Requirements on How to Run a (Badminton) Tournament

Requirements on How to Run a (Badminton) Tournament

In this project we are searching to run a particular type of (badminton) tournament, from registration of the players, to generating the draws, playing the tournament and making up the final balance.

Badminton is an indoor racket sport, played as either singles, doubles or mixed doubles. The server alone can score, and a match is won by two out of three games. The badminton court consists of two 6.1m (20ft) by 6.7m (22ft) sides, separated by a net elevated to a height of 1.524m (5ft).

Running a tournament consists of roughly four phases (note the usage of the various terms listed below):

  1. Registration: (this is where teams register their participation in a number of events) [up to 1-2 weeks before the tournament]
    1. Each person registers for the tournament in a number of events (e.g. Open Men Singles, Senior Mixed Doubles, Junior Women Singles).
    2. Registration also includes a USAB member number, region, address, email, phone, as well as various fees to be paid to both USAB and tournament. Fees are typically a fixed amount for to enter the tournment, and a fixed number for each event entered. The USAB member number is also important, as it needs to be printed on the results sheets (see below).
    3. Players register in an event, either alone in singles or with a partner in doubles or mixed doubles. Either way, we call this a team.
    4. Players can also request a partner if they don't have one yet. The program must then later resolve (usually manually) this by combining players that requested partners.
    5. Players sometimes come up with weird requests, like "I am requested a partner, but can only play in Men-Doubles or Mixed-Doubles, but not both."
    6. The tournament registration itself may limit the registration entries to a fixed amount, or a selection of events that will not overlap in time during the tournament (i.e. to be specified on the form)
    7. Typical number of players: 150 (varying 50 - 250 probably)
    8. Typical number of events: 25 (varying 5 - 100 probably)
    9. Typical number of categories: 5 (but could be as much as 40)
    10. Typical number of levels: 2 (but 1 - 4 possible)
  2. Ranking and Draw construction: (this is done after the registration is closed and the various draws in each event are made up prior to the tournament day ) [done during a single day about 1 week before the tournament]
    1. For each event all teams are extracted. For (mixed) doubles events care has to be given to players who misspell their partner's name. For mixed doubles events the male name is first (sorry, IBF rules).
    2. Players that requested partners will have to be matched together based on region, club, playing ability, etc......
    3. The players list will then be re-ordered (ranked by strength) by an outside impartial judge
    4. Players are thrown in a binary tree, with placement rules as specified by the IBF. (see link below). Typically the top 4 or 8 are sprinkled in the draw by the IBF rules, the remainder at random, maybe subject to some regional criteria.
    5. After all players have been assigned in events, a final list of all players, and how many events they play (and thus how money they owe) is now made to help during the registration just before the tournament starts. USAB fees and tournament fees should be kept separate since they go to different agencies.
    6. Based on a rough event order, match numbers can now be assigned, and given a specified amount of time per match (35 minutes), a total time-sheet of match numbers vs. time can be made estimating if the tournament can be run within the allotted time.
  3. Tournament: ( this is the big day when everybody plays their matches, and the computer program tries and keep up with the events ) [the tournament lasts 1-4 days]
    1. A number of courts are available to put matches on. (typically 10)
    2. Each match is labeled by the two teams(players), the event-name (e.g. MS-A, MD40-B), and the match-location in the draw (e.g. 3/4 for the 3rd quarter finals, 6/16 for the 6th match in the round of 16). Optionally perhaps a referee .
    3. A match sheet can be printed with all of this information on it.
    4. Automatically timestamp each match as it is opened and closed from the courts, so the tournament table can keep track of how long a particular match has been on-court.
    5. If a player is playing on-court, the program should warn if one attempts to put the same player on court from another event.
    6. Winners of a match are automatically advanced to their next slot, losers are saved or discarded based on the rules in the next item:
    7. Losers in their first round match - and optionally their second round - of a draw are dropped down in another draw, and need to be gathered, re-ranked and a new draw needs to be made up for those. This results in an A/B (double elimination) or A/B/C/D (triple elimination) type of draw. In A/B a looser in A would play single elimination in B. In A/B/C/D A players won their first two matches, B players first won, then lost the 2nd match, C players lost the first, won the 2nd and D players would have lost their 1st as well as 2nd match. Whenever they loose a third match, they are out of that event.
    8. The beforementioned A/B/C/D is complicated, and can be skipped for the first implementation, as it is currently not much used.
    9. While the tournament is running, the program should always produce a short list (10-20) matches that can go "on-court" next, so the tournament table can manually select any of them, based on subjective things like player availability etc.
  4. Results: ( this is where we make up the balance of the whole thing ) [with the right software, could be done during the last day of the tournament]
    1. Produce an overview of all winners and runners up in all events.
    2. Produce full diagrams of each event.
    3. Produce a financial report.

Constraints

Here are some constraints on your development of the project:

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This page was last modified on 30-Jan-2001 (00:58)