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Tournament Dry-Runs 🎱

Practice a whole event here — so tournament night is boring
For Jon. This is a practice guide, not a feature. Work through these the same way you'd run a real night. Every snag you hit here is one that won't happen in front of a live field.

Why we practice like this

Software gets reliable in rehearsal, not on game day. The more full tournaments you run through the app now — while nothing is on the line — the more rough edges we find and fix before a real event.

It also keeps support sane. Having a developer on call during your tournament is expensive and honestly isn't how apps are meant to work — the goal is an app that just runs. Hardening it in these dry-runs is what makes that possible. (Exactly what day-of support looks like — who you'd reach, how fast — is a conversation Annabel is teeing up with Ryan. These rehearsals are what make that conversation easy.)

How to use this page: start at #1 and work down. When something feels wrong, confusing, or just not how you'd do it at the table — that's gold. Jot it down (or drop it in your brain-dump), and it becomes the next thing we fix.

1 Register a small field warm-up

Goal: get comfortable adding players and seeing them land.
  1. Open Register and add 8 players — mix of names, ratings, and a couple from out of country for the flags.
  2. Include one player under the rating/games cutoff (e.g. a 400-games player) so you can see the eligibility flag.
  3. Open the Roster and confirm all 8 are there, with flags, ratings, and the "needs TD approval" warning on the low one.
What should happen: every player saves instantly and shows on the roster. The under-cutoff player is flagged in red for your approval.
Already loaded for you: a real 28-player field from a 505 & Under event (names + FargoRates, imported the way a FargoRate link would — no phone/email needed). That's a true-to-life uneven number to practice with — see the Roster.
Known limit today: the roster resets when we push an update — expected until the permanent database is wired. Phone/email aren't required for an imported player; they're collected later when the player confirms.

2 Set up the event warm-up

Goal: enter a real event the way you'd enter one of your Fargo Billiards nights.
  1. Open Setup and walk all 8 steps: type (double-elim), entry fee, added money, game type, race, rating cap, reg cutoff.
  2. Use the real numbers off one of your actual flyers.
What to tell us: is any field you need missing? Is the order of the steps how you'd actually do it? Anything you'd rename?

3 Calculate the payout warm-up

Goal: confirm the money comes out the way you pay it.
  1. Open Payouts. Enter your field size, entry fee, and added money from a past event you remember the payouts for.
  2. Compare what the app shows against what you actually paid out that night.
  3. Try a few sizes — 8, 16, 32, 64 — and watch how many spots get paid (always the top 25%).
The two rules it enforces: it pays the top 25% of the field, and the lowest paid spot always gets at least the entry fee back. Tell us if the shape (how top-heavy it is) matches how you like to pay.

4 Run the bracket full event

Goal: play the event out on paper, start to finish.
  1. Open the Bracket for your 8-player field.
  2. Walk the winners' side and the losers' side the way a real double-elim plays out, down to the grand final.
  3. Check the payout pills on the bracket against your payout from step 3.
What to tell us: does the bracket read the way you'd call it at the table? Byes in the right spots? Losers'-side drops landing where you expect?

5 Score + manage tables full event

Goal: run the floor — assign tables, post scores, keep it moving.
  1. Open Tables and assign matches to tables; use the on-deck queue.
  2. Open Score and post a few match results (try both TD-approval and auto-post).
What to tell us: on a busy night with every table full, would this keep up with you? What's one tap too many?

6 The full dress rehearsal full event

Goal: do a complete night end-to-end, no stopping, like it's real.
  1. Register a full 16- or 32-player field (throw in the tricky ones — low ratings, a late add, a duplicate phone).
  2. Set up the event with real money and rules.
  3. Run the bracket to a champion.
  4. Score matches and manage tables as you go.
  5. Pay it out and compare to the calculator.
This is the one that matters most. A clean full dress rehearsal is the strongest signal we're close. A messy one tells us exactly what to fix next — which is just as valuable.

7 Uneven fields — the real world full event

Goal: prove it holds up when the entry count isn't a clean 16 / 32 / 64.
  1. You rarely get a perfect bracket number. Run the payout for the odd counts you actually see — 28, 37, 19 — and confirm the top-25% and entry-fee-floor rules still land right.
  2. The real field loaded is 28 players — an uneven number on purpose.
What works today: the payout math handles any field size, clean or not.
Being built (F-05): the automatic bracket draw that fills an uneven field with the right number of byes (28 players → 4 byes to fill 32, top seeds get them). The current bracket on screen is a fixed demo; the real auto-draw from your roster is the next big piece — tell us this matters and it moves up.