Boffer Tournaments

For as long as nerds have been hitting each other with sticks, they have also been competing to see who is the best at stick hitting. Here, I will describe different types of tournaments and some of the words used to describe them. This is not an in-depth guide on how to run a tournament; it is a basic primer on different formats.

Note: typically, Amtgard tournaments will be an individual event of a single format,  consisting of multiple categories, each run back to back. For example, the Single Short, Florentine, Sword and Board, Open, and Great Weapon categories will all be run in sequence, with approximately the same people, and all of them together are considered one whole tournament. Performance in each category will provide a number of “victory points” (4/2/1/0.5 for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th is typical), and the fighter with the most total victory points wins the whole tournament. In Belgarth and Dagorhir, each weapon category is typically considered its own tournament, i.e. first is the Single Blue tournament, then the Florentine tournament, and the Green Tournament, and then the Greatsword (Red, under 66 inches)…and so forth, with each one being distinct.

Vocabulary

First, I shall rigorously define certain terms, so we can be certain that we are all using them the same way.

Bouts vs Eliminations

A single instance of two fighters hitting each other a bunch is a bout. We usually describe it as “Best X of Y”, e.g. “best 2 out of 3”, meaning, we fight until someone has won twice, and simultaneous kills count as nothing – winner of 2 advances. An X-elimination means you must be defeated in X bouts to be eliminated from the entire tournament.

Simul (Simo)

A simultaneous kill, “simul” for short – sometimes pronounced simply as “simo” – is when two fighters hit each other at the exact same time, or so close that we can’t tell the difference. This include shots that are “in time”, i.e. “already in motion”. For most formats, these count as nothing; fighters reset and try again. It is not “SIMO” – a purported backronym for “Shot In MOtion”. Simul is short for simultaneous.

Brackets (Categories)

In the strictest sense, a bracket is the simplest form of tournament structure, where fighters fight, winners advance to the next round, and eventually only 1 person remains. Since many multi-stage tournaments have a final section where the winner is decided with a bracket, or multi-category tournaments have distinct brackets for each weapon type, we often also use “bracket” to mean “category”, in the sense that each category gets its own bracket. For example, question: “How many brackets are there?” – answer: “3 brackets – we’re doing sword-and-board, greatsword, and open, today.”

Open

A type of category – usually denoting one where there are no restrictions on the type and number of weapons allowed. Contrast with “restricted”. Since most tournaments are open to all players, “open” usually does not refer to tournaments with no restriction on entrants.

Restricted

A type of tournament – usually denoting that entrants (not weapons) are restricted to a certain demographic; e.g. non-men (aka Valkyrie tournament), newbies/newcomers (below a certain number of years in game, or level of award for fighting prowess) , etc. Usually, a tournament category for a specific set of weapons is just named for that weapon (e.g. Sword and Board Tournament, Florentine/Two-Stick Tournament), rather than described as “restricted”.

Seeding

When it is known that a number of entrants are of high skill, common practice is to strategically place them on a constructed bracket. In other words, they are “seeded” at specific intervals in the list. Places with advanced history may calculate “seed points” based on previous tournament performance, or just consider previous wins at the same annual tournament. Places which can remember scaling awards for fighting prowess (Amtgard) can also simply count the people with the biggest number. Different tournament formats will do different things to seeded players.

Reeves, Heralds, Marshals, Bean Counters

A Reeve (Amtgard), Herald (Belegarth/Dagorhir), or Marshal (SCA) is a referee who (1) knows the rules, (2) can stand next to a fight and go “no, you got hit there, you died”, and (3) often wears yellow or carries a long striped stick. Those titles are largely interchangeable, though I will often default to Reeve. A bean counter is someone who does not necessarily actually judge fights, but records results of bouts on paper and does addition.

Tournament Formats

Now, I briefly describe different formats of tournaments.

Straight Bracket (Single Elimination, Double Elimination)

The simplest format of tournament is a straight bracket. You gather the names of all the players; put them in a list; then they fight, winners against each other, until one is left.

