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IMPORTANT NOTE:
Microsoft is now releasing its new operating
system, Vista, on many new computers. Tournament Plus has not been
tested on the Vista platform. There has been much discussion and
concern among software developers about the compatibility of this system
with typical runtime applications. Until this new system can be
tested with Tournament Plus, make sure you have access to a computer
running Windows 98SE, Windows2000 or WindowsXP for your tournaments.
A preliminary Vista-compatible version of Tournament Plus has been
developed, but has had only minimal tournament testing.
URGENT:
See the "Known Bugs and Fixes" page for
information about a problem in 2.05.13 involving 16-person consolation
brackets and about a Match Numbering issue.
What is the latest version of
Tournament Plus that is available?
Tournament
Plus 2.05.14 [dated December
3, 2007].
This incorporates all previous interim changes and introduces some new
features described in "What's New in
Tournament Plus 2.05?"
See Revision
History for details; download the latest version below.
If you already have version
2.05 dated November 2006 or later, you can get the latest replacement
"front end" file by clicking here
. Select "Save" at the download prompt and save the file
to your computer.
This file should be used to replace the file by the same name in
your C:\Program Files\TourPlus directory.
NOTE: This file will not
work with earlier versions (2.04 and earlier) and will not work without the associated
"back end" files. The "back end" files are put
on your computer when you install Tournament Plus from the installation
CD. If you are running Tournament Plus on a network, this file
must be on all networked computers.
How do I upgrade to 2.05?
Because of some additional files required
in version 2.05, a single file download is not possible. However,
if you are a registered
owner, and purchased Tournament Plus within the past 12 months, email us
for your free update. We will email you a link to download the newest
installation file.
If you want an update on CD,
a $10.00 fee will be charged for materials and shipping.
If you are a registered owner, and purchased Tournament Plus over 12
months ago, the latest version can be obtained for $25.00 plus shipping. Email
us for details.
email us at BrownBag Data
How do I purchase Tournament
Plus 2.05?
You can purchase Tournament Plus on the
"Purchase & Demo's" page. You can also request expedited
shipping from that page. To go their now, click here.
General ...
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What do I need to run
Tournament Plus?
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What types of brackets can I
run?
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If I have an 8-person bracket
and only 3 wrestlers, can I run a round-robin bracket for that weight
only?
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How many brackets can I have?
What about the number of wrestlers or divisions?
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How many teams can I have? Can
I have team scoring?
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How are Divisions determined?
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After I specify a Division, how
to I put a wrestler in that division?
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Can I pre-register wrestlers?
Do I have to?
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How long does it take to enter
a bracket?
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Once a bracket is entered, how
long before we can start wrestling?
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When I enter results of a bout,
do I have to go to a separate form or table?
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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?
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Where did Tournament Plus come
from, and how come I haven't heard about it before?
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Is anything else being
planned?
Getting Started with Tournament Plus ...
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What is the tournament that
appears when I first load Tournament Plus?
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What do I do with the Sample
Tournament when I want to start my own?
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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
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Do I HAVE to use the Weight
Classes and Mat Assignments screen to enter my brackets?
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Why won't the program allow me
to enter my heavyweight bracket as "HVWT"?
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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 ...
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How do I install Tournament
Plus on a network?
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I have the program loaded on
two computers, but the remote computer can't find the data.
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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?
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How do I connect the remote
program to a printer?
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I get a message saying that the
data file (TourPlus32_Data.mdb) is already in use and I cannot connect
to it.
Other Features ...
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How do I use the "Team
Scores Display Screen"?
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My Team Scores Display Screen
is blank!
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Why don't all the teams show
up?
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My laptop does not work at
800x600. How can I get the best display?
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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.
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. NOTE:
The initial program file is empty. You can
load two Sample tournaments from the opening screen. Sample 1 has
all the wrestlers entered, but no results. Sample 2 has all the
wrestlers and complete results entered.
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 floppy disk, 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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