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What is the
latest version of Tournament Plus that is available and how can I update?
NEW!! Tournament Plus 2.06.05
[dated September 2011] is available now in a BETA
version. This release incorporates a
few significant enhancements as well as a new installation scheme that
eliminates the need to get new “TourPlus.lic” files along with the front end
file to update to a later revision.
The more important changes in 2.06.05 are listed below.
·
Added pooled format
for four round robin brackets (can be 2-person through 6 person RR) where 1st
place winners go to 4-person double elimination final bracket for First
through Fourth Place; 2nd place RR finalists go to 4-person single elimination
with Fifth and Sixth Place (if
6-Places is selected) or to a 4-person double elimination for Fifth through
Eighth Place (if 8-Places is selected).
Other Round Robin pool formats are being introduced as well.
·
Added the
ability to have a text name assigned to any weight class (e.g., 215# =
"HWT")
·
Added scoring
scheme for beach wrestling; win by fall, win by points, win by referee
decision (in addition to normal results such as injury and forfeit);
customized beach wrestling bout slips also provided
If you are a
registered user of Tournament Plus and are interested in trying out version
2.06.05 BETA, contact me for a link to download the installation file. After a little more field testing, the Beta
version will be released as the latest revision, hopefully, in January, 2012.
Tournament
Plus 2.06.04b [dated December 2011]
is the latest released version of Tournament Plus. The 2.06 series is
the first single version that can be installed on XP, Vista and Windows 7,
including 64bit operating systems. See Revision History for updates in
version 2.06.
Because this
update affects the installation scheme for Tournament Plus, it is necessary
to obtain a new installation file in order to update to version 2.06.04b. This new file is available to Registered
users at no charge. Email me for a
link to download 2.06.04b.
Email: rbm@brownbagdata.com
Tournament
Plus 2.05.15b [dated February
2009] is the last version of the 2.05 series. You will not be able to
update beyond this without getting the full installation file for 2.06.01 or
later. If you are a registered user of the 2.05 series of Tournament Plus, or
earlier, contact me for a link to download the installation file for
Tournament Plus 2.06 at no additional charge.
How do I
purchase Tournament Plus 2.06?
You can
purchase Tournament Plus on the "Purchase & Demo's" page.
To go their now, click here.
General ...
1.
What do
I need to run Tournament Plus?
2.
What
types of brackets can I run?
3.
If I have
an 8-person bracket and only 3 wrestlers, can I run a round-robin bracket for
that weight only?
4.
How many
brackets can I have? What about the number of wrestlers or divisions?
5.
How
many teams can I have? Can I have team scoring?
6.
How are
Divisions determined?
7.
After I
specify a Division, how to I put a wrestler in that division?
8.
Can I
pre-register wrestlers? Do I have to?
9.
How long
does it take to enter a bracket?
10. Once a bracket is entered, how long
before we can start wrestling?
11. When I enter results of a bout, do
I have to go to a separate form or table?
12. Can I print out an individual
bracket sheet or bout slip? Do I have to wait for a division to finish before
I can print out stuff for the next round?
13. Where did Tournament Plus come
from, and how come I haven't heard about it before?
14. Is anything else being planned?
Using Vista ...
1.
Can I
install the Vista-compatible version of Tournament Plus on a computer running
a pre-Vista operating system (Windows 98SE, 2000, XP)?
2.
Can I
run Tournament Plus on a network with computers running Vista and computers
running a pre-Vista operating system?
Getting Started with
Tournament Plus ...
1.
What is
the tournament that appears when I first load Tournament Plus?
2.
What do
I do with the Sample Tournament when I want to start my own?
3.
What do
I do if I forgot to save the Sample Tournament to a floppy disk before I
clicked on "Start a New Tournament"?
Running the Program ...
1.
Do I
HAVE to use the Weight Classes and Mat Assignments screen to enter my
brackets?
2.
Why
won't the program allow me to enter my heavyweight bracket as
"HVWT"?
3.
Why
don't my bracket sheets print out for the First Consolation Round when I have
a "Bye" in the first round?
Using Tournament Plus on a
Network ...
1.
How do I
install Tournament Plus on a network?
2.
I have
the program loaded on two computers, but the remote computer can't find the
data.
