The Tournament Director 2

 

Version 2.5.15

The Tournament Director is Copyright © 2004 - 2017 Corey Cooper
http://www.thetournamentdirector.net

 

 

 

1 Table of Contents. 1

2 Introduction. 7

3 Requirements. 7

4 What's New.. 7

5 Getting Started. 7

6 Using the Tournament Director 8

6.1 Some Quick Tips. 8

7 Settings Window.. 9

8 Game Tab. 9

8.1 Game Properties. 9

8.1.1 General 9

8.1.2 Points for Playing. 10

8.1.3 Rebuys. 11

8.1.4 Add-ons. 11

8.1.5 Notes. 12

8.1.6 Options. 12

8.2 Starting Your Tournament 12

8.3 Loading and Saving Your Tournaments. 13

8.4 Loading Pre-2.0 Tournaments. 13

8.5 Creating a New Tournament 13

8.6 Tournament History. 14

8.7 Exporting Your Tournament 14

8.8 Exiting the Tournament Director 14

8.9 Registering the Tournament Director 15

8.10 About the Tournament Director 15

9 Rounds Tab. 15

9.1 Status Panel 15

9.2 Level Properties. 15

9.3 Adding New Levels. 16

9.4 Editing a Level 16

9.5 Changing the Rounds Tab View.. 16

9.6 Deleting a Level 17

9.7 Suggesting a Schedule. 17

9.8 Setting the Current Level 17

9.9 Loading and Saving Templates. 17

9.10 Clearing the Schedule. 17

9.11 Exporting the Schedule. 17

9.12 Configuring Columns. 18

10 Players Tab. 18

10.1 Track Players Mode. 18

10.2 Simple Mode. 20

10.3 Status Panel 20

10.4 Adding Players. 20

10.5 Importing Players. 21

10.6 Removing Players. 21

10.7 Buying Players In. 21

10.8 Undoing Player Buy-ins. 22

10.9 Editing a Player 22

10.10 Selecting a Player at Random.. 23

10.11 Adding Players to your Database. 23

10.12 Changing a Player's Association with a Database Player 24

10.13 Merging Players. 24

10.14 Un-merging a Player 25

10.15 Adjusting Player Rankings. 25

10.15.1 Undoing and redoing bust outs. 25

10.15.2 Adjust the rankings. 25

10.16 Setting Chip Counts. 26

10.17 Preferences. 26

10.18 Configuring Columns. 26

10.19 Importing and Exporting Players. 26

10.20 Creating a Sign-In Sheet 27

11 Prizes Tab. 27

11.1 Status Panel 27

11.2 Creating Prizes. 27

11.2.1 Amount 28

11.2.2 Recipient 28

11.2.3 Lock. 28

11.2.4 Display. 28

11.2.5 Override. 28

11.3 Editing Prizes. 29

11.4 Deleting Prizes. 29

11.5 Rounding Prize Amounts. 29

11.6 Sorting Prizes. 29

11.7 Suggesting Prizes. 29

11.8 Automatic Prizes. 30

11.9 Loading and Saving Prize Templates. 30

11.10 Clearing the Prize List 30

11.11 Clearing Adjustments. 30

11.12 Using an Estimated Pot 30

11.13 Editing Chops. 31

11.14 Exporting Prizes. 32

12 Tables Tab. 32

12.1 Status Panel 32

12.2 Creating Tables. 33

12.3 Editing Tables. 33

12.4 Deleting Tables. 33

12.5 Automatic Seating Management 33

12.6 Manual Seating Management 34

12.7 Sorting Tables. 35

12.8 Placing Dealer Buttons. 35

12.9 Locking Players. 35

12.10 Making Seats Unavailable. 36

12.11 Controlling How Your Tables Collapse. 36

12.12 Compressing Seating. 37

12.13 Viewing the Last Balance. 37

12.14 Randomizing the Seating. 37

12.15 Swapping Tables. 37

12.16 Unseating a Table. 37

12.17 Clearing Tables. 38

12.18 Undoing / Redoing Actions. 38

12.19 Loading and Saving Table Templates. 38

12.20 Exporting Tables. 38

12.20.1 Tables Diagram Format 38

12.20.2 Player List Format 38

13 Layout Tab. 39

13.1 Working with Screen Sets. 40

13.2 Working With Screens. 40

13.3 Creating and Modifying Cells. 41

13.3.1 Property Set Properties. 43

13.4 Using Global Properties. 44

13.5 Working With HTML Styles. 44

13.6 Placing Images on the Screen. 45

13.7 Inserting Tokens. 45

13.8 Using Banners. 47

13.8.1 Banner Properties. 47

13.9 Other Properties. 48

13.10 Tokens. 48

13.11 Testing Your Layout 49

13.12 Clearing the Layout 49

13.13 Loading and Saving Layouts. 49

13.14 Exporting Layouts. 49

13.15 Conditions Dialog. 50

13.16 Adjusting the Screen Size. 50

14 Events Tab. 51

14.1 Creating Sounds. 52

14.2 Sorting Sounds. 52

14.3 Creating Events. 52

14.3.1 Description. 52

14.3.2 Trigger 52

14.3.3 Hotkeys. 53

14.3.4 Conditions. 53

14.3.5 Actions. 53

14.4 Importing Sounds. 54

14.5 Editing Sounds and Events. 55

14.6 Deleting Sounds and Events. 55

14.7 Clearing Sounds and Events. 55

14.8 Stopping Sounds That are Playing. 55

14.9 Omitting Events. 55

14.10 Event Priority. 55

14.11 Message Property Sets. 55

14.12 Message Queue. 56

14.13 Loading and Saving Event Templates. 56

14.14 Restoring Default Events. 57

14.15 Sound Volume. 57

15 Chips Tab. 57

15.1 Creating Chips. 57

15.2 Creating Chipsets. 58

15.3 Editing Chips and Chipsets. 58

15.4 Deleting Chips and Chipsets. 58

15.5 Setting Chip Values and Per-Player Quantities. 58

15.6 Determining Tournament Capacity. 58

15.7 Sorting Chips. 59

15.8 Displaying Chips on the Tournament Screen. 59

15.9 Clearing Chips and Chipsets. 59

15.10 Loading and Saving Chips Templates. 59

16 Rules Tab. 60

16.1 Editing Rules Tokens. 60

16.2 Displaying Rules on the Tournament Screen. 60

16.3 Clearing Rules Tokens. 60

16.4 Loading and Saving Rules Templates. 60

17 Summary Tab. 61

17.1 Summary Information. 61

17.1.1 Take-in. 61

17.1.2 Rake. 61

17.1.3 Pot 61

17.1.4 Prizes. 61

17.1.5 Bounties. 62

17.1.6 Summary. 62

17.1.7 Action Summary. 62

17.2 Exporting the Tournament Summary. 62

18 Database Tab. 62

18.1 Status Panel 63

18.2 Creating Players. 63

18.3 Editing Players. 63

18.4 Deleting Players. 63

18.5 Adding Players to Your Tournament 63

18.6 Creating Leagues. 64

18.7 Editing Leagues. 64

18.8 Editing League Membership. 64

18.9 Deleting Leagues. 64

18.10 Working with Seasons. 64

18.10.1 Creating Seasons. 64

18.10.2 Editing Seasons. 64

18.10.3 Renaming a Season. 65

18.10.4 Deleting Seasons. 65

18.11 Searching for Players. 65

18.12 Configuring Columns. 65

18.13 Importing Players. 65

18.14 Exporting Players. 65

18.15 Backing Up the Database. 66

18.16 Restoring a Database From Backup. 66

18.17 Preferences. 66

19 Stats Tab. 67

19.1 Status Panel 68

19.2 Working With Filters. 68

19.2.1 Creating Filters. 70

19.2.2 Editing Filters. 70

19.2.3 Deleting Filters. 70

19.2.4 Copying Filters. 70

19.2.5 Tournament Scoring and Overall Scoring. 70

19.3 Refreshing Tournaments. 71

19.4 Information on Loaded Tournaments. 72

19.5 Viewing Statistics for a Single Player 72

19.6 Changing Views. 73

19.7 Configuring Columns. 73

19.8 Exporting Statistics. 73

19.9 Preferences. 74

20 Preferences Tab. 74

20.1 Resetting Preferences to their Default Values. 74

20.2 Currency / Numbers. 74

20.3 Screen Saver 75

20.4 Database. 75

20.5 Miscellaneous. 75

20.6 Rakes 77

20.7 Tournament File Locations. 77

20.7.1 Adding a Save Folder 77

20.7.2 Editing a Save Folder 77

20.7.3 Deleting a Save Folder 77

20.8 Status Messages. 77

20.9 Name Format 78

20.10 Config Files. 78

20.10.1 Default Tournament 78

20.10.2 Prizes Configuration Files. 79

20.10.3 Export Templates. 79

20.11 Languages. 79

20.12 Receipts. 79

20.12.1 Settings. 79

20.12.2 Sales People. 79

20.12.3 Modifying the Receipt Template. 79

20.12.4 On Receipt Printing. 80

20.13 Extended Display. 80

21 Hotkeys Tab. 81

21.1 Creating Hotkeys. 81

21.2 Editing Hotkeys. 81

21.3 Deleting Hotkeys. 81

21.4 Resetting Hotkeys to their Default Configuration. 81

21.5 Viewing Hotkeys. 82

21.6 Exporting the Hotkeys. 82

22 Help Tab. 82

23 Links Tab. 82

23.1 Editing Links. 82

24 Controls Tab. 83

25 Game Window.. 83

25.1 Starting the Tournament 83

25.2 Managing the Clock. 83

25.3 Changing Rounds. 84

25.4 Adding Players to the Tournament 84

25.5 Buying Players into the Tournament 84

25.6 Busting Players Out 84

25.7 Performing Rebuys. 85

25.8 Performing Add-ons. 85

25.9 Balancing the Tables. 85

25.10 Using the Hand Timer 86

25.11 Locking the Screen. 86

25.12 Locking the Keyboard. 86

25.13 Changing Screens. 86

25.14 Chopping. 87

26 Tournament Screen. 87

27 Player Rankings Screen. 87

27.1 Modifying the Player Rankings Screen. 88

28 Seating Chart Screen. 88

28.1 Modifying the Seating Chart Screen. 89

28.2 Configuring Images for Tables. 90

28.3 Creating Your Own Table Blueprints. 91

29 Player Movement Screen. 93

29.1 Modifying the Player Movement Screen. 93

30 Data Stores. 94

30.1 Activating a Data Store. 95

30.2 Creating a New Data Store. 95

30.3 Editing a Data Store. 95

30.4 Deleting a Data Store. 95

30.5 Initializing a Data Store. 95

30.6 Upgrading From Version 2.5.5 or Earlier 96

31 Blinds Schedule Screen. 97

31.1 Modifying the Blinds Schedule Screen. 97

32 Configuring Prize Levels. 97

32.1 Setting the Configuration File. 98

32.2 Configuration File Format 98

32.2.1 prizeLevels. 98

32.2.2 prizeLevel 98

32.2.3 prize. 98

32.3 Testing Your Prize Levels. 99

33 Formulas. 99

33.1 Restrictions. 100

33.2 Operators. 100

33.3 Functions. 102

33.4 Defined Variables. 104

33.4.1 Points for Playing. 105

33.4.2 Score. 108

33.4.3 Overall Score. 108

34 Choosing Columns. 109

35 Importing Players. 109

36 Exporting Data. 111

36.1 Tournament Export 111

36.2 Rounds Export 112

36.3 Players Export 112

36.4 Prizes Export 112

36.5 Tables Export 112

36.6 Summary Export 112

36.7 Database Export 113

36.8 Stats Export 114

36.9 Hotkeys Export 114

36.10 Receipts. 114

36.11 Player Movement 114

37 Printing. 115

38 HTML Colors. 115

38.1 HTML Color Listing. 116

39 Tips. 116

39.1.1 Become familiar with all of the facets of running a tournament using the Tournament Director before your first tournament! 116

39.1.2 Auto save is a good thing. 116

39.1.3 Always write tournament information down. 116

40 Frequently Asked Questions. 116

41 Known Issues / Troubleshooting. 117

42 Acknowledgements. 117

 

Welcome to the premiere poker tournament management software, the Tournament Director. With the Tournament Director, you can sit back and focus on playing in your tournaments instead of running them - the Tournament Director runs them for you.

 

Please read through this documentation before attempting to host a poker tournament with the Tournament Director. Although the Tournament Director makes it easy, it is imperative that you are familiar with the software so that your tournament will run flawlessly.

 

 

Windows (95, 98, ME, NT 4, 2000, or XP)

Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. Internet Explorer does NOT need to be your primary (default) browser, but it must be installed or the Tournament Director will not function.

Windows Media Player 7 or later. WMP does NOT need to be your primary (default) media player, but it must be installed in order for Tournament Director sounds to play.

1024x768 screen size or greater. Although smaller screen sizes will work, the Tournament Director is designed for 1024x768.

500MHz processor or greater. 1GHz or higher is highly recommended.

 

 

See the changes.txt file installed with the software for a listing of new features and bugs that have been fixed in this version of the Tournament Director.

 

 

A Start-Menu option for starting the Tournament Director is created when the software is installed. Optionally, a Desktop icon is also created. Start the Tournament Director using either of these shortcuts.

 

There are so many configuration options available that setting up a tournament for the first time can be a daunting task for new users. The easiest way to get started using the Tournament Director is to create a new tournament using the Quick Start Wizard. On the Settings Window, which will opened automatically when you start the Tournament Director, you will find the Quick Start button, located on the left-hand side of the Game Tab (which should be the tab automatically selected when the Settings Window opens).

 

The Quick Start Wizard will guide you in setting up your first tournament. This wizard will limit the number of options, allowing you to quickly get started actually using the application. Remember that there are many, many options you can choose from in configuring your tournament and tailoring the Tournament Director to your specific needs. After you have created your first tournament, you can use the Settings Window to more finely tune your tournament, if you wish.

 

 

The Tournament Director is divided into two main windows, the Game Window and the Settings Window.

 

The Game Window is the window that you'll display to your players, and consists of the Tournament Screen, which is composed of one or more screens that you can tailor completely to your own taste, the Player Rankings Screen, the Seating Chart Screen, the Player Movement Screen, and the Blinds Schedule Screen.

 

The Settings Window is where you will configure everything about your tournament, and consists of numerous tabs that break down the various aspects of the tournament configuration. Additionally, the Settings Window contains a Database Tab where you can store player, league, and season information, a Stats Tab that allows you to compute statistics for your players over numerous tournaments, and a Controls Tab that serves as "control panel" - a place for you to get all relevant tournament information at a glance, and control the running of the tournament from one location.

 

For multi-display setups, you can leave the Game Window on the display visible to your players, while controlling the tournament from the Controls Tab of the Settings Window on a separate display. If you are using a single display, you can also run the tournament directly from the Game Window.

 

Context menus are menus that appear when you click the right mouse button. The items in the menu are typically contextual, in that they may be different depending on where on the screen the mouse cursor is when you right-click. The Tournament Director makes extensive use of context menus, so when you are unsure of how to accomplish something, you should always right-click and see if the option you are seeking is available.

 

Tooltips are hints or instructions that appear when you hover the mouse cursor over a specific screen location. Most places that require input from the user have tooltips that can give you a better understanding of what input is expected. Always hover over the description of an input if you are unsure about what you should enter. For example, on the Game Tab, if you are unsure of what to place in the Buy-in input, hover the mouse over the words "Buy-in" to see the tooltip. You can also right-click on any item that contains a tooltip and the context menu will contain a "Show Tooltip" menu item. Select this item to display the tooltip. The tooltip will remain visible until you click on it or move focus away from the tooltip (by clicking on or tabbing to another item). On dialogs, the ? (question mark) button can also be used to view a tooltip. Press the ? button on the title bar of the dialog (the cursor will change to a pointer with a ? attached), then click on the item to display its tooltip. (If you have Internet Explorer 7 or greater installed, the "?" button is not available - use the right-click context menu option instead.)

 

Most dialogs in which players (or other items) are listed for selection, pressing the first letter of the entry for which you are searching will cause the list to jump to the first item beginning with that letter.

 

 

7         Settings Window

When the Tournament Director starts, the Game Window will open first while the software is initializing. Once the software has been initialized, the Settings Window will open automatically. From here you can configure the main settings for your tournament. Click on the various tabs to setup different aspects of your tournament.

 

You can open and close the Settings Window by pressing the ESC or F1 key, or by right-clicking on the Game Window and selecting Settings.

 

The Settings Window is a modal window. This means that when the Settings Window is open, you cannot access the Game Window. Close the Settings Window to access the Game Window.

Tip: The Settings Window is resizable, and will remember its size when closed so that it re-opens with the same dimensions. You can maximize the Settings Window by press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F (hold down the Ctrl, Shift, and Alt keys will pressing the F key). The restore the Settings Window to its default size, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+O.

 

Tip: You can rearrange the tabs on the Settings Window. Right-click on any tab and select Arrange Tabs.

 

8         Game Tab

The Game Tab is where you configure the basic tournament settings: what the tournament is named, how much it costs to buy-in, how much is raked from players' buy-ins, if there will be rebuys or add-ons, etc.

 

The game properties are divided into five sections: General, Points for Playing, Notes, Rebuys, and Add-ons.

 

8.1.1         General

Filename: Displays the full filename of the current tournament. This field is read-only. To set the filename, press the Save As… button.

League: This is the league for which this tournament is being held. Leagues are configured on the Database Tab. Establishing leagues is important for those who run tournaments composed of differing sets of participants, if you wish to be able to compute statistics over the different leagues independently. You may leave this set to <None> if you are not using the League feature of The Tournament Director.

Season: This indicates the season in which the tournament is taking place. Seasons are configured on the Database Tab, and are used to more easily be able to compute statistics over a particular period of time. You can leave this set to <None> if you wish.

Event Name: The name of your event. This name can be whatever you want to call your tournament. The text entered here will be used in place of the <title> token on the Tournament Screen. See the Layout Tab for an explanation of how tokens work.

Description: A brief description of your event. The text entered here will be used in place of the <description> token on the Tournament Screen.

Buy-in: The buy-in is the amount each player must pay to enter the tournament.

Starting chips: The number of chips each player receives at the start of the tournament.

Per-player rake: The amount to be raked (removed) from each player's buy-in before being added to the pot. The rake is usually used to cover the cost of hosting the tournament. For a tournament with a $50.00 buy-in, and a $5.00 per-player rake, each player pays $50.00 to enter the tournament, the house or host removes (rakes) $5.00, and the remaining $45.00 is added to the pot or prize pool. See the Preferences Tab for information on how you can utilize more than one per-player rake.