Simple 4-person single elimination bracket.

For a bracket, bouts should usually be best-2-out-of-3, increasing to 3-out-of-5 for the final.  In a double elimination bracket, you must be knocked out twice to be eliminated. Whomever loses their first bout is sent to the losers’ bracket, where they fight other players whom have already lost once. Players who do not lose for the first time until late in the original bracket are seeded into later rounds of the losers’ bracket. Eventually, you will have your first winner (who has not lost once), and the winner of the losers’ bracket (lost once, and won every bout since). The winner of the losers’ bracket challenges the first winner – and must defeat the latter twice (because it is double elimination). The first winner needs only win 1 bout, which would be the other player’s second elimination, to secure 1st place.

Each bout of a bracket needs only 1 reeve, with a single central organizer to keep track of winners and losers on the bracket. One can run as many simultaneous bouts as there are reeves.

For straight brackets, seeded players are seeded away from each other, so they meet as late as possible. This is to prevent the top fighters from knocking each other out in early bouts, when they should theoretically be able to prove themselves good enough to reach the latest rounds.

Straight brackets are the logistically easiest tournament format to run. You do not even need to actually construct a bracket – just write all the names in a list (or make them all stand in a line), and call them out two at a time, crossing out the loser. Very few tools and foreknowledge is required to run a bracket.

Texas Two-Step, aka Pits-to-Brackets, aka Ironman-to-Brackets

Formerly known as Warlord-style, this format happens over 2 sections: the ironman (aka pits), and the bracket.

The ironman section sees all players sent into a field, with a small number of designated fighting pits, and line(s). At each pit, two players fight a bout of a single kill. The winner stays in the pit (and restores wounds), and the loser returns to the line, and is replaced by a new player. This can be organized with a single line feeding all pits, with an official directing players to pits as space opens up; or with each pit having its own line, and players free to join whichever line they wish. The ironman portion of the format continues for a predetermined time: 8-12 minutes is typical, 15 for sword-and-board; time tends to scale up with number of players. The goal is to simply rack up the greatest number of kills. At the end of time, a predetermined number of players advance to the second stage. Typically, this is the top 8 by total kills – scale this up and down to fit the number of entrants, but always keep it a power of 2 to fit a straight bracket.

When fighters simul in the pit, you have 3 options: (1) let all simuls reset without limit, (2) let the first simul reset, and after that, both fighters are out and the pit gets 2 new fighters, or (3) all simuls are both out and pit gets 2 new fighters. Removing simuls from the pit minimizes the amount of time that specific fighters linger in the pit, allowing other fighters the opportunity to fight more. One can also run an optional “mercy” rule: when a fighter reaches a certain killcount, they are instantly removed from the ironman. Removed fighters are automatically placed at the top of the rankings for the second stage. This mechanic pulls obvious frontrunners out of the pits early, to give other fighters better opportunity to fight.

Each pit typically has 1 reeve and 1 bean counter. Fighters are encouraged to call out their name (or number) after they win a bout, so the bean counter knows whose name to put a tick next to on their paper. The central tournament organizer may act as a reeve or bean counter, or to direct fighters from the single line, or stand somewhere else/walk around organizing in other ways. When time is called (by the central organizer), bouts finish, then the bean counters convene to add up all the kills.

At the beginning of the ironman section, seeded players are typically placed in separate pits. If the number of strong frontrunners is known beforehand, some organizers deliberately have 1 fewer pit than the number of strong fighters, in order to force them to fight each other, and cycle the pits.

8 person seeded bracket. Numbers on the left indicate seed number – notice 1 and 2 are seeded far away from each other.