3.
I have
loaded the full version of Tournament Plus on both computers, and both computers
can see each other on the network. Why do I get different data on each
computer?
4.
How do I
connect the remote program to a printer?
5.
I get a message
saying that the data file (TourPlus_Data.mdb) is already in use and I cannot
connect to it.
Other Features ...
1.
How do I
use the "Team Scores Display Screen"?
2.
My Team
Scores Display Screen is blank!
3.
Why
don't all the teams show up?
4.
My
laptop does not work at 800x600. How can I get the best display?
5.
Can I
make changes to the automatically calculated team score for a match?
General ...
You need a computer running Microsoft
Windows and a printer.
You can run 8-person 16-person or 32-person
double elimination brackets and 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6-person round robin brackets.
Yes. You can have any number of round
robin brackets (2, 3 4, 5 or 6-person) mixed in with your 8, 16 or 32-person
double elimination brackets.
You can run a single elimination Pig-Tail
bracket that will automatically populate the 8, 16 or 32-person double
elimination bracket when completed. This way, you can handle up to 64
wrestlers at a specified weight
There is no limit to the number of brackets
or the number of wrestlers. Currently, there are provisions for up to
ten divisions (e.g., "Bantam", "Novice",
"12-Under", "Open", etc) that you can title to suit your
tournament. Each division can contain an unlimited number of brackets
and wrestlers.
There is no limit to the number of teams
that you can have or the number of wrestlers that you designate as
scorers. You can keep team scores and customize the advancement points,
win points and place points to meet your individual needs. You can
designate a wrestler as a scorer or non-scorer, and his or her points will be
added to the team total or not, depending on their designation
You specify the criteria. The only
constraint is that all divisions must use similar criteria. For
example, you can group by Grade by setting a range of grades for each division.
You can have Grades 5 thru 8 in a division, Grades 9 and 10 in a division,
Grade 11 in a division, etc.
You can also group by Age, specifying a
range such as 6 and Under (age 0-6), 12 to 13, 14 to 16 or 18 to 99 (Open
division). When you group by age, you have an option of using any date
you want, including the day of the tournament, to determine the wrestlers age
based on date of birth.
You can put everyone in a single division
(like a high school meet) or you can simply specify groups by number with no
other criteria (1 - Men - Open, 2 - Women, 3 - Senior Open).
When you register a wrestler, you enter
either a Grade, an Age or Date of Birth, or a Group Number. Tournament
Plus will automatically place him or her in that division. For example,
if your Novice Division is for Ages 12 through 13, when you enter a wrestler
and type "12" in the Age field (or the appropriate date of birth in
that field), that wrestler will automatically be designated as a
Novice.
Pre-registration is not only available, it
is recommended. As your registrations come in, you can enter team
information and all the information needed to print out weigh-in cards for
each wrestler. The weigh-in cards also provide all the information that
pairings personnel will need, and provide an easy to read, consistent format
that will minimize the chance for seeding and data entry errors.
Pre-registration also assigns a number to each wrestler that can be used to
rapidly enter that wrestler in a bracket without typing in name, team and so
on.
You don't have to pre-register. It
just saves time. You can register wrestlers on the spot and print out
the same weigh-in cards mentioned above, or you can enter wrestler by name
and team directly into the brackets without going through the registration
and weigh-in card routine.
If you are issuing weigh-in cards and
getting those cards back from the pairings people grouped the way they want
them seeded, it takes as long to enter all the wrestlers in a bracket as it
does to type in the numbers of all the wrestlers in the bracket.
For example, let's say you get the
following cards back from the pairing people. "Novice 125#
Bracket" - Jim (#0025), Bill (#0122), Tim (#0092), Alan (#0003), Jon
(#0088), Ted (#0006), BYE (for Ted), and Brian (#0310). You start
a new record and type in "Novice, 125, 25,122, 92, 3, 88, 6, 0,
310". How long did that take?
If you did not go the weigh-in card route,
when you start a new bracket record, you type in the name of the wrestler and
the team (or select from the drop down list of teams expected or registered)
in the order you want them to wrestle. A little longer and you might
need someone who can type with more than one finger.