Fixed rake: A fixed amount to be raked (removed) from the pot. With a per-player rake, the total amount raked from all buy-ins will vary with the number of players who enter your tournament. In contrast, the fixed rake is a fixed amount that is raked no matter how many players enter your tournament. If, for example, you are hosting a tournament in which you only want to rake for the expense of hosting the tournament, you can set the Fixed rake to the actual cost of hosting the tournament. Then, no matter how many players actually enter the tournament, the exact cost of hosting will be raked, and no less (if too few players enter), and no more (if more players than expected enter the tournament). You may also specify the fixed rake as a percentage of the total pot. Press the Fixed Rake button to switch between a fixed amount and a percentage amount. See the Preferences Tab for information on how you can utilize more than one fixed rake.

Guaranteed pot: Enter a pot or prize pool amount here if the house/host is guaranteeing a specific pot amount. When a tournament advertises a guaranteed pot, the house/host is guaranteeing that the pot will be (at least) a certain amount. If too few players enter the tournament so that the guaranteed pot level isn't reached, the house or host contributes money to the pot such that the guaranteed pot level is reached. If you enter an amount here, the pot will never be lower than this amount (but it may be higher of enough people enter the tournament). To see how much the house/host must contribute in order to reach the guaranteed pot, see the Summary Tab.

House contribution: The amount the house/host is contributing to the pot. The amount entered here will be added to the pot. This amount is independent of the Guaranteed pot.

Points for buy-in: The number of points each player automatically receives when they buy into the tournament. Negative values are allowed.

Points for hit: The number of points a player receives when he/she busts another player out of the tournament. Negative values are allowed.

Adjust chip count by: Enter an amount here (positive or negative) if you wish to adjust what the total chip count. This affects only what is displayed by the <chipcount> token.

Use player bounty chips: Check this box if you will issue "bounty" chips to your players when they buy-in. Bounty chips are used to encourage attempts at busting other players out. If you check this box, set the Bounty chip cost and the Restrict bounties values as well (see below). When a player busts another player out, the hitman (the player busting the other player out) receives the busted out player's bounty chip, and at the end of the tournament, the chips are cashed out, with each player receiving the cost of a bounty chip for each chip they have collected. The winner(s) of the tournament will still have their own bounty chips, and will also cash them out for their cost.

Bounty chip cost: Enter the cost of the bounty chip here, if you have checked the Use player bounty chips box (above). The bounty chip cost is IN ADDITION to the buy-in cost. Therefore, if the buy-in for your tournament is $50.00, and you choose to use player bounty chips at a cost of $5.00, each player should pay $55.00 to buy-in and receive their bounty chip.

Restrict bounties: Check this box if you intend to allow the purchase of a bounty chip to be optional, and you wish only those players who purchase bounty chips to be able to win bounty chips. If this box is unchecked, anyone busting out another player will win their bounty chip. If checked, only players who have themselves purchased bounty chips can win bounty chips by busting players out. If this option is not checked, and a player who purchased a bounty chip is busted out of the tournament by a player who did not purchase a bounty chip, the busted out player retains his/her bounty chip and may cash it in for their bounty fee.

 

8.1.2         Points for Playing

Points for Playing represents the number of points a player receives for playing in the tournament. This value can be numeric, in which case it is really no different from Points for buy-in. However, this value can also be a formula. See Formulas for more information on creating a Points for Playing formula.

 

You can test your formula by press the Test Formula button. On the Test Points for Playing Formula dialog, you can adjust your formula, and enter test values for the number of players in the tournament, and a hypothetical player's rank, number of add-ons purchased, number of rebuys purchased, etc. By pressing the Test button, you can see the number of points the player would be awarded in the Formula Results section. If something is wrong with your formula, the Points Awarded value will indicate this. Press the Test All button to see a list of the points that would be awarded for each rank (and leagueRank), from 1st place up to the number of players you have indicated. Press OK to close the dialog and transfer your formula from the testing dialog to the Points for Playing input on the Game Tab.

 

8.1.3         Rebuys

Allow rebuys: Check this box if you will allow players to rebuy into your tournament.
Allow players still in the tournament to rebuy: By default, a player must be busted out of the tournament in order to rebuy. If this option is checked, players will be allowed to rebuy while still in the tournament.

Rebuy fee: Enter the amount a player must pay to rebuy.

Rake applied to rebuy: The amount to be raked (removed) from each player's rebuy before being added to the pot. See the Preferences Tab for information on how you can utilize more than one rake.

Chips received for rebuy: The number of chips a player receives when he/she rebuys.

Points received for rebuy: The number of points a player receives when he/she rebuys. Negative values are allowed.

Disable all rebuys after round: If you wish to have a limited rebuy period, enter the round number here after which the rebuy feature will be disabled. Enter a 0 (zero) here for rebuys to be enabled throughout the tournament.

Maximum rebuys per player: If you wish there to be a limit on the number of times a player may rebuy into the tournament, enter it here. Enter a 0 (zero) for no per-player rebuy limit.

Maximum total rebuys for all players: If you wish there to be a limit on the total number of rebuys, enter it here. After the total number of rebuys for all players in the tournament reaches this number, the rebuy feature will be disabled. Enter a 0 (zero) for no total rebuy limit.

Disable rebuys when number of players fewer than: Enter the minimum number of players that must still be in the tournament for rebuys to be allowed. When the number of players still in the tournament gets below this number, the rebuy feature will be disabled.

Bounty chip cost: Enter the cost of the bounty chip purchased with a rebuy here, if you have checked the Use player bounty chips box. The bounty chip cost is IN ADDITION to the rebuy cost. Therefore, if the rebuy for your tournament is $50.00, and you choose to use player bounty chips at a cost of $5.00, each player should pay $55.00 to rebuy and receive their bounty chip.

 

8.1.4         Add-ons

Allow add-ons: Check this box if you will allow players to add-on in your tournament.

Add-on fee: Enter the amount a player must pay to add-on.

Rake applied to add-on: The amount to be raked (removed) from each player's add-on before being added to the pot. See the Preferences Tab for information on how you can utilize more than one rake.

Chips received for add-on: The number of chips a player receives when he/she adds-on.

Points received for add-on: The number of points a player receives when he/she adds-on. Negative values are allowed.

Disable all add-ons after round: If you wish to have a limited add-on period, enter the round number here after which the add-on feature will be disabled. Enter a 0 (zero) here for add-ons to be enabled throughout the tournament.

Maximum add-ons per player: If you wish there to be a limit on the number of times a player may add-on in the tournament, enter it here. Enter a 0 (zero) for no per-player add-on limit.

Maximum total add-ons for all players: If you wish there to be a limit on the total number of add-ons, enter it here. After the total number of add-ons for all players in the tournament reaches this number, the add-on feature will be disabled. Enter a 0 (zero) for no total add-on limit.

Disable add-ons when number of players fewer than: Enter the minimum number of players that must still be in the tournament for add-ons to be allowed. When the number of players still in the tournament gets below this number, the add-on feature will be disabled.

 

8.1.5         Notes

The Notes field is a free-form text field where you can enter any notes about your tournament that you like. The notes you take are for your own use, and are not used anywhere else in the Tournament Director.

 

8.1.6         Options

Auto save: If this option is selected, the Tournament Director will automatically save your tournament at regular intervals, if changes have been made. See the Preferences Tab for Auto save preferences. See the Layout Tab for adjusting the auto save visual indicator. The Auto save checkbox is an option that is not saved with your tournament file (in other words, after loading a saved tournament, the Auto save checkbox will NOT be checked). Make sure you have checked this box at the start of any tournament if you wish to auto save your tournaments. A reminder will be displayed just below the Settings Window tabs when your tournament has been changed in any way and Auto save is not enabled.

 

8.2        Starting Your Tournament

Before starting your tournament, you must have a rounds schedule configured, and you must have at least two players who have bought-in to the tournament. The Tournament Director will not allow the tournament to begin until these two requirements are met. In addition, the Tournament Director will warn you if you have not configured prizes, if you have not configured tables, or if any players are not seated, but will not prevent the start of the tournament.

 

Press the Problems button to see any problems that the Tournament Director has determined may prevent the start of your tournament, or may cause other unwanted behavior during your tournament. If the Problems button is disabled, the Tournament Director has detected no problems with your tournament.

 

After your tournament configuration is complete, you may start your tournament in one of three ways: you may start the clock by pressing the spacebar on the Game Window; you may start the clock by pressing the Start Tournament button on the Controls Tab; or you may start a Countdown until the tournament begins.

 

Starting a Countdown causes the Tournament Director to count down either a specific amount of time, or until a specific time of day, and then automatically start the tournament. To have the Tournament Director count down, press the Countdown button on the Game Tab or the Controls Tab.

 

On the Countdown dialog, select the option you wish to perform: either to count down a specific length of time, or to count down until a specific time of day. Enter the countdown length, or the time of day, and press the OK button. If you have chosen to count down a specific length of time, the countdown time will be set and the countdown clock will be paused. If you have chosen to count down to a specific time of day, the countdown will begin immediately.

 

When the countdown is complete, the tournament will start automatically.

 

To cancel a countdown, press the Countdown button again. The Tournament Director will confirm whether or not you wish to halt the countdown.

 

To skip the countdown, press Ctrl+N while on the Game Window, or press the Next Round button on the Controls Tab. The tournament will begin at level 1 and the clock will automatically be paused.

 

When choosing to count down to a specific time of day, the Tournament Director will only allow you to choose a time in the future, on either the current date or the following day.

 

You may also start the tournament or a countdown from the Controls Tab.

 

Saving your tournament is important. In addition to being able to recover a tournament should something unforeseen occur (such as a power outage), statistics can be generated from your saved tournaments (see the Stats Tab).

 

Press the Save button to save your tournament. Press the Save As… button to save your tournament to a new filename.

 

To load a previously saved tournament, press the Load button. The Tournament Director will alert you if you have made changes to the current tournament, and prompt you to save it before loading a saved tournament.

 

The filename of the currently loaded tournament is displayed in the Filename field (in the General section), and also in the title bar of the Settings Window. An asterisk (*) is displayed next to the filename (in the title bar) if the current tournament has been modified. (If you have Internet Explorer 6 installed, the title bar does not display the current tournament filename.)

 

When you load tournaments that were saved from a pre-2.0 version of the Tournament Director, the Tournament Director will attempt to convert as much of the tournament as possible to version 2.0. Most of the tournament can be converted automatically, but there are manual steps you will need to take to completely convert the tournament. If you do not completely convert the tournament, prizes may not be properly awarded, and statistics may not be able to be generated from the tournament.

 

Earlier versions of the Tournament Director did not utilize a player database. Therefore, all players in a pre-2.0 tournament will be non-database players when converted. When you load a pre-2.0 tournament, the Tournament Director will first attempt to merge the tournament players with players in your database. The Merge Players dialog will appear first. See Merging Players for information on merging your tournament players with players in your player database.

 

Prizes in pre-2.0 tournaments also had no actual connection with rankings. Therefore, you must also associate prizes for first place with rank 1, prizes for second place with rank 2, etc. The Tournament Director will attempt to automatically make this association for you when the tournament is loaded, but you should make sure that the associations were made correctly, and complete any that the Tournament Director was not able to make.

 

Pressing the New button will reset ALL tournament settings to their default state, giving you a "blank" tournament with which to work. All tournament settings are reset to their default (blank) state, except for the layout, which is retained. To reset the layout, go to the Layout Tab and press the Reset Layout button.

 

Pressing the Reset button will allow you to return the tournament to a pre-start state.

 

You can change the "default" tournament to a tournament of your own on the Preferences Tab. This is useful, for example, if the tournaments you host have a typical set of players, a standard rounds schedule, a standard prizes schedule, a standard set of tables, etc. In this case, you can create a new tournament, configure the tournament round schedule, prizes, tables, add players, etc., save the tournament, and then set the tournament as your default tournament. Then, each time you start the Tournament Director, or press the New button on the Game Tab, the tournament will be pre-configured for you.

 

8.6        Tournament History

To see a history of actions that have occurred in your tournament, press the History button. You can add your own items to the tournament history by pressing the Add button. Items added by the system will appear with a white background, while items manually added will appear with a green background. To save the tournament history to a text file, press the Save As… button.

 

The Export button allows you to export the data from your completed tournament to a file. By exporting the data, you can display the tournament results to your players on a web page, or import the data into a poker tournament website.

 

Select the format to which you wish to export your tournament:

 

Stats Genie / Home Series of Poker
This is a free website that allows you to track your poker tournament league online. By exporting to this format, you can directly upload your exported tournament to the Stats Genie / Home Series of Poker website at http://www.statsgenie.com.

 

HOMEPOKERTOUR.COM
This is a free website that allows you to track your poker tournament league online. By exporting to this format, you can directly upload your exported tournament to the HOMEPOKERTOUR.COM website at http://www.HOMEPOKERTOUR.COM.

 

PokerDIY

This is a free website that allows you to track your poker tournament league online. By exporting to this format, you can directly upload your exported tournament to the PokerDIY website at http://www.PokerDIY.com.

 

Shark Stats

Shark Stats supplies and hosts your fully-featured poker league site. Exports to this format can be directly uploaded into Shark Stats sites. http://shark-stats.co.uk

 

Lethal Media (Joomla Poker Component)

This is a Joomla component that allows you to track your poker tournament league online on your own website. By exporting to this format, you can directly upload your exported tournament into your own website with no ongoing costs. http://www.lethalmedia.com.au

 

HTML
Select this format to export your tournament summary to an HTML file. Next you will be asked to choose the columns you wish to use when exporting the tournament. See Choosing Columns for help in using the column chooser dialog. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

 

Print

Select this option to directly print the tournament summary (this will print the same data that the HTML option saves to a file).

 

You can exit the Tournament Director at any time by pressing the Exit button on the Game Tab. You can also exit the Tournament Director by pressing the Windows close button (top-right corner) on the Game Window, or by pressing Alt+F4. If in Full-screen mode, the Windows close button is not displayed on the Game Window. Instead, moving the mouse to the top-right corner will reveal a minimize button and a close button.

 

The Tournament Director will prompt you to save your current tournament, if necessary.

 

The Tournament Director will run without limitation (fully-featured) for a period of 30 days. After this time, you must register the software in order to continue using it. See the Tournament Director website for information on registering the software.

 

If you have purchased a User ID and License Key, you may enter it by pressing the Register button. Enter your User ID and License Key EXACTLY as they appear in your registration information. If you enter either the User ID or License Key incorrectly, the Tournament Director will alert you that the registration information is invalid.

 

Once you have entered your registration information correctly, you will be able to continue using the Tournament Director.

 

Press the About button to open the About dialog with information about The Tournament Director, including the version number, the license agreement, and your registration information. Pressing the Check for new version button will check to see if a new version is available at http://www.thetournamentdirector.net.

 

 

9         Rounds Tab

The Rounds Tab is where you configure your tournament "schedule". A tournament schedule consists of Levels, where each level is designated as either a Round, in which cards are played, or a Break, in which play is suspended.

 

The status panel gives you a quick view of some of the properties of your schedule:

 

Levels: the total number of levels in your schedule

Rounds: the total number of levels in your schedule which are rounds

Breaks: the total number of levels in your schedule which are breaks

Length: The total length of your tournament schedule, in Hours:Minutes format

Play: The total length of the rounds in your schedule (levels in which play occurs), in Hours:Minutes format

On break: The total length of breaks in your schedule (levels in which play is suspended), in Hours:Minutes format

 

Each level contains a set of properties that define the characteristics of the level. For Rounds, the following properties apply:

 

Level: The round number, counted sequentially from the start of the tournament.

Game Type: The type of game being played in the round, either Limit, Pot Limit, or No Limit.

Game Name: The name of the game being played in the round. Specify any text you wish here. The list is pre-populated with common poker tournament game names.

Small Blind: The chip value of the small blind bet for the round.

Big Blind: The chip value of the big blind bet for the round.

Limit 1: An additional chip value field to use for games that require other bets, such as a bring-in bet.

Limit 2: An additional chip value field to use games that require other bets.

Ante: The chip value of the ante for the round.

 

 

For Breaks, the following properties apply:

 

Chip Up: Whether or not a "chip up" should occur. A chip up is when lower value chips are traded in for higher value chips, for the purpose of reducing the number of chips a player has in his or her stack (but not reducing the actual value of the stack). For example, in a tournament that is using $1, $5, $10, $50, and $100 chips, when the small blind reaches $10, a chip up might be designated at the next break, at which time players trade in all of their $1 and $5 chips for $10 chips. When you designate a chip up for a break, the value of the <breaktext> token is overridden to include text indicating a chip up should occur. See the Layout Tab for information on tokens.

 

 

The following properties apply for both Rounds and Breaks:

 

Duration: The length of the round or break, specified in minutes.

Start Time: The time (Hours:Minutes format) that the round or break will begin, relative to the start of the tournament. This field is automatically calculated from the lengths of the levels you specify.

Tokens: The number of token overrides that have been created for the round or break. Tokens are used to display specific items on the Tournament Screen. See the Layout Tab for information on tokens and the token overrides dialog. Tokens specified for a round or break override the value of the specified token for that round or break only.

 

Press the New Round or the New Break button to add a new round or break to the end of the schedule. You may also right-click in an empty space of the Rounds pane to add a new round or break.

 

Double-click a level or right-click on a level and select Edit round or Edit break to edit a level.

 

To make level changes easy, your schedule can be viewed using a spreadsheet-like view. Press the View button to change the way the tournament schedule is displayed on the Rounds Tab.

 

Standard: The standard view displays the schedule much like the other tabs display information. Each level is highlighted when the mouse moves over the level. Double-clicking the level opens the Edit Level dialog. To edit the individual values (Small Blind, Big Blind, Ante, etc) of a level, you must open the Edit Level dialog.

 

Spreadsheet: The spreadsheet view displays the schedule more like a typical spreadsheet application. Each value is in a cell of its own and can be edited directly on the screen. There is no need to open the Edit Level dialog to edit the individual values associated with a level. Press Tab and Shift+Tab to move forward and backwards through the values. Press the Cursor Up and Cursor Down keys to move forward and backwards through the levels. Press the Enter key to move to the next level. Pressing the Enter key while editing a value on the final level will add a new level to the schedule. To access the context menu for a level, right-click on the Level column.

 

Right-click on a level and select Delete round or Delete break to delete the level. If your tournament has already begun, the Tournament Director will not allow you to delete the current level.

 

The Tournament Director can suggest a tournament schedule for you. Press the Suggest button to open the Suggest Rounds Schedule dialog. You must have your chips defined in order to use the tournament schedule suggestion tool.

 

Enter the data needed on the Suggest Rounds Schedule dialog. The Tournament Director will pre-fill as much data as it can from the current tournament configuration. Press OK to have the Tournament Director suggest a schedule for you. The Suggest Rounds Schedule dialog will retain the data you've entered in it for as long as you the Tournament Director is running. To reset the data in the dialog, press the Reset button.

 

After the Tournament Director has suggested a schedule, press the Use button to replace your current schedule with the suggested schedule. The Tournament Director will confirm the action before replacing your current rounds schedule.

 

When your tournament has begun, the Rounds Tab will display an arrow on the left side of a row indicating the current level. To change the current level, right-click on a level and select Set as current level. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before actually changing the current level. When the current level is changed, the Tournament Director automatically pauses the clock, and resets the clock to the time for the chosen level.

