Splendid City, sports scheduling software basics & tutorials
Need quick answers? Try searching the Splendid City site knowledge base.
The Splendid City Help Manual (1 MB) in it's entirety it is available here in PDF format. If you don't have a pdf reader you can download the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Try out Splendid City using these in depth tutorials targeted for 3 different levels of SC users:
| Beginner | Intermediate | Expert | .
Splendid City client Markus Ganz has posted some excellent video tutorials on YouTube. You can view them here.
Archived (.zip) tutorial HTML files can be downloaded to disk, for convenient off-line access.
If you are still looking for answers to your questions be sure to take a quick look at the Splendid City support FAQ, which get updated periodically.
Read this special tutorial on how to load CSV schedule files generated by 3rd party software to produce Splendid City project schedules.
Learn how to incorporate the icalendar files produced by Splendid City with the freely available Mozilla Calendar in this new calendar 'how to' tutorial. Using Mozilla, users can edit, view, print and publish their Splendid City generated schedules in monthly, weekly, biweekly, daily calendar format using all the great features of Mozilla Calendar.
If you are new to Sports Scheduling, you should take a look at this sports scheduling on-line lesson below.
Types of Tournaments
Single Elimination
This type of tournament is used when time is limited such as on weekends, one-day events or final playoff of round robin tournament. (Sample Single Elimination Tournament)
- If the number of participants is a power of two, then no byes are necessary in the first round. Example: 4, 8,
- Number of byes = next power of two – number of participants. Example: If you have 5 participants, the next power of two is 8 so 8 – 5 = 3 byes.
- Number of games = number of participants – one.
Double Elimination
This type of tournament is similar to the single elimination but everyone gets a second chance. Losers of winners bracket drop down to play again in loser's bracket. Each participant must lose two games before being eliminated. (Sample Double Elimination Tournament)
- Minimum number of games = (2 X number of participants) - 2. Example: With 12 participants; (2 X 12) - 2 = 22 minimum games.
- Maximum number of games = (2 X number of participants) - 1. Example: With 12 participants; (2 X 12) - 1 = 23 maximum games.
Round Robin
This type of tournament is the most popular and provides maximum playing time for participants. It is used for league competition and is very time consuming. It is important to first determine the number of games to be played. (Sample Round Robin Tournament)
- Number of games =[ (number of teams) x (number of teams - 1) ] / 2; Ex: 8 teams = [8x7] / 2 = 28
- Number of rounds - Even: N – 1, Odd: N
- Number of games per round – Even: [ N / 2] Odd: [N - 1] / 2; Ex: [ 6 teams = [6 / 2] = 3 games ] or [ 5 teams = [5 - 1] / 2 = 2 games ]
Complementary Round Robin
The Complementary Round Robin schedule type offers an optimized algorithm for shared home field usage for team pairs. In other words, if two teams were to share a home location, this cyclic round robin pattern will ensure that both teams never play home or away on the same date or in the same round, allowing for better management of shared locations. In order for this algorithm to work, game rounds should be allocated using the standard round robin (i.e. number of games per round = Number of Teams / 2) games per round distribution. For odd numbers of teams, fractional remainders are truncated (i.e. 5 / 2 = 2).
Sharing teams would then be assigned with their complement. The formula for determining the complement of a position would be:
- complement = position + (number of Teams / 2).
A complement pairing example using eight, Splendid City template team objects would be:
- Temp_Team_1 & Temp_Team_5, Temp_Team_2 & Temp_Team_6, Temp_Team_3 & Temp_Team_7, Temp_Team_4 & Temp_Team_8.
Hence, using the complementary round robin algorithm, scheduled teams would be able to share a common home field and not be positioned home or away on the same date.
Swiss-Style Tournament
This tournament offers several advantages over single and double elimination tournaments, as all teams participate in the same number of rounds allowing everyone to enjoy a full day of play. It also allows an accurate assessment of playing strengths for a large grouping of teams without the need for a prohibitively large number of games like Round Robin Tournaments. It is also satisfying to all participants as players who are still new to the game may have a chance to win. Odd number of teams can be scheduled as well without too much difficulty. In the Swiss system, players are paired off each round according to their cumulative score. (Sample Swiss Style Tournament )
- The actual number of rounds needed to handle the number of players in the section is 2^n, where n = the number rounds. So for 32 players, 5 rounds are needed to determine a clear winner, since 2^5 = 2x2x2x2x2 = 32.
- For odd number of teams, the lowest ranked team gets placed into the bye slot. A bye round for a team gets treated as a win and compounded with enough scores or goals for to place that team back into the middle of the rankings for subsequent rounds.
Challenge Tournaments
Participants challenge each other. This type of tournament can be carried on with little supervision.