With the bracket entered (as described
above), click one button to send the Bracket Sheet directly to the printer
and another button to print out the Bout Slips for the first round. Post
the Bracket Sheet, give the Bout Slips to the announcer and get going! You
don't have to wait until the whole division is entered to start.
Of course not! Who wants to have to type in
a bunch of bout numbers and then hope that what you put in shows up correctly
in the next round. In Tournament Plus, you work with the bracket
displayed in front of you and click on the winners name to enter the score or
pin time. The program does the rest - move the winner and loser to the
next correct round and enter appropriate team points if you're doing Team
Scoring.
It all happens in front of you so you see
exactly what is happening, as it happens.
Yes. No. You can print out a
bracket sheet or bout slip for any round and any bout at anytime. You
can print out entire divisions or bout slips for entire rounds all at once,
or you can print out bracket sheets or bout slips for all brackets above or
below a specified weight at once.
Tournament Plus is a home-grown application
developed by people who run wrestling tournaments, for people who run
wrestling tournaments. It is not simply a double elimination tournament
program made to work for wrestling tournaments.
We have been using Tournament Plus in one
form or another since 1994 to run our local tournaments. As our events grew,
we needed a program to handle the number of wrestlers, the number of teams
and the number of matches being run at once. We developed Tournament
Plus as a Microsoft Access application to handle this. We are now
comfortably handling tournaments of 1100+ wrestlers. Our major
tournament typically includes over 65 teams (with team scoring), in at
least four divisions, wrestling up to 16 bouts at a time.
As new tools have become available, we can
now provide this application in a runtime version that does not require
Microsoft Access. Now we feel comfortable making it available to
others. To this point, we have shared it with some of our neighboring
teams to help them run more efficient tournaments. The response from
them has been great. Their programs are growing and people aren't
spending all day and half the evening at their tournaments.
For a typical tournament of 300 to 400
wrestlers, with 6 or 8 matches going on at the same time, a single computer
and a single printer can handle all the data entry and printout
demands. For larger tournaments, Tournament Plus can be run on a
network using multiple computers and printers.
For our largest tournaments, we have run up
to 4 computers. We were able to handle registration for a subsequent
division in one area while wrestling is going on, a Question-and-Answer
station, a data entry station and a backup computer where we could look
ahead.
LOTS!!
We are putting some finishing touches on a
true Round Robin tournament format, vertical pairing. This format is
typically used in many Freestyle and Greco tournaments. This will
provide the same type of What You See is What You Get tournament information
and ease of printing out bout slips and bracket sheets. Watch for more
information.
Using Vista
...
Yes. The only difference between the
Vista and pre-Vista versions is in the installation scheme and the file
locations. If you already have a version of Tournament Plus on your
computer, uninstall Tournament Plus before you attempt to install the
Vista-compatible version on that computer. Your previously saved
tournament files will not be affected by this re-installation.
Yes you can. My experience has shown
that it is easier to use a pre-Vista computer as your Primary computer (the
one with the full Tournament Plus installation). Vista is too picky
about allowing the file sharing permissions that need to be established to
allow remote computers (workstation installation) to update data on the
Primary computer.
Getting
Started with Tournament Plus ...
A sample tournament is already loaded in
the Tournament Plus program. This is for you to use to try out the
different functions and to see how things will look by the time your
tournament has completed. Try out some of the reports and print out
some of the bout slips and bracket sheets to see how easy it is. This
sample data is also copied to the Tournament Plus/Save/Sample folder on
installation.
You can simply click on Start a New
Tournament and begin entering your setup options. You might want to use
the sample tournament to try saving a tournament to a USB drive or to your
hard drive and reloading it.
Just reload the sample tournament from the
opening screen. You can get a new copy of the Sample Tournament files
from the "Purchase and Demos" page on this site if you need to.
Instructions for downloading and installation are also there. The
sample files are also on the installation CD, and can be loaded from there.
Running the
Program ...
No. All information (i.e., Division,
Weight, Mat, Bracket Size, etc.) can be entered at the Data Entry screen
either at the time of entering wrestlers into the brackets or prior to
entering any wresters. Also, you do not have to add brackets in
order. They will be shown as ordered by Division and then by Weight
Class after they are entered.