 

Your tournament schedule can be saved independently from other tournament settings. To save your tournament schedule, press the Save Template button. To load a tournament schedule, press the Load Template button. When you load a tournament schedule, only the schedule of your tournament is affected. No other settings (players, prizes, tournament state, etc) are affected by this.

 

To clear the tournament schedule and delete all levels, press the Clear button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting all levels. If your tournament has already begun, the Tournament Director will not allow you to clear the schedule.

 

You may export your tournament schedule to HTML by pressing the Export button. This provides a printable view of your schedule. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

 

The properties of the levels that are visible on the Rounds Tab is configurable. Press the Columns button to select which columns you wish to see, and in which order. See Choosing Columns for information on using the column chooser dialog.

 

 

10     Players Tab

The Players Tab is where you configure who will play in your tournament.

 

You can manage your players by using one of two modes: Track players mode, or Simple mode.

 

In Track players mode, you add players to your tournament by entering player specific information (Name, etc) or by adding players from your player database, and you may specify different amounts for each player for buying-in, rebuying, and adding-on. Tracking players also allows you to manage player seating and movement, and collect statistics for each player. This is the default mode.

 

In Simple mode, specific players are not added to a tournament. Instead, you indicate only the number of players in the tournament. Likewise, specific players do not bust-out, rebuy, or add-on. Instead, only the number of players busting out, rebuying, etc, is specified. Seating and player movement is not managed. Tournaments played in Simple mode are not including when computing statistics.

 

Select the mode by pressing the Track Players button.

 

10.1     Track Players Mode

Each player who will participate in your tournament must be added to the tournament, and they must "buy-in". A player who is added to the tournament but has not bought-in (paid) will not participate in the tournament.

 

There are two options when adding players to your tournament: you may add players who are not in your player database directly to your tournament; or, you may add players from your player database.

 

Why would you want to add a player to your tournament and not add the player to your player database as well? Consider the scenario where you host tournaments on a regular basis, and your tournaments are typically composed of players who play regularly in your tournaments. Occasionally you may have guests who play in a single tournament, but never return to play in any other tournaments. You may not want to "clutter" your database with these players.

 

Note that statistics can only be computed for players who are in your player database.

 

Tournament players who are also in your player database are displayed in normal (black, non-italicized) type. Tournament players who are not in your player database are displayed in light-gray, italicized type.

 

The columns of the Players Tab are defined as follows. See Configuring Columns for information on selecting which columns you wish to display.

 

Name: The player's name, displayed in the format designated on the Preferences Tab.

Nickname: The player's nickname.

First Name: The player's first name.

Last Name: The player's last name.

Email 1: The player's email address (1 of 2).

Email 2: The player's email address (2 of 2).

Street Address: The player's street address.

City: The player's city.

State: The player's state.

Zipcode: The player's zip code.

Country: The player's country.

Phone 1: The players phone number (1 of 2).

Phone 2: The player's phone number (2 of 2).

Notes: Notes taken on the player.

Paid: Whether or not this player has bought-in to the tournament.

Paid in Full: Whether or not this player has paid the entire buy-in fee.

Buy-in Cost: The amount this player paid to buy-in to the tournament.

Bounty Chip: The amount this player paid for his/her bounty chip.

Buy-in Rake <rake name>: The amount collected from this player's buy-in for the named rake.

Total Buy-in Rake: The total amount collected from this player's buy-in for all buy-in rakes.

Buy-in Chips: The amount of chips this player received for buying-in to the tournament.

Rebuys: The number of times this player has re-bought into the tournament.

Rebuys Cost: The total cost of rebuys purchased by this player.

Rebuys Rake <rake name>: The amount raked from all of this player's rebuys for the named rake.

Total Rebuys Rake: The total amount raked from all of this player's rebuys.

Rebuys Chips: The total number of chips this player has received from rebuys.

Add-ons: The number of add-ons this player has purchased.

Add-ons Cost: The total cost of add-ons purchased by this player.

Add-ons Rake <rake name>: The amount raked from all of this player's add-ons for the named rake.

Total Add-ons Rake: The total amount raked from all of this player's add-ons.

Add-ons Chips: The total number of chips this player has received from add-ons.

Total Cost: The total amount this player has paid into the tournament.

Total Rake: The total amount raked from all of the money this player has paid into the tournament.

Chips Bought: The total number of chips this player has received from their buy-in, rebuys, and add-ons.

Time Out: The date and time this player last busted out of the tournament.

Round Out: The round number that this player last busted out of the tournament.

Hitman: The player who last busted this player out of the tournament.

Rank: The current rank of this player. A player's rank is the place in which the player busted out of the tournament, relative to the other players.

Hits: The number of players busted out of the tournament by this player.

Bounties Won: The number of bounty chips won by this player.

Bounties Kept: The number of bounty chips this player has kept. A player keeps his/her bounty when the player wins the tournament or is busted out by a player who has not purchased a bounty chip (and the Restrict bounties option has been selected).

Bounty Money Kept: The amount of money this player paid for bounty chips that were kept (not won by other players).

Prize Winnings: The amount of money won by this player by qualifying for one or more prizes.

Bounty Winnings: The amount of money won by this player by collecting bounty chips (by busting other players out of the tournament).

Total Winnings: The total amount of money won by this player.

Points: The total number of points earned by this player.

Take: The total profit for this player (the total amount won minus the total amount paid).

Chip Count: The current amount of chips held by this player.

Playing Time: The amount of time the player has been in the tournament.

Seat: The current table and seat in which the player is seated.

Buy-in Time: The time at which the player bought-in to the tournament.

 

The Paid field denotes whether or not a player has bought-in to the tournament. The Paid field will display a checkmark if the player has bought-in.

 

The Paid in Full field is a convenience field that you can use to denote when players have actually paid the buy-in fee. This field does not affect game play.

 

The Paid in Full field can be useful if you allow players to arrive late. Typically, if it is known that a player will be arriving late, the player can be bought-in to the tournament before he/she arrives, so that the player is participating in the tournament. In this case, the Paid in Full field can be used to note that although the player is entered into the tournament, they have not yet paid the buy-in fee.

In Simple mode, the Tournament Director only cares about how many players have bought-in, how many have busted out, how many have rebought, and how many have added-on. All buy-ins are purchased for the same amount (determined by the settings on the Game Tab). Likewise, all rebuys are purchased for the same amount, and all add-ons are purchased for the same amount (also determined by the settings on the Game Tab).

 

In Simple Mode, tables and player seating is not managed (since you do not specify who exactly is playing in your tournament), and player statistics are not available.

 

Most of the options available on the Players Tab apply to Track Players mode, and thus are disabled when in Simple mode.

 

The status panel gives you a quick status of the players in your tournament:

 

Players: The total number of players who have been added to the tournament. This includes all players, whether or not they have bought-in to the tournament.

Paid: The total number of players who have bought-in to the tournament.

Still in: The total number of players who have bought-in and are not currently busted-out of the tournament.

Busted out: The total number of players who have bought-in to the tournament and are currently busted-out.

Rebuys: The total number of rebuys that have been purchased.

Add-ons: The total number of add-ons that have been purchased.

 

10.4     Adding Players

Press the Add Players button or right-click in an empty space in the Players pane and select Add Players to add players from your player database to your tournament.

 

In the Add Players dialog, select a league in the League selection to narrow the list of players to a specific league.

 

Place a check in the checkbox next to each player you wish to add to your tournament. Players who are disabled (and pre-checked) are already in your tournament. Press the "check all" link to check all listed players, or the "check none" link to uncheck all listed players.

 

Optionally, you can buy players into the tournament at the same time you add them to the tournament by checking Buy-in players now and then filling in the buy-in details.

 

Press the OK button when you have selected the players to add to your tournament.

 

To add a player to your tournament who is not in your player database, press the New Player button or right-click in an empty space in the Players pane and select New Player. On the New Player dialog, select the league to which you will add this player (or <None>), enter the player's information, and press the OK button. If you check the Add player to database checkbox, the player will also be added to your player database. To add multiple players in this manner, check the Immediately redisplay this dialog checkbox.

 

In Simple mode, players are not added to the tournament. A player enters the tournament when they buy-in.

 

You can import players directly into your tournament from a CSV (comma-separated values) file.

 

See Importing Players for more information on importing players directly into your tournament.

 

Press the Remove Players button to remove players from your tournament.

 

In the Remove Players dialog, place a check in the checkbox next to each player you wish to remove from your tournament. A player's name displayed in gray (instead of black) indicates that the player has "acted" in your tournament already (bought-in, and possibly busted out, or busted some other player out). Typically you will not want to remove players who have already acted. Press the "check all" link to check all listed players, the "check none" link to uncheck all listed players, or press the "check unpaid only" link to have the Tournament Director place a check next to only those players who have not yet bought-in (paid) to the tournament. Press the OK button when you have selected the players to remove from your tournament.

 

You may also right-click on a player and select Remove player from tournament to remove a player from the tournament.

 

The Tournament Director will warn you if you attempt to remove from the tournament any players who have already acted.

 

10.7     Buying Players In

Press the Buy-in Players button to buy players in to your tournament, or right-click on a player and select Buy-in player.

 

In the Buy-in Players dialog, place a check in the checkbox next to each player you wish to buy-in to your tournament. Press the "check all" link to check all listed players, or the "check none" link to uncheck all listed players. In the Details section, you may enter or change the values for the buy-in amount, the number of chips received for the buy-in, the amount raked from the buy-in, the number of points received for the buy-in, and the bounty chip cost, if the option to use player bounties was selected (on the Game Tab). These values are filled in automatically for you from the information given on the Game Tab. You may change the values here, however, overriding them for the specific players you are buying-in to the tournament. The final line displays the total amount that should be collected from each player who is buying-in. Press the OK button when you have selected the players to buy-in to your tournament.

 

Place a check in the Auto Seat box to automatically seat the player(s) who are buying-in. The player will be placed in any available seat in your tables configuration. Balancing of tables is not considered at this time - each player will be seated randomly at any available seat.

 

Optionally, you can right-click on a player and select Quick buy-in. This will buy the player into the tournament without displaying the buy-in confirmation dialog.

 

In Simple mode, you specify only the number of players buying-in to the tournament. Buy-ins are cumulative. If you buy-in 10 players, and later buy-in 10 players, there will be a total of 20 players bought-in to the tournament. In other words, when you buy-in players, you are not specifying the total number of players participating in the tournament, but the number of players buying-in at that time.

 

Press the Undo Buy-in button to undo player buy-ins, or right-click on a player and select Undo buy-in player.

 

Place a check in the checkbox next to each player whose buy-in you wish to undo. A player's name displayed in gray (instead of black) indicates that the player has "acted" in your tournament already (bought-in, and busted out or busted some other player out). Typically you will not want to undo the buy-in of players who have already acted. Press the "check all" link to check all listed players, or the "check none" link to uncheck all listed players. Press the OK button when you have selected the players whose buy-in to undo.

 

10.9     Editing a Player

To edit a player, double-click on a player or right-click on a player and select Edit player. In the Edit Game Player dialog, you may view the player's status in the tournament; adjust the player's total winnings, points earned, or chip count; edit the player's history of actions in the tournament; edit the player's details (name, address, etc); view details on the player's income for the tournament; or change the player's association with a player in your database.

 

To adjust the player's total winnings, enter a value in the Adjust total winnings by input. You may use a positive or negative number. The amount entered here will be added to the player's calculated total winnings.

 

To adjust a player's points earned, enter a value in the Adjust points earned by input. You may use a positive or negative number. The amount entered here will be added to the player's calculated points earned.

 

Note: Players added to a tournament but never bought-in are not included in statistics generated on the Stats Tab. However, if a player's total winnings or points earned are adjusted, they will be included in statistics generated on the Stats Tab, even if they did not buy-in to the tournament. This allows penalizing (or rewarding) players who do not play in a tournament.

 

Enter a value in the Current chip count field to set the player's current chip count.

 

The Number of seating moves value displays the number of times this player has been moved from one seat to another during the course of the tournament. This count influences whether or not this player will be chosen to be moved when a table balancing action occurs. Increase this value to lower the odds that this player will be moved, or decrease the value to increase the odds that this player will be moved. See Automatic Seating Management for more information.

 

The Tournament History area displays the player's history of actions in the tournament. A player's buy-in, bust-outs, rebuys, and add-ons are displayed here. You may edit the details of the actions by double-clicking on the appropriate action. You may also delete or undo some of the actions, or insert new actions, by right-clicking and selecting the appropriate menu item.

 

Some actions may not be undone. For example, if a player has busted out of the tournament, you may not undo the player's buy-in. You must undo the player's bust-out before you may undo the buy-in.

 

Care should be taken when editing or undoing any of a player's actions. Note that you may abort changes made by simply canceling the dialog. Changes are not committed until you press the OK button.

 

Press the Player Details button to edit a player's personal information.

 

Press the Income button to view details on any income the player has received from the current tournament.

 

When you make changes to a player on the Edit Game Player dialog, you will see the dialog information update automatically as you make changes (with exception of the total winnings adjustment, points earned adjustment, and current chip count). However, no changes to your tournament are actually made until you press the OK button on the Edit Game Player dialog.

 

See Adding Players to Your Database, Changing a Player's Association with a Database Player, Merging Players, and Un-merging a Player for information on these topics.

 

Press the Random Player button to open the Random Player dialog. This dialog will assist you in choosing one of your players at random should you need to do so for any reason.

 

In the Criteria section you may select one or more criteria to reduce the pool of players from which a random player will be chosen. If no criteria are selected, all of the players that have been added to your tournament will be in the player pool. Press the Check button to display the number of players in the players pool, based on the criteria you have selected. Press the List button to list the players who are part of the pool and separately those that have been omitted from the pool, based on the criteria you have selected.

 

When you have defined the appropriate players pool, press the Go button to select a player at random.

 

The last 10 players chosen at random are automatically saved in the random player history. Press the History button to view them.

 

You may see, listed in the History or in the Last randomly chosen player field, the words "Unknown Player" instead of a player's name. "Unknown Player" will be listed when the player that was chosen was both not in the player database, and not part of the currently loaded tournament. For example, assume player "Cristy" is part of tournament A and is not in your player database. Cristy was chosen as a random player and is listed in the Random Player History. Tournament B is now loaded, in which Cristy did not participate. Because Cristy is not in the player database, and is not part of the currently loaded tournament, "Unknown Player" will be displayed in place of Cristy's name. Should Tournament A be loaded again, Cristy's name will again be displayed in the Random Player History.

 

If you've added to your tournament a player who is not in your player database, you might later wish to add the player to your player database. To add the player to your player database, double-click the player, and on the Edit Game Player dialog, press the Add To DB button. Select the League to which to add this player (or <None> if you do not wish to add this player to an existing league), complete the player details, and press the OK button. When you press OK on the Edit Game Player dialog, the player will be added to your player database. Note that the player's name will change from the non-database player style (gray, italicized type) to the database player style (black, non-italicized).

 

If you wish to quickly add more than one tournament player to your player database, press the Add All to Database button.

 

Place a check in the checkbox next to each player who you wish to add to your player database. Press the "check all" link to check all listed players, or the "check none" link to uncheck all listed players. Press the OK button to add the players to your player database.

 

10.12  Changing a Player's Association with a Database Player

If you have added a database player to your tournament, and realize that you have selected the wrong database player, you may change the tournament player's association with the database player without altering the status of your tournament. For example, if players John B and John D are in your player database, and you add John B to your tournament, and later discover that it was John D who participated in the tournament and not John B, you'll want to change the tournament player from John B to John D. If the tournament has already begun, or is already over, removing the John B and adding the John D is not an option, as this would delete the player's actions in the tournament, and possibly alter the outcome of the tournament.

 

To change a tournament player's association with a database player, double-click the player on the Players Tab. On the Edit Game Player dialog, press the Change Player button. The Change Player dialog displays all players in your player database to which you may change this tournament player. Database players who are already in your tournament will not be displayed. Check the radio selection next to the database player to which to change this player, and press the OK button. When you press OK on the Edit Game Player dialog, the tournament player will be updated to reflect the new database player you selected.

 

10.13  Merging Players

Sometimes you may add a player to your tournament who is not in your player database, and later realize that the player is actually already in your database. If the tournament has already begun, or is already over, removing the non-database player from the tournament and adding the database player is not an option, as this would delete the player's actions in the tournament, and possibly alter the outcome of the tournament. Instead, you want to merge this tournament player with the database player.

 

To merge the tournament player with a database player, double-click the player on the Players Tab. On the Edit Game Player dialog, press the Merge button. The Merge Player dialog displays all players in your player database with which you may merge this tournament player. Database players who are already in your tournament will not be displayed. Check the radio selection next to the database player with which to merge this player, and press the OK button. When you press OK on the Edit Game Player dialog, the tournament player will be merged with the database player.

 

To quickly merge more than one player, press the Merge All button. The Merge Players dialog displays all players in your tournament who are not in your database, and will attempt to automatically match tournament players with database players with similar names. The dialog displays the tournament player on the left, and the closest matching database player on the right, or no database player if the Tournament Director could not determine a matching database player. To change the database player with which a tournament player should be merged, click on the row corresponding to the tournament player. A selection input will display with the list of possible database players with which you can merge this tournament player. Select the appropriate database player with which to merge the tournament player, or press the Clear button to clear the selection, indicating you do not wish to merge this tournament player. When you have selected all of the matching database players, press the OK button to merge the players.

 

10.14  Un-merging a Player

Unmerging a player means to remove the tournament player's association with a database player, thus changing the tournament player into a "non-database" player, without affecting the status of the tournament. To un-merge a tournament player, double-click the player on the Players Tab. On the Edit Game Player dialog, press the Un-merge button. The Tournament Director will confirm that you are sure you wish to un-merge the tournament player. When you press OK on the Edit Game Player dialog, the tournament player will be un-merged from the database player.

 

Occasionally you might find yourself in a situation in which you have busted players out of the tournament in the wrong order. For example, a player may forgot to inform you that he or she busted out of the tournament, and when you learn of this, you have busted other players out that should have been busted out after this player.

 

In this case, if you simply bust the player out of the tournament at that time, the rankings will not accurately reflect the tournament. You can fix this in two ways.

10.15.1   Undoing and redoing bust outs

You can fix this situation by undoing the bust outs of the players you have busted out since this player actually busted out, busting the player out, then re-doing the bust outs of the other players.

 

For example, if player A busted out of the tournament but failed to inform you, and since then players B, C, and D have busted out, you can fix this by undoing the bust out of players B, C, and D, then busting player A out, then redoing the bust outs of players B, C, D. This can be time consuming and possibly error-prone if the tournament is large and/or many people have busted out since the player in question. It also will skew the actual times that each player busted out. However, the order in which people busted out will be correct, which will cause the rankings to correctly reflect the tournament, and is enough for most people.

 

10.15.2   Adjust the rankings

You can also fix this using the Adjust Rankings dialog. To open the Adjust Rankings dialog, press the Adjust Rankings button on the Players Tab.

