. If you've played in a tournament, you will have seen it before:

The big red T

This icon is an easy way to get players seated correctly. All they have to do is be logged in with the correct username and they'll see it. They just click the icon, and are taken directly to their table, in the correct seat.

At this point, you've sent alerts to Brazil, Sweden, Australia, and Spain... now you need to repeat the procedure for Scotland, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium. Once you do this, you will have sent alerts to all players. It's now up to them to get to their seats and play.

Once players have finished their game, a red "complete!" message will show next to the match in the World of Card Games TD admin panel. If you click "view/edit" next to that match, you'll see the winning team names highlighted in green. This is how you will know for sure who won and who lost. If players do not properly report their losses, you can adjust the match for them using the MyLeague TD panel.

winners are highlighted in green in the admin panel

Once Round 1 is finished, you will need to repeat the above procedure to get the last, Round 2 match alerts sent out. Once again, check the MyLeague pairings to see who is paired up for Round 2. Then create a table using the correct pairings, as before.

There are some precautions that you should take. There can be differences between a MyLeague username and a World of Card Games username. The names are in general similar, but whitespace is not allowed in usernames at MyLeague. So for example, the name "big red" at World of Card Games might correlate with the user "bigred" at MyLeague. The World of Card Games admin panel accepts MyLeague names only. You can copy and paste the names directly from the MyLeague admin panel into the World of Card Games panel.

You might have noticed in the above screenshots that MyLeague sometimes abbreviates a name - "Switzerland" shows up as "Switzerlan." in the pairings. Be on the lookout for these abbreviations. Make sure to use the player's full MyLeague name in the World of Card Games admin panel.


Finally, you will have noticed that I usually send out emails to all registered players when a tournament is ready. Unless people specifically authorize me to share emails, I will not share them with other tournament directors. So any new TDs need to adapt a method for getting in contact with players, and players need to adapt as well. One suggestion is to use the MyLeague tourney site, where it is possible to post messages in the forum or use their personal messaging system: http://www.myleague.com/junglegymspades/messages/

Time will tell if these methods of communication are acceptable.... I think that they are probably better than email, but everyone has to be willing to use them. I do plan on adding personal messaging to World of Card Games soon, but that will take a while, so something else is needed in the meantime.

I will make myself available to new TDs while they set up their first few tourneys and until it's clear that they don't need my help anymore. Suggestions for improving the admin panel are welcome.