Weight Classes must be entered as numeric
values. You can use 275 as the heavyweight bracket (high school) or the
highest weight in you heavy bracket. You can use numbers with one
decimal place. Similarly, if you want to have more than one bracket at
a given weight, you can use a decimal format like "103.1",
"103.2", etc.
To avoid printing bout slips for invalid or
blank brackets. Tournament Plus looks at the field for the first wrestler in
each bracket. If that field is empty, it assumes it is an invalid
bracket. When you give a wrestler a Bye in the first round, identify
his "opponent" by entering a zero (0) in the Wrestler Number field.
This will put "Bye" in the name field and progress the Bye
accordingly.
Using
Tournament Plus on a Network ...
Tournament Plus needs to be installed,
either in a "Server" or "Full"
format, on one computer (the computer to be used as the primary
computer). If you plan to use the primary computer for data entry or to run
any Tournament Plus functions, use the "Full" format.
This computer needs to remain on whenever Tournament Plus is being used by
other computers. All other computers included on the network will need
the Tournament Plus "Workstation" format
installed. The installation disk will prompt you for the installation
format. The screen will look like this:
You need to tell Tournament Plus where to find
the data table (which is installed only on the primary computer) in order for
the remote computers to be able to use the data. You will know whether
or not the remote computer(s) can find the data as soon as you try to access
the "Setup Options" or other forms. You will get a message
like this:
Click "OK" and then select Refresh Data Link and click on the
"Refresh Link to Tournament Plus Data Tables" menu bar dropdown.
If Tournament Plus cannot find the file "TourPlus_Data.mdb" on the
computer, you will be given a directory screen to point to that file.
The file will be found in the directory that you specified to install
Tournament Plus on the primary computer (the default location is C:/Program
Files/TourPlus). You must have a network connection established between
the two computers in order to link the remote program to the data table.
When you install a full version of Tournament
Plus, you install the program files and the data tables in the same
directory. The program files are linked to the data tables in that
directory. When you have two full installations, you have two programs
using separate data tables. You need to uninstall the full version from the
remote computer, reinstall the "Workstation" version, and establish
the link to the data as described above.
You have two options when connecting a
printer. First, you can use a printer connected to one of the computers
and share it on the network. This may be a little slower and will
require the computer that the printer is connected to (using the local
printer port or USB connection). The other option is to use a network
printer connected to a router or print server. In both cases, you must
set the printer you want to use as the Default Printer for each individual
computer using the Windows printer setup.
Make sure that the folder where this file
is located (typically C:\Program Files\TourPlus on the "primary"
computer or server) is shared and allows network users to modify data.
Some operating systems will not allow you to share the Program Files
directory. In this event, go to the TourPlus directory and share
it. The sharing window in Windows XP looks like this:
Both the "Share this folder on the
network" and the "Allow network users to change my files" must
be checked. Network users will only have change authority in this
folder.
Other
Features ...
The "Team Scores Display Screen"
will let you display up-to-date Team Scores (refreshed about every 2 minutes)
on a separate computer display or on a projector. Set up either the
projector or the screen/monitor of a remote computer (requires a networked
setup) to display Tournament Plus from that computer. One the remote
computer, select "Show Team Score's Display Screen" on the Scoring
menu bar item. When the Team Scores screen is displayed, select the
Division(s) that you want to show. Leave this computer and
screen/monitor/projector alone and watch the scores change as the results of
the matches are entered.
Try recalculating Team Scores by selecting
"Calculate Team Scores" on the Scoring menu bar item.
Every time team scores are refreshed, the appropriate data table is deleted
and rebuilt. That table may not have been built when you set up this
feature.
This screen only displays the top 25 teams
in each Division. If your windows task bar covers up the bottom of the
screen, you should set the task bar to "Auto-Hide". This
screen is displayed best at 800x600 resolution.
Set your laptop display (using Control Panel
- Display - Settings - Advanced) DPI setting to Large Size (125% normal
size). This will give you an approximately 800x600 display with a
1024x768 resolution.
Yes, simply edit the field where the team
score is shown by clicking on it, highlighting the old score and typing in
the new one. This change will be reflected the next time you choose
"Calculate Team Scores". If you are displaying Team Scores on
a separate computer or projecting them onto a screen or wall, they will
automatically change in about 30 seconds.
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