 

On the Adjust Rankings dialog, you will see a list of the players who are currently busted out of the tournament, along with the time of each player's most recent buy-in (their initial buy-in or their latest rebuy), the time of each player's bust out, and each player's current rank. Here you can move players up and down in the rankings, effectively changing their bust out times, remove players from chops, add players to chops, edit existing chops, or manually set the bust out time of a player.

 

Most players will have an arrow pointing up and an arrow point down next to them. To move a player in the rankings, click the up arrow or the down arrow to the left of the player's name, or right-click the player and select one of the given options.

 

To manually edit a player's bust out time, double-click the player, or right-click the player and select Edit bust-out time for [player]. On the Adjust Bust-Out Time dialog, use the up and down arrows to increment or decrement the player's bust out time. If you need to move the bust out time significantly (a few hours, for example), click one of the arrows and hold the mouse button down. The time will begin to increment or decrement slowly, and will gradually pick up speed.

 

When a single player wins your tournament, they will not have a bust out time. Because of this, if there is a single tournament winner, you may not be able to move this player within the rankings. If it was your intention to have a different winner, you should correct this by undoing the bust out of the true winner and then busting out the previously incorrect winner.

 

A player's chip count is the amount of a chips a player holds at any given time in the tournament. You may record your players' chip counts during the course of a tournament. A player's chip count may be set on the Edit Game Player dialog, or all players' chip counts may be updated quickly by using the Chip Counts dialog.

 

Press the Set Chip Counts button to open the Chip Counts dialog. Here, you can quickly set the value of each player's chip count. If you wish to set them all to the same value, set the chip count value in the Quick Set area, and press the Set All button. All chip counts will be updated. When you press OK on the Chip Counts dialog, all players' chip counts will be updated.

 

Chip counts, as recorded in the Tournament Director, have no direct bearing on play, but are only used for display on the Tournament Screen. See the Layout Tab for information on displaying player chip counts.

 

Press the Preferences button to open the Players Tab Preferences dialog. Here you can set the preference to view your player list in a paged format, or in a single list displaying all players. Note that listing all players in a single list, rather than having the list of players displayed on separate pages, can cause an increase in the time it takes to update the player list. The time to update the list depends on which columns are configured to be displayed, the number of players in the list, and the speed of the computer on which you are running the Tournament Director software.

 

10.18  Configuring Columns

The properties of the players that are visible on the Players Tab is configurable. Press the Columns button to select which columns you wish to see, and in which order. See Choosing Columns for information on using the column chooser dialog.

 

The columns may also be rearranged directly on the screen. Simply click on a column and slide your mouse left or right to initiate a 'drag' of the column. Red arrows will appear to indicate where the column can be dropped, in relation to the other columns. Release the mouse button to drop the column in the designated place.

 

Columns may also be renamed. You could, for example, change the "Name" column to read "Player", or change the "Hits" column to read "Knockouts". To rename columns, press the Column Names button. You can also rename a column by right-clicking on the column itself and selecting Rename column.

 

The Import / Export Players dialog gives you the option to import players into your tournament from a text file, export your players to an HTML file, export your players to a CSV format file, create a sign-in sheet, export player email addresses, or print the player list.

 

See Importing Players for information on importing players into your tournament.

If you choose to export the players to an HTML file, or to print the player list, see Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

 

See Creating a Sign-In Sheet for information on creating and/or printing a sign-in sheet.

 

10.20  Creating a Sign-In Sheet

A sign-in sheet is a list of all of the players in your tournament that can be used to allow players to sign-in as they arrive and or buy-in to your tournament. The sign-in sheet contains 3 columns: the player's name, their paid status, and a signature column. To create or print a sign-in sheet, press the Import / Export button and select Create sign-in sheet or Print sign-in sheet. Enter the number of rows per page to include. The default value of 40 is the maximum number of rows that can fit on a typical 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Press OK to print or save your sign-in sheet.

 

 

11     Prizes Tab

The Prizes Tab is where you configure the prizes that will be awarded for your tournament. Prizes can be created that are a percentage of the pot, a fixed amount, or a non-monetary award, and the Tournament Director can award the prizes to your tournament players automatically.

 

The order that the prizes are listed on this tab is controlled by you, but it is only important for display purposes. Tokens that display the prizes on the Tournament Screen display them in the order that they are listed on this tab.

 

The status panel gives you a quick view of the total prize pool, and how it has been allocated to the prizes. It can also quickly let you know whether or not you've allocated all of the prize pool money, and if you have possibly over-allocated the money.

 

Percent. total: This is the total percentage of the pot that has been allocated for prizes. For all prizes that are designated as a percentage of the pot, this is the sum of those percentages.

Adjust. total: The sum of adjustments that have been made to prizes.

Shared total: The Shared total represents the amount of leftover pot money that has been allocated to prizes via the Share leftover pot option. A portion of the pot could be "leftover" if less than 100% of the pot is allocated to prizes, or if prizes have been rounded in such a way as to total to less than 100% of the pot. This "leftover" prize money can be allocated to prizes via an option on the Prize dialog.

Prizes total: The sum of all prize amounts.

Pot: The total prize pool available.

Leftover: The difference between the prize pool and the sum of the prize amounts.

 

11.2     Creating Prizes

To create a prize, press the New Prize button, or right-click on an empty space in the prizes area and select New prize. The Prize dialog is displayed, allowing you to select the characteristics of the prize you wish to create.

11.2.1      Amount

Prizes amounts may be specified as a percentage of the pot, as a fixed amount, or as a non-monetary amount. Select the radio checkbox next to the desired prize amount type, and enter the percentage or fixed prize amount in the input box next to the prize amount type selected. For non-monetary prizes, you should enter a text string indicating what the prize is. This will be displayed in place of a monetary figure where ever prizes are displayed.

 

The Adjust by field allows you to adjust the actual prize amount by a positive or negative amount. Any amount you enter here is added to the prize amount after the prize is calculated.

 

Enter in the Points field the number of points the prize recipient should receive. Negative values are allowed.

 

Check the Share leftover pot checkbox if you wish for this prize to include in it a share of any leftover pot money.

11.2.2      Recipient

Select whom should receive this prize in the Recipient area. Select the Rank radio checkbox if this prize should be awarded to the player who achieves a particular rank. For example, select Rank and enter 1 (one) in the input box if the player who ranks 1 (first place) should receive the prize.

 

For player bounties (different from bounty chips), select the Bounty on player radio checkbox, and select the player on whom this prize is a bounty. The prize will automatically be awarded to the player who busts out of the tournament the selected player. If the selected player is not busted out of the tournament (if they win, for example), the selected player will receive the prize (they win their own bounty). You may also choose "(Random Player)". If selected, the Tournament Director will choose one of your players at random on which to place the bounty. When someone busts the random player out of the tournament, the random player will be revealed, and the hitman will be awarded the prize.

 

You may select that a random player receive the prize. If selected, the Tournament Director will choose one of your players at random to whom to award the prize. When the random player busts out of the tournament, the player will be revealed.

 

Finally, for other types of prizes, select the Manual radio checkbox. This could be used for prizes given for other achievements, such as a "Bad Beat" prize, or "Best Hand" prize. For this prize type, the Tournament Director will not award automatically. You will need to override the recipient of this prize when the prize winner has been determined in order for it to be awarded.

11.2.3      Lock

You can lock a prize to prevent the prize from being overwritten. When you use the Suggest Prizes tool or the Automatic Prizes feature, the Tournament Director will overwrite the defined prizes with prizes it suggests, based on the number of tournament participants. By locking a prize, the software is prevented from overwriting the prize.

11.2.4      Display

Enter the name of the prize in the Name input. This will be displayed as the prize name where ever prizes are displayed. If your prize recipient is based on rank, or is a bounty on a player, the prize name will automatically fill when you select the rank or the player, if the prize name is currently empty.

 

Place a check in the "Display prize on Tournament Screen" if you wish the prize to be displayed in the prizes list on the Tournament Screen.

11.2.5      Override

The Override section allows you to override the various aspects of the prize: to whom it is awarded, the monetary value of the prize, and the points value of the prize. If your prize recipient is set to Manual, you will need to use the Recipient override in order to award the prize.

 

To edit an existing prize, double-click on the prize or right-click on the prize and select Edit prize. The Prize dialog is displayed, allowing you to update the properties of the prize. See Creating Prizes for help with the Prize dialog.

 

Right-click on a prize and select Delete prize to delete a sound. See Clearing the Prize List to quickly delete all prizes.

 

When running tournaments, dealing with prizes that include fractional amounts is often undesirable. Usually, we wish to round prizes up or down to nearest whole dollar amounts.

To configure prize rounding, press the Rounding button. On the Prize Amount Rounding dialog, select the rounding option you wish to use for your prize amounts. After selecting the rounding option, enter the monetary amount to which you wish to round your prizes. Press the OK button when done. Or press the Apply button to see the rounding selection applied to your prizes without closing the Prize Settings dialog.

 

The order of prizes is relevant only to the actual display of the prizes on the Tournament Screen. The order of prizes does not affect the amounts of the prizes or how the prizes are awarded. You can move a prize up and down in the list of prizes by right-clicking on a prize and selecting Move prize up or Move prize down. To quickly re-order all of your prizes, press the Sort Prizes button to open the Sort Prizes dialog. You can then select one or more prizes and use the up arrow and down arrow buttons to move the prizes up or down within the list. Press the Alpha sort button to quickly sort all of the prizes alphabetically. Press the Numeric sort button to quickly sort all of the prizes numerically. Press the Reverse button to reverse the order of the prizes.

 

11.7     Suggesting Prizes

The Tournament Director can suggest the prizes to be awarded for you. Press the Suggest button to open the Suggest Prizes dialog.

 

On the Suggest Prizes dialog, enter the number of players in your tournament and press OK. The Tournament Director will suggest the prizes to be awarded. If you wish to use the suggested prizes, select the location at which to add the prizes (the top or bottom of the prize list), then press the Use button. The Tournament Director will confirm the action before continuing. All currently defined prizes that are not locked will be deleted, and the suggested prizes will be added to the prize list. If there are currently defined prizes that are locked, those prizes will not be deleted, and the suggested prizes will be added to the prize list before or after the locked prizes, depending on the location selected in the Suggest Prizes dialog.

 

Press the Show Config button to see the prize levels that will be used when the Tournament Director suggests prizes.

 

You can configure your own prize suggestions if you wish. See the Configuring Prize Levels section for information on configuring your own prize suggestions.

 

11.8     Automatic Prizes

Using the Automatic Prizes feature is like automatically pressing the Suggest Prizes button every time you buy a player into your tournament (or remove a player, or undo a player's buy-in). In other words, as the number of participants in your tournament changes, the prizes are automatically updated to reflect the size of the tournament.

 

Press the Automatic button to enable or disable the automatic prizes feature. When the automatic prizes feature is enabled, the tournament prizes will automatically be updated as the number of your tournament participants changes.

 

If you wish to have additional prizes, such as a bounty on the returning champion, make sure you enable the lock on each additional prize. By enabling the lock, the prize will not be overwritten by the automatic prizes feature.

 

Like the Suggest Prizes feature, you can configure your own automatic prizes if you wish. See the Configuring Prize Suggestions section for information on configuring your own automatic prizes.

 

 

Your prizes can be saved independently from other tournament settings. To save your prizes, press the Save Template button. To load a prizes template, press the Load Template button. When you load a prizes template, only the prizes of your tournament are affected. No other settings (rounds, players, tournament state, etc) are affected by this.

 

11.10  Clearing the Prize List

Press the Clear button to quickly erase all prizes. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before allowing the prizes to be cleared.

 

You can quickly clear all prize adjustments, leftover pot sharing, and overrides by pressing the Clear Adjustments button. On the Clear Adjustments dialog, place a check next to each item you wish to clear from your prizes and press the OK button.

 

You may wish to fine tune your prizes before all of your players have bought-in to the tournament. You can use an estimate pot amount in order to determine what your prize amounts will be before your players have bought-in.

 

To configure an estimated pot, press the Estimate Pot button. On the Estimate Pot dialog, place a check in the Use estimated pot checkbox. Next, check the Estimated pot amount radio checkbox and enter the estimated pot amount if you wish to directly specify an estimate pot amount. Or, if you wish to calculate an estimate pot, check the Calculate estimated pot radio checkbox. Then, enter the number of buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons you estimate will occur for your tournament. The estimate pot will be calculated using the buy-in, rake, rebuy, and add-on settings from the Game Tab.

 

The Pot indicator in the Status Panel will change to Estimated Pot to indicate that the amounts shown are estimated, and not calculated from the actual pot. To return to using the actual pot, uncheck the Use estimated pot checkbox on the Prize Settings dialog.

 

11.13  Editing Chops

Chops occur when two or more players bust out of the tournament simultaneously. This can occur when two or more players have bet all of their chips in a single hand against another player and lose the hand. This can also occur if the final players of a tournament agree to stop playing and chop (divide) the remaining prizes among themselves.

 

Although chops are created whenever two or more players bust out of the tournament simultaneously, they are typically only meaningful when a prize is awarded to the rank of the players who busted out simultaneously. For example, for a tournament in which prizes are awarded to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th places, two players who bust out together in 10th place technically chop 10th place. However, because no prize is awarded for 10th place, the Tournament Director will create a chop for these players but will not prompt you to fill out the details of the chop. For two players who bust out in 4th place, when the players are busted out the Tournament Director will prompt you to configure the chop, which divides the 4th and 5th place prizes between these two players. Because both players busted out in 4th place, they both receive a 4th place ranking (by default), and the next ranking player receives 6th place.

 

Press the Chops button to view the existing tournament chops. Chops that are listed in a lighter color do not have prizes associated with the ranks of the players in the chop.

 

Select the appropriate chop, and press the Edit button to edit the chop.

 

The Edit Chop dialog displays the ranks which this chop is dividing, the total amount of prize money that is awarded to the ranks, and the recipients of the chop along with their portions of the prizes.

 

Prize money and points can be allocated to the recipients using percentages, using actual prize or points amounts, or by using chip counts. You can use separate methods for chopping cash (prize money) and points if you wish.

 

By default, chopping players receive the same rank. However, you may wish to rank the players differently. For example, if the final two players of a tournament decide to end the tournament by chopping the 1st (and 2nd) place prizes, and player 1 has 60% of the chips while player 2 has 40% of the chips, you might wish to chop accordingly, giving player 1 60% of the cash and points and player 2 40% of the cash and points, as well as award the 1st place ranking to player 1 and the 2nd place ranking to player 2.

 

Select the method to use to divide the cash or points using the Method selector. Then fill the values for each player's portion accordingly. If you decide to change the chop method, the values you have entered will be retained should you change the method back to its original setting. The dialog will automatically calculate the portion for each player and total the portions for you. A note will display next to the total, warning you if the sum of the portions is greater or less then the actual prize amounts.

 

The arrow buttons will copy the values for each player from the Cash pane to the Points pane, and vice-versa. The copy buttons are only active when the methods used to chop cash and points are the same.

 

If at any time you wish to let the Tournament Director evenly divide the cash or points, press the Redistribute button in the Cash pane or the Points pane. The Redistribute button will re-divide the chop among the players. The Redistribute button only re-divides the currently selected Method amounts.

 

Finally, you can alter the ranking of the players by entering a relative ranking value into the Ranking pane. The values you enter will indicate which ranks each player will receive, relative to each other. For example:

 

Players A, B, C are the final 3 players in your tournament, and choose to chop. The chop will span rankings 1st through 3rd. By default, each player will have a relative ranking of 0, giving each player a ranking of 1st (and the last person who busted out of the tournament before the chop a ranking of 4th).

 

If player A had 5000 chips, and players B and C both had 2500 chips when the chop occurred, you may wish to rank player A 1st, and players B and C 2nd. To do this, change the relative ranking of players B and C to 1.

 

Alternately, if player A had 2500 chips and players B and C both had 5000 chips when the chop occurred, you may wish to rank players B and C 1st, and player A 3rd. To do this, change the relative ranking of player A to 1.

 

The Ranking pane will automatically update the Actual ranks of players as you change their Relative ranking. Set the Relative ranking of players to different values to get the hang of how the relative ranking works.

 

Finally, if you have made changes and wish to revert to the original state of the chop, press the Reset button.

 

You may export your prizes to a file in HTML format by pressing the Export button. Next you will be asked to choose the columns you wish to use when exporting the prizes. See Choosing Columns for help in using the column chooser dialog. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

 

 

12     Tables Tab

On the Tables Tab, you define the tables you'll use for your tournament, and configure how the Tournament Director will manage the seating and balancing of tables during your tournament.

 

The Tables pane displays the tables that you have configured for use in your tournament. The Unseated Players pane displays all players who are eligible to be seated, but are not currently seated at a table.

 

Seating and moving players is easy. You can simply drag-and-drop players from seat to seat, or you can allow the Tournament Director to do all of the table balancing for you.

 

Typically, only players who have bought-in to the tournament may be seated. However, you can allow seating of players who have not bought-in by pressing the Settings button and checking Allow seating of players who have not bought-in. When this option is selected, all players who have been added to the tournament will be eligible for seating. Bought-in players appear normally, while players who have not bought-in appear in red, italicized text. Players who have not bought-in will be treated the same as players who have bought-in, with respect to seating. That is, they will be considered for movement by the Automatic Seating Management feature when enabled.

 

The status panel gives you a quick view of information pertaining to the seating status of your tournament.

 

Tables: The number of tables configured.

Total Seats: The total number of seats at all tables.

Available Seats: The total number of seats not marked as unavailable.

Total Players: The number of players bought-in to the tournament.

Players still in: The number of players remaining in the tournament.

Unseated: The number of players eligible to be seated but are not currently seated.

Players locked: Indicates the number of players who have been locked into their seat.

 

Tables can be created several ways. Press the New Table button, or right-click in the Tables pane and select New table to create a new table. On the New Table dialog, enter a name for the table and the number of seats at the table. Press the OK button to create the table. The table is added to the end of the set of tables that already exist.


If your tournament utilizes a set of uniform size tables, the Tournament Director can quickly create all of the tables for your tournament with one step. Press the New Tables button, and on the New Tables dialog, enter the number of players in your tournament, and the number of seats at each of your tables. The Tournament Director will create enough tables of the size you enter to accommodate all of your players. The New Tables button is only enabled when there are no tables currently configured.

 

To edit a table, double-click the table name, or right-click on the table name and select Edit <table name>. On the Edit Table dialog, you can change the table's name and/or the table's seating capacity.

 

If you decrease the number of seats at the table, the Tournament Director will warn you if this has an effect on players who are currently seated there.

 

To insert a new seat at a table, right click on a seat (or seated player) and select Insert new seat. The new seat will be inserted before the selected seat.

 

To delete an existing seat, right click on the seat (or seated player) and select Delete seat. The Tournament Director will warn you before deleting the seat if the seat is occupied by a player.

 

To delete a table, right-click the table name and select Delete <table name>. The Tournament Director will confirm the deletion of the table, and will warn you if players are seated at the table.

