Tournament Mode
League Dispatcher includes a full-featured tournament engine. Run structured tournaments with defined participants, brackets, and standings — completely independent of your regular drop-in dispatching.
What is Tournament Mode?
Unlike the continuous dispatch algorithms, tournaments have a fixed structure with defined teams, a set schedule, and a clear winner. When a tournament is active, it takes over the dispatch — regular play pauses until the tournament ends.
Supported Formats
Four tournament formats are available:
Round Robin — Every team plays every other team exactly once. Winner determined by most wins, with head-to-head and point differential as tiebreakers.
Single Elimination — Classic knockout bracket with seeded matchups (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, etc.). Optional 3rd place match and consolation rounds. BYEs are automatically handled for non-power-of-2 team counts.
Double Elimination — Players get a second chance. Losers drop to a lower bracket. The upper and lower bracket winners meet in the Grand Finals.
Pool Play — Teams are split into pools (default 4 teams per pool) and play a round-robin within their pool. Pool standings are ranked by wins, then head-to-head, then point differential. The top finishers from each pool then automatically advance to a built-in single- or double-elimination bracket, seeded by pool finish so that pool winners get the top seeds and same-pool rematches are pushed to later rounds.
Team Sizes
Tournaments support any team size: 1 player per team for singles (1v1), 2 for doubles (2v2), 3 for triples (3v3), and so on. The team size is set at creation and applies to all teams in the tournament.
Setting Up
Go to the Tournaments tab and click the Manage Tournament button to open the setup screen. Give it a name, choose the format (Round Robin, Single Elimination, Double Elimination, or Pool Play), set the number of players per team, pick how many games each matchup is played to (single, best of 3, best of 5, or best of 7), and assign players to teams — either manually or let the system generate random teams.
For bracket tournaments, you can choose the seeding mode (random or manual order) and enable optional features like 3rd place matches or consolation rounds. Once everything is set, click Start to begin the tournament. The Manage Tournament button now lives directly on the Tournaments page (and on the empty state when no tournaments exist yet) — it has been moved out of League Setup so it is one tap away from the tournaments list.
Best-of-N Matchups
Each matchup can be played as a single game (default) or as a best-of-3, best-of-5, or best-of-7 series. The team that wins the majority of games wins the matchup. Series ends as soon as one team is mathematically uncatchable — best-of-3 ends at 2 wins, best-of-5 at 3, best-of-7 at 4.
Round Robin tries to keep an in-progress series on the same court so teams don't have to switch mid-series. Standings, head-to-head, and tiebreakers only count completed matchups, so a partial series in progress doesn't skew the leaderboard until the series is decided. Pick the matchup length when you create or edit the tournament — single game is still the default for quick events.
Integration with Regular Play
When a tournament is active, it takes exclusive control of the dispatch. Regular play is paused — the dispatch button shows tournament matches instead of regular matchups. Tournament games appear on the dashboard with a trophy icon. Players involved in an active tournament match are marked as busy and cannot be dispatched elsewhere.
Series Indicator on the Games List
When a matchup is more than one game, every game in the series shows a small chip on the games list and on court cards (e.g., "Game 2 of 3") so you can tell at a glance where you are in the series. The chip uses both text and shape so colorblind organizers can read it without relying on color.
Upcoming Matches List
Round Robin and Pool Play tournaments now show a numbered list of the next matches the dispatcher will propose as courts free up. Players can see exactly which teams come next, in what order, without asking the organizer. The list updates automatically as matches finish and as new ones are dispatched.
Scoring and Standings
As you enter scores, standings update automatically. Round-robin shows a cross-table matrix of who beat whom. Brackets update visually with winners advancing to the next round. Tiebreakers work in order: most wins, head-to-head result, then point differential.
Tournament Lifecycle
A tournament goes through four phases: Setup (create teams and configure), Start (locks the tournament and pauses regular play), Play (dispatch matches, enter scores, brackets advance automatically), and Finish (final standings are computed, regular play resumes). Only one tournament can be active per league at a time.