The second stage of a Texas Two-Step is the bracket. Take the top players and seed them into a single elimination bracket. See the figure above for a traditional seed structure – the player with the most kills from the first stage is matched against the 8th most, the 4th against the 5th, and so forth. If tiebreaks are necessary, e.g., the top 7 are clear, but 3 players tied for 8th, then sort out your top players before constructing the bracket. For a 2 person tiebreak, this is typically a best-2-of-3. For 3 or more, this can be done as a round-robin. For very large tiebreaks, e.g. 5+, this can be a best-of-1 single elimination, for speed. During the bracket stage, there will typically be 2 reeves per bout. Bouts will be best-2-of-3, and 3-of-5 at least for the final.

For large, multi-category tournaments, such as an Amtgard Weaponmaster, one can immediately run each bracket, or save all brackets for the end. These styles can be referred to as “pits-brackets-pits-brackets”, or “all-pits-all-brackets”, respectively.

Texas Two-Step tournaments require a medium amount of infrastructure, due to the relatively large amount of kill-tracking and addition. However, there is only a small amount of initial setup, since bean counters begin counting only when players win in their pit. One advantage of this format is that since nobody is knocked out of the first round (bout losers just go back in line), players are guaranteed a certain amount of fight opportunity (though a potentially-large proportion of that time is spent waiting in line).

Just Ironman

A Texas Two-Step, Ironman/Pits-to-Brackets is not the same as a tournament just called “Ironman”. An ironman tournament is one that has no bracket stage. In a pure ironman tournament, there is 1 or more pit(s), and the winner is simply the person with the most total kills. Do not refer to a 2 stage, Texas Two-Step, pits into brackets tournament merely as “Ironman”.

Round Robin and Swiss

A round robin tournament is one where every player fights every other player. Since everyone fights everyone else and no one is knocked out, no seeding is relevant. However, since the number of bouts required rapidly increases as more players enter, this format is not feasible for large, or even medium, tournaments.

Swiss

A variant of the round robin is the Swiss tournament, popularized by competitive chess. Swiss is like round robin, with no knockouts, however, it is run only over a limited number of rounds (typically 5 or 6, more required for tournaments with more than 32 players). Scores are tracked with points assigned for victory in previous rounds, and players are matched with other players of similar scores – with a bias towards not repeating opponents. If seeded, players with high strength are matched against each other in the first round (when everyone’s score is zero). A Swiss tournament reduces the group to a definite ranking in as few rounds as a single-elimination bracket. Since no one is knocked out, however, players are guaranteed the same amount of fights. Since players who lose earlier bouts can continue to win points in later rounds, it is like a multi-elimination bracket with no strict limit.

Individual bouts in the rounds of a Swiss tournament are typically best-2-of-3, 1 reeve per fight. Typically, the central organizer will not reeve fights, but only record scores and call new matches.

The major advantage of a Swiss tournament is the guaranteed fight time for all entrants, but taking much less overall time than a full round robin. However, Swiss tournaments are mathematically very complex, virtually requiring computer aid. All players must be known beforehand to set up the system, and it is difficult to remove (walk-offs) and impossible to add (walk-ons) players partway through.

Tournament runners may also choose to run a second stage with a single elimination bracket, using the top players from the result of the Swiss rounds. Players will be seeded, in the normal way for brackets, based on their score from the Swiss stage.

Pools

A pools-system is a multi-stage tournament, where a large field of entrants is first divided into a number of small pools. The players of each pool will then fight amongst themselves using a different tournament format, and the top players from each pool will advance to the next stage. Typically, this will be pools of around 8 competing in a best-of-3 round robin, with the top 2 from each pool advancing. For example, 60-100 total players could be separated into 8 pools of 7-13 players each, from which the top 2 of each pool advance into a 16 person double elimination bracket. Seeded players are distributed equally throughout the pools. This system is useful for reducing a very large entrant group into smaller, relatively fast stages – which individually happen more quickly while still giving every player a guaranteed number of fights. Conversely, this is not useful with a small group, since you could simply run the other tournament format directly instead of separating into pools first.

A pools system requires a large amount of initial setup and a medium amount of administration. Each pool should have a dedicated bean counter, who is individually responsible for fewer people than a typical ironman pit. Each pool should have at least 1 on-demand reeve (not necessary for every single bout, but available).