 

To quickly delete all tables, see Clearing Tables.

 

12.5     Automatic Seating Management

The Tournament Director can manage the seating and balancing of tables automatically for you. Press the Settings button to open the Tables Settings dialog, which contains automatic seating management preferences:

 

Automatically suggest player movements: Place a check in this checkbox to have the Tournament Director manage the seating automatically.

 

Maximum player disparity before movement suggestion is made: This setting controls how unbalanced the tables must be before the Tournament Director suggests player movement to rebalance the tables. The default value is 1. With a value of 1, the Tournament Director will allow any two tables to be out of balance by only 1 player. When two tables are out of balance by 2 or more players, the Tournament Director will suggest player movement to rebalance the tables. If you wish to minimize player movement, you can increase this value.

 

Automatically randomize seating at final table: By placing a check in this checkbox, the Tournament Director will automatically shuffle the seating at the final table when the number of tables in use falls to only one.

 

When moving players, seat players as close to seat 1 as possible: If this setting is checked, players moved automatically by the Tournament Director will always be seated at the lowest numbered available seat at their destination table.

 

Allow seating of players who have not bought-in: If this is checked, players who have been added to the tournament but have not yet bought-in can be seated.

 

The Tournament Director keeps track of how many times each player has been moved during the course of the tournament. When possible, the Tournament Director will always choose for movement players who have moved fewer times over players who have moved more times. You can adjust the number of times a player has moved on the Edit Player dialog on the Players Tab. You can clear the number of movements count for all players by pressing the Clear button on the Tables Tab.

 

The Tournament Director displays an unbalanced table icon in the Game Window when your tables are unbalanced according to the settings on the Tables Settings dialog. The color and location of this icon are configured using the Other Properties dialog on the Layout Tab.

 

While the unbalanced table icon will display whenever tables are unbalanced, the Tournament Director will only automatically suggest table balancing when player(s) enter or exit the tournament. That is, when players buy-in, a player busts out, a player rebuys, or you undo any of these actions.

 

When the Tournament Director suggests player movement, the suggested movement is not required. You may cancel the player movement and continue playing with unbalanced tables. You may also choose to accept only part of the suggested movement. On the Balance Tables dialog, check the box next to each player you wish to move, and uncheck the box next to any player you do not wish to move. Press the OK, move players button to move the checked players. Note that your tables will possibly (probably) remain unbalanced if you do not move all of the players in a balance tables operation.

 

You may also request table balancing at any time by pressing Ctrl+T in the Game Window or by pressing the Suggest Movement button. The Suggest Movement button will appear highlighted in red when the Tournament Director determines that player movement should occur.

 

Note that the Suggest Movement button will be labeled Seat Players when there are unseated players and your tournament has not yet started.

 

If you wish to manually seat and move players, the Tournament Director makes this easy. To seat a player, double-click a seat in which no player is seated. The Seat Player dialog will open and allow you to select a player to seat at the chosen table and seat.

 

You may also use the drag-and-drop feature to seat unseated players, or to move players from one seat to another. Click and hold the left mouse button while the mouse is positioned over a player's name, either seated at a table or in the Unseated Players pane. While holding the mouse button down, move the cursor to the seat at which you wish to place the player (or to the Unseated Players pane to unseat the player), then release the mouse button. If the destination seat is empty, the player will be moved into the seat. If the seat is occupied, the Tournament Director will prompt you to indicate what the desired action is (swap the players or unseat the player already sitting in the destination seat, for example).

 

The order of the tables is irrelevant to game play, but you may wish for the tables to be displayed in a particular order.

 

To re-order your tables, press the Sort Tables button to open the Sort Tables dialog. You can then select one or more tables and use the up arrow and down arrow buttons to move the tables up or down within the list. Press the Alpha sort button to quickly sort all of the tables alphabetically. Press the Numeric sort button to quickly sort all of the tables numerically. Press the Reverse button to reverse the order of the tables.

 

Dealer buttons are used to indicate where the deal should begin, since typically the deal rotates around a table. To the Tournament Director software, the presence of the dealer button influences how the software chooses players to move when a table balance is needed.

 

The Tournament Director randomly chooses players to be moved when a table balance is needed. However, if dealer buttons have been placed, the Tournament Director will attempt to move players with respect to the buttons. That is, the Tournament Director will attempt to move players from other tables such that after they have been moved, they will still remain the same number of seats away from the dealer.

 

To place a dealer button, right-click on any seat and select Place Dealer Button. Only one dealer button is allowed per table. If you place the dealer button on a table where the button is already set, the dealer button will be moved.

 

Since the dealer button moves with each hand on each table, keeping proper placement of it with the software is impractical. If you intend to use the dealer button feature, the best method is to wait for the Tournament Director to suggest player movement, press the Don't move anyone, go to Tables tab button on the Unbalanced Tables dialog, set the dealer buttons, then press the Suggest Movement button.

The Tournament Director can automatically place dealer buttons at each table for you. Press the Set Dealer Button to open the Set Dealer Button dialog. You can either set the dealer button at a specific seat at each table, or allow the Tournament Director to randomly set the dealer button. If the Must have player seated checkbox is checked, the dealer button will always be placed in a seat that is occupied by a player. If the chosen seat (either specifically or randomly chosen) is unoccupied, the seats will be searched forward until an occupied seat is found, at which point the dealer button will be placed. If a table has no occupied seats, a dealer button will not be placed.

 

If your tournament has designated dealers who also play in your tournament, it is convenient to prevent these players from moving when tables are balanced. The Tournament Director allows you to lock these players into their seat.

 

Right-click on a seated player and select Lock <Player name> in seat. When a player is locked in their seat, the Tournament Director will avoid selecting the player for movement unless it has no other choice.

 

When the Tournament Director must move a player who is locked in their seat, the player's lock moves with the player. Therefore, they will be locked in the destination seat.

 

You can mark a seat as unavailable at any time during your tournament. When a seat is marked unavailable, the Tournament Director will operate as if the seat does not exist, and will therefore not place any players in the seat. This is useful if, for example, you wish to designate a seat for a permanent (non-player) dealer and you wish for the dealer to be displayed on the Seating Chart Screen. You may also wish to temporarily reduce the size of one or more tables. By making a seat unavailable, the effective size of the table is reduced.

 

To make a seat unavailable, right-click on an empty seat and select Make seat unavailable. You will be prompted to enter a label that will be displayed in the unavailable seat.

 

To make available a seat that is marked as unavailable, right-click on the seat and select Make seat available.

 

Note that when a seat is unavailable, the Tournament Director treats the table as if the seat does not exist. Therefore, a table with 10 seats that has 1 seat marked unavailable will be treated as if it has 9 seats.

 

Unavailable seats can be dragged to new locations in the same way that players can. Dragging an unavailable seat to the Unseated Players pane will make the seat available again. Dragging an unavailable seat onto another unavailable seat will swap the two seats (this will only be noticeable if you have different labels for each of the unavailable seats). Dragging an unavailable seat onto a seated player will unseat the player and make the seat unavailable (while restoring the original seat to an available state). Dragging a player onto an unavailable seat will make the seat available and seat the player in it. The Tournament Director will confirm your intentions before performing either of these two actions.

 

When players bust out of a tournament, tables are collapsed (removed from play) as they are no longer needed. Generally speaking, tournaments are held with tables that are identical in make and size, and therefore the order in which tables are removed is irrelevant. However, many times, especially in home tournaments, available tables may be of different size, and of different quality. It can therefore be desirable to control the order in which tables are removed from play.

 

The Tournament Director makes controlling the removal of tables easy. On the Tables Tab, press the Collapse Order button to open the Table Collapsing Order Preference dialog. This dialog allows you to group your tables by collapse preference.

 

To ensure that one or more tables is removed from play as early as possible, move the table(s) to the Collapse these tables first list. The ensure that one or more tables remains in play as long as possible, move the table(s) the to the Collapse these tables last list. Leave the remaining tables in the No preference list.

 

Check the In the order listed above checkbox below the lists if you wish for the tables in the lists to be removed from play in the order they are listed.

 

The Tournament Director will make a best effort to comply with your collapse order preference. However, some situations may dictate that the order is not followed precisely.

 

Previous versions of the Tournament Director had a Final Table designation. This feature has been removed in favor of Collapse Order. To designate a final table only, simply move the table into the Collapse these tables last list.

 

Compressing the seating at a table means to eliminate empty seats between players by moving players towards seat one without changing seating order. For example, if at a table with 8 seats, players were seated at seats 1, 3, 4, 7, and 8, compressing the seating would result in players seated at seats 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, but the players would remain in the same order.

 

To compress the seating at a table, right-click on the table name and select Compress seating. To quickly compress the seating at all tables, press the Compress Seating button.

 

If at any time you need to view the last table balancing event, press the Show Last Balance button. The Tournament Director will display the player movement that occurred the last time the Tournament Director suggested player movement, and the changes were accepted.

 

You can also print player movement by pressing the Print button on the Player Movement dialog. See Printing for more information on the limitations of printing directly from the Tournament Director application. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the printed player movement listing.

 

If the players in your tournament are not yet seated, press the Seat Players button and the Tournament Director will randomly seat your players.

 

To shuffle the seating at a single table, right-click on the table name and select Randomize seating at this table.

 

If some or all of your players are already seated, but you wish to re-randomize the seating of all players, press the Randomize Seating button. Players who are locked in their seats will not be moved by this operation, unless you check the option to Include players locked in their seat. Note that when you randomize the seating of the entire tournament, the tables in use may change. For example, if you have a 40 player tournament seated at four tables of ten players each (tables 1 through 4), and half of your players have busted out leaving the remaining 20 players at tables 3 and 4, and then press the Randomize Seating button, the remaining 20 players may be moved to tables 1 and 2. If you wish for the players to remain at the current set of in use tables (tables 3 and 4), you can swap the tables after your randomize the seating. See Swapping Tables for more information.

 

12.15  Swapping Tables

Sometimes, players will sit at the wrong table. And sometimes, you may wish to move players from one table to a different table. To quickly move all players at a table, right-click on the table name and select Swap players with another table. Then choose the other table with which to swap players. The Tournament Director will exchange players on each table without affecting the order in which players are seated. If one table has more seats than the other, the additional seats will be unaffected.

 

To unseat the players at a single table, right-click the table name and select Unseat table. The Tournament Director will confirm your intent to unseat the table. To quickly unseat all tables, see Clearing Tables.

 

12.17  Clearing Tables

Press the Clear button to quickly delete all of your tables, unseat all of your players, clear all player locks, remove all dealer buttons, clear unavailable seats, and/or reset the number of seating moves made for all players. The Tournament Director will confirm your action before proceeding.

 

Actions you perform on the Tables Tab can be "undone" by pressing the Undo button. Press the Redo button after you have pressed the Undo button to redo an undone action. The Tournament Director will remember a limited number of your actions and make them available to be "undone".

 

Some actions performed in your tournament, particularly those that affect the list of players currently in the tournament, can affect the state of the tournament such that previous table movements cannot be "undone". When one of these actions occurs, the Undo button on the Tables Tab will be disabled.

 

Your tournament tables can be saved independently from other tournament settings.

 

To save your tables, press the Save Template button. When you save a tables template, only the tables themselves are saved. Seated players are not saved as part of the tables template.

 

To load a tables template, press the Load Template button. When you load a tables template, only the tables of your tournament are affected. No other settings (players, prizes, tournament state, etc) are affected by this. Also, any seated players will be unseated. The Tournament Director will confirm that you want to load a tables template and unseat all players before proceeding.

 

You may export your tables and/or seating assignments to a file in HTML format by pressing the Export button.

 

12.20.1   Tables Diagram Format

Select Tables diagram format to export a diagram of the tables, much like what is displayed on the Tables Tab. The Export Tables to HTML dialog allows you to choose the tables you wish to export. Check each checkbox next to the tables you wish to export. Press the check all link to check all tables, the check none link to uncheck all tables, or the check tables with players seated link to check only those tables which have players seated at them. Next, enter the number of tables that should be included per row, and the number of rows that should be included per page. Press the OK button to export your tables.

 

12.20.2   Player List Format

Select Player list format to export an alphabetical listing of all players with their seating assignment. The Export Player List to HTML dialog allows you to choose a single table, which will display the name of the chosen table at the top of the exported page, and highlight the players at that table (in bold, by default). If you do not select a table, no table name will be displayed and no players will be highlighted.

 

See Exporting Data for more information on configuring the format of the export.

 

 

13     Layout Tab

The Layout Tab is where you configure the screens that are displayed in the Game Window while your tournament is running, which is referred to as the layout. The Tournament Director comes with pre-defined layouts which you may load and use in your own tournaments. Or, you can modify the existing layouts to suit your own needs, or create your own. The layout is flexible, allowing complete customization of the display. Your layout can contain multiple screens that cycle, banners that cycle, images, background images, and screens that change based on the status of your tournament.

 

The layout is made up of a number of items with which you should become familiar if you want to design your own layout.

 

Screens: One particular screen definition. Screens are made up of Cells, which are arranged by the use of Rows and Columns.

Screen Sets: Collections of Screens. When a Screen Set is in use, the Screens it contains display in a predefined order, each for a particular amount of time. Screen Sets can be conditionally described, so that a Screen Set will be used when certain conditions in your tournament are met. All layouts contain a Default Screen Set that is used when there are no Screen Sets that match the current tournament state.

Cells: A unit of display on a Screen. Cells contain Property Groups which describe how the Cell is to look. Property Groups can be conditionally described, so that a Property Group will be used when certain conditions in your tournament are met. All Cells have a Default Property Group that is used when there are no Property Groups that match the current tournament state.

Rows and Columns: Containers for Cells. Screens contain Rows and Columns, which contain Cells, in order to arrange the Screen. Cells inserted inside of a Row will be positioned side-by-side, horizontally. Cells inserted inside of a Column will be positioned vertically, one on top of the next. Rows can contain Columns, and vice-versa.

Property Groups: Containers for Property Sets. Property Groups contain three Property Sets: one for odd-numbered rounds, one for even-numbered rounds, and one for breaks. Property Groups can be conditionally described, so that a Property Group will be used when certain conditions in your tournament are met.

Property Sets: Containers for display properties for a Cell. A Property Set contains configurable display information, such as the text (or banner) that will be displayed in a cell, how big the cell is, the colors used for the cell, alignment, border size and colors, etc.

Tokens: Textual codes used to display information about your tournament. Tokens are words surrounded by less-than and greater-than symbols (<>), which are inserted into the text to be displayed in a Cell. The Tournament Director automatically replaces Tokens with information from your tournament. For example, if the text for a cell were "Round <round>", the Tournament Director would automatically replace the Token <round> with the current round number, so that the resulting text might be "Round 2".

Global Property Sets: Named Property Sets that can be utilized by other Property Sets. By using Global Property Sets, many cells can use the same properties (and hence look and act similarly), and changes can be made in one location (in the Global Property Set), rather than in many locations (a Property Set in each of the Cells)

Banners: An image to be displayed in a Cell.

Banner Sets: Collections of Banners. When a Banner Set is in use, the Banners it contains display in a predefined order, each for a particular amount of time

 

The Screen pane displays the screen selected in the Screen selector. The Toolbox pane displays all available cells. Screens do not actually contain cells, but instead they contain references to cells. Therefore, multiple screens can contain the same cell (multiple times, of desired). When a cell is removed from a screen, only the reference to the cell is removed from the screen - the actual cell remains in the Toolbox. Cells are only deleted when they are deleted from the Toolbox. If a cell is deleted from the Toolbox, all references to the cell are removed from all screens.

 

While the Tournament Screen is displayed, the Tournament Director is continually evaluating the state of your tournament against the conditions of the layout's screen sets, and will switch the display to the screen set that best matches the tournament state, and cycle through the screens of that screen set. It also compares the tournament state against the conditions of all cell property groups, and will display the property group whose conditions best match the tournament state for each cell at any given moment in your tournament.

 

Screen sets define which screens should be displayed (and cycled) in the Game Window at which time during your tournament. Each screen set has conditions that determine when the screen set should be used. Every layout has a Default screen set. The Default screen set has no conditions, and is used when there are no other screen sets whose conditions match the current tournament conditions.

 

Press the Screen Sets button to open the Screen Sets dialog. The Screen Sets pane displays the currently defined screen sets, including the Default screen set. The Screens pane lists the screens that make up the screen set currently selected in the Screen Sets pane. The Screen Properties pane displays the amount of time the screen currently selected in the Screens pane should display.

 

Press the New button to create a new screen set.

 

Press the Delete button to delete the currently select screen set. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the screen set. The default screen set cannot be deleted.

 

To copy the properties of a screen set, select the screen set that will receive the copied properties. Then press the Copy button. In the Copy Screen Set dialog, select the screen set from which you wish to copy properties. Press OK to copy the screen set properties to the screen set currently selected in the Screen Sets pane.

 

To edit the conditions of a screen set, select the screen set and press the Edit Conditions button. See Conditions Dialog for information on editing conditions for the screen set.

 

When the Tournament Director selects the screen set that will be used at any given moment, the screen sets are scanned in the order that they are displayed on the Screen Sets dialog. When a screen sets whose conditions match the current tournament state is found, the screen set is selected for display. If no screen set is found, the default screen set is used. If more than one screen set matches the current tournament state, the first one found is used.

 

To move a screen set within the list of screen sets, select a screen set and press the up arrow button or the down arrow button. The default screen set cannot be moved from the top position of the list of screen sets.

 

To add a new screen to a screen set, press the Add button. Select a screen to add in the Add Screen dialog, then press the OK button. The screen will be added to the currently selected screen set, with a default display time of 120 seconds.

 

To remove a screen from a screen set, select the screen in the Screens pane and press the Remove button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before removing the screen.

 

To create a new screen, press the New button in the Screen Controls pane, or right-click in the Screen pane and select New screen.

 

To switch to another screen, select the desired screen in the Screen selector.

 

To insert a row or column, right-click in the desired location within the screen and select Insert new row or Insert new column. A column may contain cells and rows, but it may not directly contain another column. Likewise, a row may contain cells and columns, but it may not directly contain another row. However, a row may reside inside of a column, which in turn resides inside of another row (and likewise for columns).

 

To insert a cell, right-click in the desired location within the screen and select Insert cell. You may also right-click an existing cell and select Insert cell above <cell name> or Insert cell below <cell name>. To edit a cell, double-click the cell or right-click on the cell and select <cell name> properties. See Creating and Modifying Cells for more information.

 

To remove a cell, right-click the cell and select Remove <cell name>. Removing a cell only removes the reference to the cell from the screen. The cell itself is not deleted, and it remains in the Toolbox. To delete a cell, right-click on the cell in the Toolbox and select Delete <cell name>. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the cell.

 

To move cells around within the layout, right-click on a cell and select one of the options that are available for moving the cell. Options will vary, depending on where the cell is located.

 

Rows and columns contain properties that can be modified. Double-click a row or column, or right-click within a row or column and select Row properties or Column properties. Row and column properties:

 

Background color: The background color of the row or column. By default, the color is transparent. This allows the screen's background color or image to show through. Typically, cells within a row or column fill the entire row or column, and therefore the background color is not seen. However, a cell's size may be adjusted such that portions of the row or column background are visible.

Border color: The color of the border of the row or column. The border is only visible if one of the border checkboxes is selected.

Size: The size of the border, in pixels.

Top, Left, Right, Bottom: If checked, these indicate on which side(s) of the row or column a border will be displayed.

Width, Height: The width and height of the row or column. By default, rows and columns expand automatically to fill the screen. If you specify a width and/or height, the row or column will attempt to display at the specified width or height. However, rows and columns cannot be made smaller than the size of their contents.

Padding: Indicates the amount of space, measured in pixels, between the contents of the row or column and the border of the row or column (or the edge, if the border is not displayed).

 

13.3     Creating and Modifying Cells

To insert a cell into screen, right-click on the screen in the location you wish to insert the cell. You can right-click inside of a row or column to add the cell to the end of the row or column (the end being the right end of a row, or the bottom of a column). Or, you can right-click on an existing cell and insert the new cell before or after the selected cell.

 

You can insert into the screen an existing cell (a cell in your Toolbox) or a new cell (with a default property group and property sets), or a new cell that is a copy of an existing cell.

 

To insert an existing cell, on the Insert Cell dialog, select an existing cell in Toolbox pane and then press the Add Cell button.

 

To insert a copy of an existing cell, on the Insert Cell dialog, select an existing cell in Copy pane and then press the Copy Cell button.

 

To insert a new cell, on the Insert Cell dialog, select an existing cell in New pane and then press the Create Cell button.

 

To edit an existing cell, double-click the cell or right-click the cell and select <cell name> properties. The Cell Properties dialog displays the cell name, the cell description, the cell's property groups, and the property sets of those property groups.

 

Cell Name: The name of the cell. The name must be unique among all cells.

Description: A short description of the cell.

 

The Property Groups pane displays the property groups defined for this cell. The Property Sets pane displays the property sets contained in the property group selected in the Property Groups pane.

 

When the Tournament Director selects the cell's property group that will be used at any given moment, the property groups of a cell are scanned in the order that they are displayed on the Cell Properties dialog. When a property group whose conditions match the current tournament state is found, its properties are used to display the cell. If no property group is found, the default property group is used. If more than one property group matches the current tournament state, the first one found is used.

 

To move a property group within the list of property groups, select a property group and press the up arrow button or the down arrow button. The default property group cannot be moved from the top position of the list of property groups.

 

To add a property group, press the New button. The new property group will be added to the end of the list of property groups.

 

To delete a property group, select the property group and press the Delete button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the property group. The default property group cannot be deleted.

 

To rename a property group, select the property group and press the Rename button.

 

To edit the conditions of a property group, press the Conditions button. See Conditions Dialog for information on editing conditions of the property group.

 

To copy the property sets of another property group, select the property group to which to copy property sets and press the Copy button. On the Copy Property Group dialog, select the property group from which to copy property sets. Press the OK button to copy the property sets.

 

Each property group contains three property sets: a property set for odd-numbered rounds, a property set for even-numbered rounds, and a property set for breaks. When a property group of a cell matches the current tournament state, one of its property sets is used to display the cell, determined by the current round or break state of the tournament. The Even Rounds property set can be deleted, in which case the Odd Rounds property set would be used for all rounds. The Breaks property set can be deleted, in which case the Odd Rounds or Even Rounds property set would be used for breaks (depending on the round number). The Odd Rounds property set cannot be deleted.

 

To delete a property set, select the property set tab in the Property Sets pane and press the Delete Property Set button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the property set.

 

To create a property set, press the Create Property Set button.

 

To copy the properties of another property set, select the property set tab to which to copy the properties and press the Copy Property Set button. On the Copy Property Set dialog, select the property set from which to copy properties. Press the OK button to copy the properties.

 

Pressing the Find button will display all screens on which the cell being edited is found.

 

13.3.1      Property Set Properties

Property sets can be global, or can be part of Property Groups, or part of a Row or Column. Property sets in rows and columns contain a subset of the properties of property sets belonging to other groups.

 

Display cell: Checked by default. If this box is unchecked, the cell will not display when this property set is used.

Use global property set: Check to use a global property set. By using global property sets, many of the properties used to display the cell can be defined in one place, making it easier to change properties of many property sets at the same time. If you check this box, the properties defined by the global property set will be removed from the dialog, and a selection input will be displayed to allow you to choose the global property set to use.

Use banners: Check to display one of your defined banner sets in this cell instead of text. If you check this box, the section of the dialog defining the text to be displayed in the cell will be replaced by a banner set selection input. Select the banner set you wish to display in the cell.

HTML: The text to be displayed in the cell. The text entered into this box will be displayed in the cell when the selected property group and property set is used. HTML can be used as well as plain text. Tokens can be used to display information about your tournament, such as the current round number, the number of players in the tournament, or the size of the prize pool. See Inserting Tokens for information on tokens. A common HTML element is the <img> element, which displays a graphical image (JPG or GIF image, for example). To make inserting an image easy, press the Insert Image button, select an image, and the HTML for displaying the image will be insert automatically for you. If the input area for HTML is too small, press the HTML button to open a larger editor. After editing the HTML, press the OK button and the text from the editor will be placed in the property set HTML input.

Rotate text 90°: Check this box to have the text of the cell rotated 90 degrees (clockwise).

Background color: The color of the background of the cell.

Foreground color: The color of the foreground (text) of the cell.

Font: The font to use for the text of the cell.

Font size: The font point size to use for the text of the cell.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Border color: The color of the border of the cell. The border is only visible if one of the border checkboxes is selected.

Size: The size of the border, in pixels.

Top, Left, Right, Bottom: If checked, these indicate on which side(s) of the cell a border will be displayed.

Width, Height: The width and height of the cell. By default, cells expand automatically to fill the available space. If you specify a width and/or height, the cell will attempt to display at the specified width or height. However, cells cannot be made smaller than the size of their contents.

Padding: Indicates the amount of space, measured in pixels, between the contents of the cell and the border of the cell (or the edge, if the border is not displayed).

Horizontal alignment: The horizontal alignment of the contents of the cell.

Vertical Alignment: The vertical alignment of the contents of the cell.

Background Image: Press the Background Image button to insert an image to display in the background of the cell. See Placing Images on the Screen for more information on the background image properties.

HTML Styles: Internet Explorer is used to render (display) your screens. Therefore, some features of HTML (the language used to describe web pages) can be used to modify how your screens are displayed. In particular, styles can be specified. Some of the more common styles, such as font, font size, borders, and colors, are already specified by the other properties of the property set. If there are other styles not already exposed by the property set that you wish to modify, you can use the HTML Styles feature to do so. See Working With HTML Styles for more information.

 

Sometimes, you may have groups of cells that display different information, but appear the same on the screen. In other words, they display different text (or HTML), but have the same background color, foreground color, font, etc. It can be tedious to update the properties of these cells (especially when you factor in that each cell might have multiple property groups, and each property group has three property sets). If you want to change the background color of these cells, you may have to update the background color of a lot of property sets.

 

A solution is to use global property sets. If each property set of each property group of each cell was configured to use a single global property set, then changing the background color of this group of cells would be easy, since it would require changing on the background color of the global property set they all referenced.

 

To configure a cell to use a global property set, open the Cell Properties dialog, select the desired property group and property set, then check the Use global property set checkbox. In the Global Property Set to use selector, select the global property set you wish to use.

 

To edit global property sets, press the Global Properties button. Or, from the Cell Properties dialog, you can press the Edit button next to the Global Property Set to use selector.

 

On the Global Properties dialog, the Global Property Set pane displays the list of defined global property sets. The Properties pane displays the properties of the property set selected in the Global Property Set pane. The properties of the global property set are the same as those of property sets belonging to the property groups of cells. See Property Set Properties for a description of the properties.

 

To create a new global property set, press the Create Property Set button.

 

To delete a global property set, select the global property set and press the Delete Property Set button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the global property set.

 

To copy the properties of another property set, select the global property set tab to which to copy the properties and press the Copy Property Set button. On the Copy Property Set dialog, select the property set from which to copy properties. Press the OK button to copy the properties.

 

13.5     Working With HTML Styles

The HTML Styles dialog allows you to add specific HTML style attributes to a Cell, Row, or Column. Style attributes control various aspects of how the contents of a cell, row, or column render, or display. For example, you can control the various font attributes of the text that is to be displayed, the colors of the text or background, alignment, borders, margins, padding, size, clipping, etc.

 

On the Cell dialog, Row or Column dialog, or Global Properties dialog, press the HTML Styles button to open the Styles dialog. Here you can add or remove style attributes, and modify their values.

 

Press the New Style button to create a new style attribute. When creating a new style, you may specify the name of the style yourself, or use the drop-down list to select the name of a known style attribute. Press the OK button and the style will be added to the list of styles defined for the cell, row, or column. Select the style attribute in the Styles pane, and then modify the value of the style in the Value pane.

 

Select a style attribute in the Styles pane and press the Delete Style to remove the style attribute.

 

For example, add a style with the name "filter" to a cell. Enter the following for the style's value:

 

progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Glow(enabled=yes, strength=5, color=red)

 

This will give the text in the cell a red glow.

 

Styles are defined by the World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS

Microsoft's CSS styles reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/css/reference/attributes.asp

 

13.6     Placing Images on the Screen

You can place images on your screen in several different ways.

 

Images can be inserted into cells by the use of HTML <img> tags. Simply place an <img> tag within the HTML/text of a cell. The Tournament Director makes this easy by the use of the Insert Image button on the Cell Properties dialog. See Creating and Modifying Cells for more information.

 

Multiple images can be displayed in a cell, one at a time, by the use of banner sets. If you wish to display image banners for sponsors of your event, for example, simply create a banner set with the desired images and configure one of your cells to use the banner set. See Using Banners for more information.

 

An image can be placed as the background of a screen. Press the Background button to open the Screen Background dialog. The Screens pane displays the list of defined screens. The Background Properties pane displays the background properties of the screen selected in the Screens pane.

 

Color: The color of the background.

Filename: Enter the path and filename of an image file to display in the background, or use the Browse… button to locate an image. If a background image is used, it will display over the background color defined above.

Repeat: Select one of the repeat options to indicate how the background image, if specified, will be tiled.

Horizontal Alignment: Select the horizontal position of the background image.

Vertical Alignment: Select the vertical position of the background image.

Override all background colors (make them transparent): By checking this box, all cells will have their background colors automatically displayed using the "transparent" color (this does not change the actual properties of any cell). A screen background will normally not be seen, since cells will automatically expand to fill the available screen space. You can make the background visible (or a portion of it), by changing a cell's background color to "transparent". It can, however, be very tedious to change all cell background colors to transparent. This option makes it easy by overriding ALL cell background colors and making them transparent, making the screen background visible.

Override all borders (turn them off): Similar to the option above. By checking this option, the border settings of all cells are overridden and turned off. No cell properties are actually changed by this.

 

13.7     Inserting Tokens

Tokens are the heart and soul of the Tournament Screen. When the screen is rendered, tokens in the text/HTML of a cell are automatically replaced with data from your running tournament.

 

Tokens are all lowercase words surrounded by less-than (<) and greater-than (>) symbols, much like HTML elements. Some tokens have attributes, of the form attribute="value", that specify details of what the token should be replaced with. Tokens can be placed anywhere in the text/HTML for a cell. For example:

 

<nobr>Round: <round></nobr>

 

If the running tournament were currently in round 3, the above text would be modified automatically to read:

 

<nobr>Round: 3</nobr>

 

The <nobr> and </nobr> elements are HTML elements, indicating that the text between them should be rendered on one line (no linefeeds should occur).

 

Any valid token can be placed in the text/HTML of any cell, and more than one token can be placed in the text/HTML of a cell. Another example:

 

<nobr>Round: <round><br>Next Break: <nextbreak></nobr>

 

If the running tournament were currently in round 3, and 10 minutes remained until the next scheduled break, the above text would be modified automatically to read:

 

<nobr>Round: 3<br>Next Break: 10:00</nobr>

 

Again, the <nobr> and </nobr> elements are HTML elements, indicating the text between them should be rendered on one line. The <br> element is also an HTML element, indicating that a linefeed should occur at that position. Ultimately, the text would render on the screen as:

 

Round: 3

Next Break: 10:00

 

Another example, with attributes:

 

<chips size="30" columns="1" values="right">

 

This token would be replaced automatically with HTML that renders the defined chips (graphically). The size attribute specifies that the chips be 30 pixels in size (height and width), the columns attribute specifies that the chips be rendered in one column, and the values attribute specifies that the chip values be displayed on the right side of each chip.

 

<chips size="30" columns="10" values="none">

 

The above example is mostly the same as the preceding example, except that the chips would render in one row instead of one column (provided that there were no more than 10 chips defined), and the chip values would not be displayed.

 

It is not required that attributes be specified for tokens that have attributes. For any attribute not specified, a default value will be used. For example, using the token:

 

<chips>

 

Would be the same as using:

 

<chips size="30" columns="1" values="left">

 

Since these are the default values of the attributes. However, it is recommended that you always specify all attributes.

 

Inserting tokens is made simple by the use of the Insert Token button on the Cell Properties dialog. Press the Insert Token button to open the Insert Token dialog. The Tokens pane displays the list of all available tokens. The Attributes pane displays a description of the token currently selected in the Tokens pane, along with any attributes of the token. Select the token you wish to insert, enter values for the token's attributes, then press the OK button to insert the token.

 

The token will be inserted into the HTML input, at the current cursor position. If text in the HTML input is currently selected, the selected text will be replaced by the inserted token.

 

To edit the value of an existing token, highlight the token and press the Insert Token button (if you do not highlight the entire token, the Tournament Director will automatically attempt to highlight the entire token when you press the Insert Token button). The Insert Token dialog will open with the token already selected, and any token values specified pre-filled. Be sure to highlight the existing token beginning with the initial less-than symbol (<), all the way to the final greater-than symbol (>). Do not highlight any other part of the text/HTML.

 

13.8     Using Banners

Banners are graphical images that are displayed within a cell (in lieu of text). Multiple banners can be specified in a set, such that the images are displayed one after the other, cycling through the images at a rate defined in the set. Banners are typically used for advertising or displaying tournament sponsorship, but can be used for displaying whatever images you like. If you wish to display a static (non-changing) image, such as a league logo, see Placing Images on the Screen.

 

Press the Banner Sets button to open the Banner Set dialog. The Banner Set pane displays the defined banner sets. The Banner pane displays the banners defined in the banner set currently selected in the Banner Set pane. The Banner Properties pane displays properties of the banner currently selected in the Banner pane.

 

To create a new banner set, press the New button in the Banner Set pane. To delete a banner set, select the banner set and press the Delete button in the Banner Set pane. To copy the properties of another banner set, select the banner set to which to copy the properties and press the Copy button in the Banner Set pane. On the Copy Banner Set dialog, select the banner set from which to copy properties. Press the OK button to copy the properties.

 

To create a new banner, press the New button in the Banner pane. To delete a banner, select the banner and press the Delete button in the Banner pane. To copy the properties of another banner, select the banner to which to copy the properties and press the Copy button in the Banner pane. On the Copy Banner dialog, select the banner from which to copy properties. Press the OK button to copy the properties.

 

13.8.1      Banner Properties

Filename: Enter the path and filename of an image file, or use the Browse… button to locate an image.

Actual size: Select this to display the banner image at its actual size.

Stretch to fit: Select to have the banner image automatically resized to the same dimensions as the cell in which it is displayed. If you select this option, you MUST set the cell's height. The cell's height setting must not be 0 or the banner will not display properly.

Defined size: Select to set a specific height and width at which to display the image. You may enter only one dimension and leave the other blank. If you do this, the dimension left blank will be sized proportionally to the dimension specified.

Width, Height: Enter the desired width and height of the image, in pixels, if you've selected a Defined size.

Time to display: Enter the amount of time, in seconds, to display this banner of the banner set.

 

There are other parts of the layout with configurable options that do not fall directly into categories already covered. Status icons (screen lock, keyboard lock, unbalanced tables, and auto save) can be configured, as well as properties for the Player Rankings Screen, Seating Chart Screen, Player Movement Screen, and Blinds Schedule Screen, on the Other Properties Dialog.

Press the Other Properties button to open the Other Properties dialog. The Other Property Set pane lists the property sets that you can edit. The Properties pane displays the properties of the other property set selected in the Other Property Set pane.

 

Four of the property sets are for icons displayed in the Game Window: the Screen Lock icon (displayed when the screen is locked), the Keyboard Lock icon (displayed when the keyboard is locked), the Unbalanced Tables icon (displayed when the tables are unbalanced), and the Saving Tournament icon (displayed when the Tournament Director auto saves the tournament). These icons are displayed in one of the four corners of the screen, superimposed over the layout. You can adjust the visual characteristics of these icons, so that they are more suited to your layout. To turn the display of these icons on or off, see the Preferences Tab.

 

Location: Select which of the four corners of the screen the icon will be displayed.

Color: The color of the icon.

Opacity: The opacity, or transparent quality, of the icon. The lower the number, the less opaque (and more transparent) the icon will be.

Size: The size of the icon, in pixels.

 

For information on adjusting properties of the other built-in screens, see one of the following: Player Rankings Screen, Seating Chart Screen, Player Movement Screen, Blinds Schedule Screen.

 

The values of tokens are automatically calculated by the Tournament Director while your tournament is running. For example, the value of the <round> token is the current round number of the tournament, and the token <round> is automatically replaced with this value anywhere on the screen that it appears.

 

You can override the value of any token by using the Tokens dialog. You can also create your own tokens, with values that are plain text or HTML, and the values can be entered into the layout or can come from the contents of a file.

 

Press the Tokens button to open the Tokens dialog. The Tokens pane displays the tokens that you have defined, and the Value pane displays the value of the token currently selected in the Tokens pane.

 

To create a new token (or override the value of an existing token), press the New button. To delete a token, select the token and press the Delete button. To rename a token, select the token and press the Rename button.

 

To set the value of the token, select whether you wish the text to be interpreted as plain text or as HTML in the Value pane. Because the Tournament Director utilizes Internet Explorer to display the Tournament Screen, HTML is used to render the screen. For tokens that are plain text, the Tournament Director will convert your text into HTML, such that it will display exactly as it appears in the text pane, or in the text file that you select. For tokens that are HTML, the Tournament Director will not attempt to translate the text into HTML, but will insert the text exactly as it appears. Therefore, you can use HTML tags, such as <IMG> to display an image, <FONT> to change the font characteristics (size, color, type), or <UL> to display bulleted lists.

 

Finally, select Text and enter the text of the token into the text pane, or select File and enter the filename of the file to display in the File input, or press the Browse… button to search for a file.

 

Testing your layout is essential to a smoothly running tournament. The Layout Tab displays a small preview of your screens that can help give you an idea of what the screens will look like. Cells are displayed using their defined colors and font. Cells that are configured to not be displayed are designated with a line through their name (e.g., Rebuys). By default, the screen previews are for round one of a running tournament in which rebuys are not allowed, add-ons are not allowed, the game is No Limit, etc. You can modify these conditions to have the screens preview for different conditions.

 

Press the View For… but to open the Game State dialog. Set the various conditions that you wish to preview your layout for and press the OK button. To reset to the default tournament state, press the Reset button.

 

The best way to test your layout is to run a mock tournament. After you have created and saved your layout, create a tournament using your layout. Start the timer and run through a tournament, busting players out, rebuying, adding-on, etc. Make sure the layout performs as you expect.

 

To clear the layout, press the Clear Layout button. The Clear Layout dialog gives you the option of deleting portions of your layout. Check the box next to each item set you wish to delete. Press the OK button to delete the layout portions you have selected.

 

Your layout can be saved independently from other tournament settings. To save your layout, press the Save Template button. To load a layout, press the Load Template button. When you load a layout, only the layout of your tournament is affected. No other settings (players, prizes, tournament state, etc) are affected by this.

 

You may choose to use additional, external images in your layout by embedding HTML <img> tags within the HTML of a cell. Saving a layout only saves the design of a layout, and does not include images referenced by HTML <img> tags. Sharing a layout with other Tournament Director software users can be difficult if your layout includes these files.

 

Exporting a layout will bundle the layout file, as well as any referenced image files, in a ZIP file, allowing a much more convenient method of sharing your layout. You may also choose to include your events template, as well as sound files, and/or your chips template, as well as chip images files, in your exported layout. By doing this, you can share your full tournament audio and visual setup with other Tournament Director users in one convenient package.

 

Any external image files and/or sound files must be located within the Tournament Director installation folder, or within folders located within the Tournament Director installation folder. Files located here have paths that are relative to the Tournament Director installation folder, and can thus be included in the exported ZIP file. Any files that your layout, your events template, or your chips template reference that are not within the Tournament Director installation folder will not be included in the exported ZIP file.

 

To export your layout, press the Export button. The export will included the layout template and any referenced image files. Check the Include events template and sound files if you wish to include your events configuration in the export. Check the Include chips template and chip image files if you wish to also include your chips configuration in the export.

 

Your layout must first be saved to a relative location before the export can be completed. You will be prompted to save your layout. If you include your events template, you will also be prompted to save your events template to a relative location. If you include your chips template, you will also be prompted to save your chips template. Finally, you will be prompted for a filename in which to save the exported layout.

 

13.15  Conditions Dialog

The Conditions Dialog is used to define a particular tournament state for which a screen set or a property group should be used. Each condition on the Conditions Dialog is "anded" with every other condition to produce a specific tournament. For example, if you were to select Before Game, select Yes for Rebuys are allowed, and select No for Add-ons are allowed, the state would read "Before Game AND Rebuys are allowed AND Add-ons are not allowed".


Some conditions which reference numeric values allow you to specify the condition as an expression. For example, Rebuys remaining indicates the number of rebuys that can still be purchased, based on tournament settings and the number of rebuys already purchased by players. Since Rebuys remaining is a number, you can specify the number of rebuys remaining be an exact number, less than some number, greater than some number, etc. For these types of conditions, the following symbols can be used:

 

< 

 

Less than

<=

 

Less than or equal to

=

 

Equal to

>=

 

Greater than or equal to

> 

 

Greater than

!=

 

Is not equal to

 

Note that the Before Game condition will match a tournament that has not yet begun, whether or not a pre-tournament countdown is commencing. An In Countdown condition will only match a tournament that is in a pre-tournament countdown. In Countdown is a more specific version of Before Game.

 

Therefore, if your screen sets include a screen set for both the Before Game stage and a screen set for the In Countdown stage, you should position the In Countdown screen set before the Before Game screen set. Otherwise, the Before Game screen set will be used for both "before game" and "in countdown" tournament states. This applies to property groups as well.

 

The Round condition accepts a specific round number, or you can enter "all" to match all rounds, "even" to match only even numbered rounds, or "odd" to match on odd numbered rounds. The Break condition accepts a specific break number, or you can enter "all" to match all breaks.

 

13.16  Adjusting the Screen Size

If a layout screen you have created is too large, elements of the screen may "run" off the side or bottom of the display. The Tournament Screen does not display scrollbars, so to view all of the information on your layout screen, you'll need to adjust the layout screen, making elements smaller so that everything fits.

 

Adjusting the font sizes of the displayed elements is usually the most efficient way to resize the screen, as most elements are text. It is good practice to use global property sets where ever possible, so that adjusting font sizes can be done in as few places as necessary.

 

The Tournament Director can also auto-size the display for you. On the Tournament Screen, right-click and select Auto-size screen. The Tournament Director will resize the layout screen by adjusting font sizes of elements that are currently displayed, until the screen fits within your display size. This process usually takes only a few seconds, but depending on the size of your display, the speed of your computer, and the complexity of your screen, it could take longer. After the screen has been resized, you can accept the new screen size or revert back to the previous size. Note that this process changes the font sizes of your layout.

 

Likewise, if your display size is larger than is necessary to display the current screen, the auto-resize process will increase font sizes as much as possible while all elements of the screen remain within the display size.

 

Remember that auto-resizing only resizes elements currently displayed on the screen. If you use the auto-resize feature, you should make sure to resize all of your screens. Also note that screens may contain elements that are not displayed at the time of the resize (such as number of rebuys, if the rebuy feature is disabled), and those elements will not be affected.

 

Some elements cannot be automatically resized. For example, chips displayed using the <chips> token, and images will not automatically be resized. You will need to adjust the sizes of these elements manually. If you must adjust these elements, adjusting them before you auto-size the screen will usually result in more proportional results.

 

 

14     Events Tab

Events allow you to alert your players (by playing an audio file and/or displaying a message on the screen) when something significant occurs during your tournament, such as when a player busts out, or when a round ends or will soon end.

 

On the Events Tab, a Sounds library is configured, and Events are created that play sounds in the sounds library, display messages on the screen, pause the clock, unpause the clock, or save the tournament, or any combination thereof.

 

Events consist of a Trigger, which corresponds to the occurrence in your tournament that will "trigger" your event (such as a player busting out); Conditions, which restrict when a trigger will actually "fire" your event; and a set of Actions that define what should happen when the event is "fired".

 

Each Sound and Event can also have a Hotkey defined. When the Hotkey is pressed for a Sound, the Sound will be played immediately. When a Hotkey is pressed for an Event, the Event will be triggered immediately (resulting in possibly playing a Sound, and/or displaying a message, etc).

 

The default events configuration includes an event that plays a warning sound at one minute, three seconds, two seconds, and one second before a level (round or break) ends; an event that plays an alarm sound when the level ends; an event that plays a gong sound when the clock is paused or unpaused; and an event that plays an alarm sound when the time on a hand timer runs out.

 

14.1     Creating Sounds

To create a sound, press the New Sound button, or right-click in an empty space in the Sounds pane and select New Sound.

 

On the New Sound dialog, you'll need to specify the path to the sound file. The Tournament Director uses Windows Media Player to play sounds, so any sound file that Windows Media Player can play should be compatible with the Tournament Director.

 

You'll also need to specify a unique name for the sound. If you choose your sound file first, the Tournament Director will complete the Name field for you by using the name of the sound file.

 

If you wish to assign a hotkey to your sound file, select the hotkey from the list of hotkeys, and optionally add a "shifter" to it; a shifter is one of the Ctrl, Alt, or Shift keys that must be held down while pressing the hotkey. If you select a hotkey, the sound file will play when you press the selected hotkey and the Game Window is in focus, and also when the Settings Window is in focus and the Controls Tab is selected.

 

Press the OK button when you have chosen your sound file, sound name, and optionally a hotkey for your sound. You can also press the Play button to preview the sound file, and Stop to stop the sound file during playback.

 

The order of the sounds is irrelevant, but you may wish for the sounds to be in a particular order.

 

To re-order your sounds, press the Sort Sounds button to open the Sort Sounds dialog. You can then select one or more sounds and use the up arrow and down arrow buttons to move the sounds up or down within the list. Press the Alpha sort button to quickly sort all of the sounds alphabetically. Press the Numeric sort button to quickly sort all of the sounds numerically. Press the Reverse button to reverse the order of the sounds.

 

To create a new event, press the New Event button, or right-click in an empty space in the Events pane and select New Event.

 

You will first be given the option of creating an event from a list of pre-defined events, or creating a new event "from scratch". Many situations are covered in the list of pre-defined events, so you may wish to choose one of these events instead of creating your own. You may also wish to choose one of these events and modify it to conform to the exact circumstance you wish your event to respond to.

 

After selecting a pre-defined event or choosing to create your own event from scratch, the Event Dialog will be displayed.

 

14.3.1      Description

Enter a description for the event in the Description input.

 

14.3.2      Trigger

Select a trigger that you wish to cause your event to "fire". When a trigger occurs in a tournament, events utilizing this trigger will be processed. If the Conditions of the event evaluate to true, the event will "fire".

 

14.3.3      Hotkeys

If you wish to be able to "fire" the event at will, choose a Hotkey for the event. If you choose a Hotkey, then the event will "fire" any time the Hotkey is pressed (on the Game Window or Controls Tab of the Settings Window).

 

14.3.4      Conditions

Next, you may wish to provide Conditions which restrict when this event will "fire". For example, if you wish for the event to fire when the clock reaches 60 seconds remaining in a round, you would choose the trigger "The clock ticks", and set the Conditions to "secondsLeft = 60". The trigger "The clock ticks" causes the event to be considered every time the tournament clock ticks. The conditions "secondsLeft = 60" prevents the event from firing every time the clock ticks, and instead allows it to fire only when the clock ticks AND there are 60 seconds remaining on the clock.

 

The conditions work just like a Formula, and may be as simple or as complex as you like. The conditions must evaluate to either 1 (true) or 0 (false). When the trigger occurs, the event will fire only if the conditions evaluate to true. See Formulas for more information on creating formulas.

 

The Event Dialog contains a Test Formula section which allows you to test your event conditions. Here you may enter arbitrary values for various tournament conditions, and then evaluate your Conditions formula based on those tournament conditions.

 

14.3.5      Actions

Finally, add Actions to your Event to define what will happen when your event is fired. To add a new action, press the New Action button, or right-click within the Actions pane and select New Action.

 

To edit an existing action, double-click the action, or right-click the action and select Edit action.

 

To delete an existing action, right-click the action and select Delete action.

 

Note: In the Actions section, there is a column named Performed that contains a checkbox for each action. This checkbox indicates whether or not the particular action has already been performed for this event. This prevents the software from repeating the same actions in subsequent events (see Action Settings). When a particular action is performed, the Performed checkbox is checked automatically. When all actions of a particular type (play a sound or display a message) have been performed, all Performed checkboxes are cleared so the next time the event fires all actions may be once again considered.

 

14.3.5.1    Playing Sounds

To play a sound, select Play sound and then select one of the sounds from your sounds library. If the audio file you wish to play is not present, you'll need to add the audio file to your sounds library first. See Creating Sounds.

 

14.3.5.2    Displaying Messages

If you wish to display a message on the Game Window, select Display message, and then enter the message in the provided input box.

 

Messages should be in HTML format. This allows you to markup your messages with various HTML characteristics, but entering messages in plain text is fine, too. Messages are displayed using an "overlay", which is simply a panel or plaque that is displayed over the current screen contents.

 

Enter the number of seconds for which you wish the message to be displayed in the Duration input.

Property sets are used to defined the display characteristics (font, size, color, etc) of the message overlay. Select the property set you wish to use for the message in the Message property set selection. See Message Property Sets for more information.

 

Messages can also make use of tokens. Tokens work in exactly the same way as they do within your tournament Layout (see Layout Tab). However, the set of tokens available for use in Event Messages is different from the set of tokens available for use on the Tournament Screen. Press the Insert Token button to see the list of available tokens, and insert a selected token into the text of your event message. Note that the value that a token will resolve to will depend on the trigger that fired the event. For example, the <name> token resolves to the name of the player involved in whatever action triggered the event. If the trigger "A player busts-out" causes the event to fire, the <name> token will resolve to the name of the player who busted out of the tournament. However, the <name> token will resolve to nothing if the trigger was "A level ends" (since no players are specifically involved in this trigger).

 

14.3.5.3    Other Actions

You may also choose actions Pause the clock, Unpause the clock, or Save the tournament, which will perform their respective action when the event is fired.

 

14.3.5.4    Action Settings

Here you can control various aspects of how sounds are played and how messages are displayed for the particular event.

 

You may define several actions that play a sound and/or several actions that display a message for a single Event. If the actions were all performed simultaneously, an audio and visual mess would ensue. Audio files would play, overlapping each other, and messages would be displayed on top of each other. The Action Settings allows you to define what should happen when multiple actions (that play a sound or display a message) are defined for a single event. Press the Actions Settings button on the Event dialog to display the Action Settings dialog.

 

14.3.5.5    Ordering Actions

The order in which actions are performed may be important. For example, if an event contains several actions that play sounds, you may wish for the sounds to be performed in a particular order (for each subsequent firing of that event). To order the actions of an event, right-click on the action and select Move action up or Move action down. To quickly re-order all of your actions, press the Sort Actions button to open the Sort Actions dialog. You can then select one or more actions and use the up arrow and down arrow buttons to move the actions up or down within the list. Press the Reverse button to reverse the order of the actions.

 

If you have several sound files you'd like to use, you can import them all at once instead of manually creating each sound. Press the Import Sounds button, and then select the folder in which your sound files reside. The Tournament Director will scan the folder and then display each sound file that it finds, along with a unique name to use to import each sound. Place a check in the box next to each sound you would like to import and press the OK button. A maximum of 100 sound files can be imported at one time.

 

To edit a sound, double-click on a sound, or right-click on a sound and select Edit Sound.

 

To edit an event, double-click on an event, or right-click on an event and select Edit Event.

 

Right-click on a sound and select Delete sound to delete a sound. Right-click on a event and select Delete event to delete a event. See Clearing Sounds and Events to quickly delete all sounds and/or events.

 

14.7     Clearing Sounds and Events

Press the Clear button to clear your sounds or sound events. On the Clear Events dialog, place a check in the checkbox next to Clear Sounds or Clear Events. Press the OK button to delete sounds and/or events.

 

Press the Stop All Sounds button to stop any sounds that are currently playing. You can also press the Backspace key to stop all sounds when the Game Window is in focus, or on the Controls Tab of the Settings Window.

 

To omit a particular event, place a check in the box next to the event in the Events section. When an event is omitted, the event will never respond to a trigger.

 

When a trigger occurs during your tournament, you may have more than one event configured that will be triggered. When this occurs, the first event listed in the Events section that matches the trigger and tournament conditions will be the event "fired". Therefore, you give priority to events by placing them higher in the Events list.

 

To move an event, right-click the event and select Move event up or Move event down.

 

To more easily order your events, press the Order Events button.

 

14.11  Message Property Sets

Message property sets are used to defined the display characteristics (font, size, color, etc) of the event messages. Press the Msg Property Sets button to open the Message Property Sets dialog.

 

The Sets section displays the message property sets that are defined. A Default message property set is built-in to the Tournament Director and cannot be changed. You can, however, create new message property sets and tailor them to your preference.

 

The Properties section displays the properties of the message property set currently selected in the Sets section:

 

Background color: The color of the background of the message overlay plaque.

Foreground color: The color of the foreground (text) of the message overlay plaque.

Font: The font to use for the text of the message.

Font size: The font point size to use for the text of the message.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Opacity: The opacity, or transparent quality, of the message overlay plaque. The lower the number, the less opaque (and more transparent) the plaque will be.

Location: The location on the screen at which the message overlay plaque will be displayed. If you wish to specify exact coordinates, select Specify and enter X and Y values.

Flash messages: Check to make the message overlay plaque flash on and off when displayed.

 

To create a new message property set, press the New button. To delete a message property set, select the message property set and press the Delete button. To copy the properties of another message property set, select the message property set to which to copy the properties and press the Copy button. On the Copy Status Message Set dialog, select the message property set from which to copy properties. Press the OK button to copy the properties.

 

In the Settings section, you can select the default values for the message property set and the message duration. These values will be set automatically when you create a new event action that displays a message.

When an event is fired and the event contains actions that display a message, the message that is to be displayed enters the Message Queue. Because each message displayed can be configured to display as long as desired, you may experience cases where a message is still displayed on the screen when another event fires that displays a message. In this case, the second message will enter the Message Queue and will only be displayed once the display duration of the first message expires.

 

For example, assume an event is configured to display a message for 60 seconds when a player busts out of the tournament. If a player busts out of the tournament, and then 30 seconds later another player busts out, the first message will still be displayed on the screen (and will continue to be displayed for another 30 seconds). The second message will wait in the Message Queue until the first message has completed displaying, at which time the second message will immediately be displayed.

 

Just as you may cancel any sound that is currently playing, you may also cancel any event message that is currently displayed. Doing so will cause the next message in the Message Queue to be displayed immediately (if there are any messages in the Message Queue). You may also choose to cancel the entire Message Queue. Doing so would cause any currently displayed message to be removed, and any event messages waiting in the Message Queue to be canceled.

 

To clear the currently displayed event message, right-click (on the Game Window) and select Clear Current Event Message.

To clear the currently displayed event message and any messages waiting in the Message Queue, right-click and select Clear All Event Messages.

You may also assign these actions to a hotkey. See Hotkeys Tab for more information.

 

Your events can be saved independently from other tournament settings. To save your events, press the Save Template button. To load an events template, press the Load Template button. When you load an events template, only the events of your tournament are affected. No other settings (rounds, players, prizes, tournament state, etc) are affected by this.

 

Press the Reset button to restore the default events. All sounds and events you have created will be replaced with the default sounds and events.

 

You can control the volume level that the Tournament Director plays sounds using the Volume slider located on the Events Tab and the Controls Tab. You can also assign hotkeys to increase and decrease the volume level.

 

Note that the volume level of the Tournament Director is relative to the volume level of Windows. If you cannot hear sounds played with the Tournament Director volume at the maximum level, check the volume level of Windows by using the sound control panel applet. On the Windows Start Menu, select Settings, then select Control Panel. On the Control Panel, select Sounds and Audio Devices.

 

 

15     Chips Tab

The Chips Tab serves two purposes: it allows you to define the chips you will be using in your tournament for display on the Tournament Screen; and, it serves as a chip calculator, allowing you to determine how many players you can support in a tournament with the chips you possess.

 

Explanation of columns in the Chips pane:

 

Display: Whether or not to display this chip on the Tournament Screen, for layout tokens that display chips.

Image: The image that will be used when this chip is displayed.

Description: A description of the chip. Typically, the name of the chip's color.

Value: The tournament value of this chip.

Quantity: The total number of chips of this type in all defined chipsets.

Total Value: The total value of chips of this type in all defined chipsets.

Per Player: The quantity of this chip that each player receives at tournament buy-in.

Value/Player: The total value of chips of this type that each player receives at tournament buy-in.

Needed: The total number of chips of this type that are needed for the number of buy-ins defined in the Buy-ins input. This value is displayed in green if it is less than or equal to the total number of chips of this type in all defined chipsets, or in red otherwise.

Over/Under: The difference in the number of chips of this type needed for the number of buy-ins defined in the Buy-ins input and the total number of chips of this type in all defined chipsets. This value is displayed in green if there are more than enough chips, in black if there are exactly enough chips, or in red if there are not enough chips.

 

15.1     Creating Chips

To create a new chip, press the New Chip button, or right-click in an empty space in the Chips pane and select New chip.

 

On the New Chip dialog, select the color of the chip. You may select one of the pre-defined colors, or select Other and choose the color yourself. You may also use an image for your chip. Select Image and then enter the filename of the chip image in the File input, or press the Browse… button to browse your file system for the image file.

 

Enter a description for the chip, and a value for the chip. Place a check in the Display on tournament screen checkbox if you wish for this chip to be displayed on the Tournament Screen for layout tokens that display chips. See the Layout Tab for information on layout tokens. Press the OK button to create the chip.

 

15.2     Creating Chipsets

A chipset is a collection of chips. A chipset contains quantities of the chips you have defined in the Chips pane.

 

To create a chipset, press the New Chipset button, or right-click in an empty space in the Chipsets pane and select New chipset.

 

On the New Chipset dialog, enter a name for the chipset in the Name pane.

 

The Contents pane displays the defined chips and the quantities of each that this chipset contains. For each chip, set the number of chips that this chipset contains.

 

Press the OK button to create the chipset.

 

To edit a chip, double-click the chip, or right-click on the chip and select Edit chip.

 

To edit a chipset, double-click on the chipset name or any of the chips within the chipset, or right-click on the chipset name or any of the chips within the chipset and select Edit chipset.

 

To delete a chip, right-click on the chip and select Delete chip. To delete a chipset, right-click on the chipset name or any of the chips within the chipset and select Delete chipset. To quickly delete all chips and/or chipsets. See Clearing Chips and Chipsets to quickly delete all chips and/or chipsets.

 

15.5     Setting Chip Values and Per-Player Quantities

To quickly set values of all chips and/or to set the quantity of each chip that each player receives when buying-in to the tournament, press the Set Per-Player button. The Set Chip Values and Per-Player Quantities dialog is shown.

 

For each defined chip, the current value of the chip is displayed, and can be updated in this dialog. Next to each chip's value, the per-player quantity is shown. Update these values with the number of each chip that each player receives at buy-in. The number of chips and the total value of those chips, per-player, is displayed at the bottom of the screen as you update the chip values and quantities.

 

To determine the total number of players you can accommodate in your tournament with the amount of chips that you possess, follow these steps:

 

Define your chips: see Creating Chips.

Define your chipsets: see Creating Chipsets.

Define how many of each chip each player will receive at buy-in. See Setting Chip Values and Per-Player Quantities.

Enter the number of buy-ins you anticipate in the Buy-ins input in the Options pane.

Use the Needed and Over/Under columns to determine if you have enough chips for the number of buy-ins entered.

 

Pressing the Current button will fill the Buy-ins input with the number of players in the current tournament.

 

The Status pane displays the maximum number of players that can be accommodated with the current chipsets and per-player distribution.

 

If you do not have enough chips to support the size tournament you wish to hold, you can adjust the number of chips that each player receives at tournament buy-in. For example, if each player receives ten $100 chips and eight $500 chips at buy-in, and you do not have enough $100 chips to support the size tournament you want, but have extra $500 chips, change the initial chips received to five $100 chips and nine $500 chips.

 

The order in which your chips are displayed on the Chips Tab is important only because this is the order in which your chips will be displayed on the Tournament Screen, if you choose to display them.

 

To change the ordering of your chips, right-click on a chip and select Move chip up or Move chip down.

You may also press the Sort Chips button to bring up the Sort Chips dialog. You can then select one or more chips and use the up arrow and down arrow buttons to move the chips up or down within the list. Press the Sort by Description button to quickly sort all of the chips by their description. Press the Sort by Value button to quickly sort all of the chips by their value. Place a check in the Reverse checkbox and then click one of the sort buttons to sort the chips in reverse.

 

Only chips that have been marked to be displayed will be displayed on the Tournament Screen. Right-click on a chip and select Display on tournament screen, or edit a chip and check Display on tournament screen.

 

To display your marked chips on the Tournament Screen, use the <chips> token. See the Layout Tab for information on configuring the Tournament Screen.

 

15.9     Clearing Chips and Chipsets

Press the Clear button to clear your chips or chipsets. On the Clear Chips dialog, place a check in the checkbox next to Clear all chips or Clear all chipsets. Press OK to delete your chips and/or chipsets.

 

Your chips can be saved independently from other tournament settings. To save your chips, press the Save Template button. To load a chips template, press the Load Template button. When you load a chips template, only the chips and chipsets of your tournament are affected. No other settings (rounds, players, prizes, tournament state, etc) are affected by this.

 

 

16     Rules Tab

The Rules Tab provides a place for you to quickly add or update text that you wish to display on your Tournament Screen without the need to actually edit the layout that you wish to use.

 

The Rules Tab provides for 12 pre-defined layout tokens, for which you provide the actual value of the token. The value can be plain text, or HTML, and can be entered on the Rules Tab, or can come from a file. There are three tokens for each of a welcome message, an announcements message, a rules message, and a farewell message. Of course, any of these tokens can be used at any time, any place in the tournament layout, but the categories are provided for your convenience.

 

See the Layout Tab if you are unfamiliar with layout tokens and their role on the Tournament Screen.

 

To edit a rules token, select the token you wish to edit in the Rules Tokens pane.

 

Next, select whether you wish the text to be interpreted as plain text or as HTML. Because the Tournament Director utilizes Internet Explorer to display the Tournament Screen, HTML is used to render the screen. For tokens that are plain text, the Tournament Director will convert your text into HTML, such that it will display exactly as it appears in the text pane, or in the text file that you select. For tokens that are HTML, the Tournament Director will not attempt to translate the text into HTML, but will insert the text exactly as it appears. Therefore, you can use HTML tags, such as <IMG> to display an image, <FONT> to change the font characteristics (size, color, type), or <UL> to display bulleted lists.

 

Finally, select Text and enter the text of the token into the text pane, or select File and enter the filename of the file to display in the File input, or press the Browse… button to search for a file.

 

To display a rule token on the Tournament Screen, insert the token into the HTML section of a cell. For example, if you have entered text for the <announcements> token, insert <announcements> into the HTML section of a cell. See the Layout Tab for information on configuring the Tournament Screen.

 

Because rules tokens are only used if they are included in a layout, they cannot be deleted. However, if you wish to clear the value of a token, you can select the token, then select Text, and then delete the Text of the token. To quickly clear all of the rules tokens, press the Clear button. The Tournament Director will confirm your intention to clear the value of all of the rules tokens before proceeding.

 

Your rules can be saved independently from other tournament settings. To save your rules, press the Save Template button. To load a rules template, press the Load Template button. When you load a rules template, only the rules of your tournament are affected. No other settings (rounds, players, prizes, tournament state, etc) are affected by this.

 

 

17     Summary Tab

The Summary Tab displays a current summary of your tournament.

 

17.1.1      Take-in

Buy-ins: Displays the amount of money collected from buy-ins, and the number of buy-ins in parentheses. This amounts does not include bounty chips.

Rebuys: Displays the amount of money collected from rebuys, and the number of rebuys in parentheses.

Add-ons: Displays the amount of money collected from add-ons, and the number of add-ons in parentheses.

Total: The total amount of money collected from players (the sum of money collected from buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons, not including bounty chips), and the sum of the number of buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons in parentheses.

 

17.1.2      Rake

Buy-ins: The amount of money raked from buy-ins.

Rebuys: The amount of money raked from rebuys.

Add-ons: The amount of money raked from add-ons.

Fixed: The amount of fixed rake.

Total: The total amount of money raked.

 

17.1.3      Pot

Paid-in: The total amount of money collected from players, not including bounty-chips.

House contribution: The amount of money contributed to the pot by the house.

Rake: The amount of money raked from the buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons.

Total: The total amount of money, contributed by players, available for the pot.

Guaranteed pot: The amount that the house guarantees the pot will be. If a guaranteed pot is specified, and the sum of the money collected from players plus the house contribution minus the rake is less than the guaranteed pot, then the house typically makes up the difference.

House adds to reach guaranteed pot amount: The amount that must be added (typically by the house) to the pot in order to reach the guaranteed pot amount.

Pot: The total amount in the pot (the prize pool).

 

17.1.4      Prizes

Percentage: The total amount of prize pool money allocated to percentage prizes, and the number of percentage prizes in parentheses.

Fixed: The total amount of the prize pool money allocated to fixed prizes, and the number of fixed prizes in parentheses.

Non-monetary: The number of non-monetary prizes in parentheses.

Total: The sum of the prizes allocated.

 

17.1.5      Bounties

Bought: The sum of money paid for all bounty chips bought, and the number of bounty chips bought in parentheses.

Won: The sum of all bounty chips won, and the number of bounty chips won in parentheses.

Kept: The sum of all bounty chips bought and not won, and the number of bounty chips bought and not won in parentheses. A player keeps their bounty chip when they win the tournament. A player may also keep their bounty chip if they are busted out by a player who did not purchase a bounty chip, and the tournament is configured to only allow players to win bounty chips if they purchase a bounty chip.

 

17.1.6      Summary

Tournament start time: The time that the tournament started.

First player(s) out: The first player(s) to bust out of the tournament. This displays the first player (or multiple players, if multiple players busted out at the same time) that busted out of the tournament, whether or not the player rebuys into the tournament.

First player(s) permanently out: The first player(s) to bust out of the tournament who did not later rebuy into the tournament.

Tournament end time: The time that the tournament ended.

Winner: The winner(s) of the tournament.

 

17.1.7      Action Summary

The Action Summary pane displays a concise summary of the actions that have occurred in your tournament. It is different from the Tournament History in that it does not list actions such as round changes, clock adjustments, undoing of actions, etc.

 

Press the Save Action Summary button to save the action summary to a file.

 

You may export the tournament summary to HTML format by pressing the Export button. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

 

 

18     Database Tab

The Database Tab contains your player database, where you can store information about the players in your tournaments, and create leagues and seasons.

 

By creating players in your player database, you can quickly and easily add players to your tournaments. By using database players in your tournaments, player information is correlated across tournaments, which allows you to gather statistics on your players.

 

Leagues and seasons can be created to help you manage your players, and to more easily generate statistics.

 

For each player, the Tournament Director stores the player's nickname, first name, last name, two email addresses, street address, city, state, zip code, country, two phone numbers, and notes on the player. In addition there is an ID field which can be used for any purpose. The fields that are collected are configurable on the Preferences Tab. For every player you must enter either a nickname or a first name. All other fields are optional.

 

Information in your player database is automatically saved. Any time you add, update, or delete a player, league, or season, the data is automatically saved in the database.

The Status Panel gives you some quick information about your database, and about the set of players currently displayed.

 

Players in Database: Displays the total number of players in your database.

Leagues in Database: Displays the total number of leagues in your database.

Seasons in Database: Displays the total number of seasons in your database.

Players in View: Displays the number of players currently displayed. This could be the total number of players in your database, the number of players in a specific league, or the number of players that were found as the result of a search.

 

To create a new player, press the New Player button, or right-click in an empty space in the Players pane and select New player.

 

On the New Database Player dialog, you may select a league to which this player will belong. This is merely a convenient way to set the player's initial league, and it may be changed later. Next, fill in the information for this player. You are required to enter either a First name or a Nickname. All other fields are optional. Finally, press the OK button to add the player to the database.

 

To add multiple players quickly, check the Immediately redisplay this dialog checkbox.

 

To edit a player, double-click on the player, or right-click on the player and select Edit player.

 

On the Edit Database Player dialog you may update the player's information. Press the Edit Leagues button to edit the player's league membership. Press the OK button to commit the changes to the player.

 

To delete a player, right-click on the player and select Delete player. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the player.

Players are typically added to and removed from your tournament on the Players Tab, but you can also add and remove players on the Database Tab. Right-click a player in the player list and select Add to tournament or Add to tournament and Buy-in. If you are currently editing a player on the Database Tab, you can use the Add to Tournament and Add to Tournament and Buy-in buttons located on the Edit Database Player dialog.

Players who are added to your current tournament are highlighted in red. To remove a player from the current tournament, right-click the player and select Remove from tournament. Again, you can also remove a player from the current tournament by pressing the Remove from Tournament button on the Edit Database Player dialog.

 

To create a league, press the New League button. On the New League dialog enter the name of the league, and optionally enter a description of the league and any notes about the league you wish to keep. Press the OK button to create the league.

 

To edit a league, select the league in the Leagues pane, then press the League Properties button. On the League Properties dialog, you may update the league's name, description, and notes. Press the OK button to update the league.

 

To update the membership of a league, select the league in the Leagues pane, then press the Edit Members button. On the League Membership dialog, place a check in the checkbox next to each member of the league. Press the OK button to update the league's membership list.

 

To delete a league, select the league in the Leagues pane, then press the Delete League button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the league.

 

Seasons are helpful for organizing your tournaments. By configuring tournaments to belong seasons, it is easy to quickly create a filter that will allow you to gather stats on the tournaments of a particular season.

 

Press the Seasons button to open the Seasons dialog. The Seasons pane on the left side of the Seasons dialog displays all of the seasons you have created. The Season Properties pane on the right side of the Seasons dialog displays the properties of the season that is selected in the Seasons pane. The Last Updated field is a read-only field that displays the last time that the season was updated.

 

When you work with the Seasons dialog, changes you have made (newly created seasons, deleted seasons, or changes to existing seasons) are not committed until you press the OK button. Pressing the Cancel button cancels all changes made on the Seasons dialog.

 

18.10.1   Creating Seasons

To create a new season, press the New button. Enter a name for the new season and press the OK button. The new season will be added to the list of seasons in the Seasons pane.

 

18.10.2   Editing Seasons

To edit a season, select the season in the Seasons pane. The properties of the selected season are displayed in the Season Properties pane. Update the properties you wish to change in the Season Properties pane.

 

18.10.3   Renaming a Season

To edit a season, select the season in the Seasons pane and then press the Rename button. Update the season name and press the OK button.

 

18.10.4   Deleting Seasons

To delete a season, select the season in the Seasons pane and then press the Delete button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the season.

 

If your player database becomes large, it may become difficult to find specific players. To search for a player, press the Find Player button.

 

On the Find Database Player dialog, enter into one or more fields a search string. Searches are for partial matches, and are case-insensitive. That means that if you enter the word ace for the nickname, a match will occur on ace, AcesFull, ChipRace, etc. The more fields in which you enter search strings, the more narrow the search will become.

 

Press the OK button to execute the search. The Leagues pane will update to include a <Search Results> item, which is not really a league but the results of the search.

The properties of the players that are visible on the Database Tab is configurable. Press the Columns button to select which columns you wish to see, and in which order. See Choosing Columns for information on using the column chooser dialog.

 

The columns may also be rearranged directly on the screen. Simply click on a column and slide your mouse left or right to initiate a 'drag' of the column. Red arrows will appear to indicate where the column can be dropped, in relation to the other columns. Release the mouse button to drop the column in the designated place.

 

Columns may also be renamed. You could, for example, change the "Name" column to read "Player", or change the "Hits" column to read "Knockouts". To rename columns, press the Column Names button. You can also rename a column by right-clicking on the column itself and selecting Rename column.

 

Initially populating your player database can be cumbersome and time consuming. However, you can quickly import your players into your database from a CSV (comma-separated values) file.

 

See Importing Players for more information on importing players into your player database.

You may export your database players to a file by pressing the Export button. The Export Players dialog gives you the option to export your players to HTML or to CSV format, or to export email addresses. CSV stands for Comma-Separated Values. This format is suitable for import into other programs, such as Excel. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export. See Creating a Sign-In Sheet for information on creating a sign-in sheet.

 

When you export your database players, the players that are exported are those players in the current view. That is, the players that are currently displayed (including all pages). Therefore, if you select <All Players> in the Leagues pane, then press Export, all players in your database are exported. However, if you select a particular league in the Leagues pane, then press Export, only those players in the selected league are exported.

 

18.15  Backing Up the Database

Backing up your database is a safety measure that you should employ periodically to protect yourself against data loss, should something drastic occur. The Tournament Director provides an easy way to backup your database, as well as your saved tournaments, templates, and preferences.

 

The player database, as well as saved tournaments and templates, are stored in the currently selected Data Store. When you perform a backup, files in the currently selected Data Store are included in the backup. See Data Stores for more information on selecting, locating, or changing the Data Store.

 

Press the Backup button to backup your database. On the Backup Database dialog, select the items you wish to include in your backup:

 

Check Database to include the database in the backup.

Check Saves folder to include in the backup the folder where tournaments are saved. This is the folder named "saves" inside of your currently selected Data Store folder.

Check Templates folder to include in the backup the folder where templates are saved. This is the folder named "templates" inside of your currently selected Data Store folder

Check Preferences to include the preferences file in the backup.

 

The Tournament Director will next prompt you for a filename. The Tournament Director backs up its data files into a ZIP file. Choose the location and filename of the backup file and press the Save button.

 

You can ensure that your files were backed up by opening the saved backup file. Any utility that is compatible with the ZIP file format should be able to open the backup file.

 

Restore allows you to restore data files stored in a backup file created using the Backup feature. When you restore a backup file, the files are restored to the currently selected Data Store. All files included in the backup will be restored. You cannot selectively restore part of a backup file.

 

Before you restore a backup file, you should always perform a backup first. See Backing Up the Database for instructions on backing up your database.

 

To restore a backup file, simply press the Restore button. Select the backup file, and press the OK button. The files stored in the backup file will be restored to your currently selected Data Store.

 

Press the Preferences button to open the Database Tab Preferences dialog. Here you can set the preference to view your player list in a paged format, or in a single list displaying all players. Note that listing all players in a single list, rather than having the list of players displayed on separate pages, can cause an increase in the time it takes to update the player list. The time to update the list depends on which columns are configured to be displayed, the number of players in the list, and the speed of the computer on which you are running the Tournament Director software.

 

 

19     Stats Tab

The Stats Tab allows you to gather statistics over a set of your tournaments. Data items such as total winnings, total take (win/loss), average times placed, etc, can be calculated for each of your players.

 

Because you may have multiple leagues and multiple seasons, or just have sets of tournaments that are disjoint, the Tournament Director gathers statistics on all of your tournaments but displays the statistics via a filter. The filter allows you to narrow down the statistics to a subset of your tournaments and/or players.

 

By default, the tournaments that are loaded for gathering statistics are those located in the "saves" folder in the currently selected Data Store. However, you can change this, or add other folders to be loaded via the Tournament File Locations pane on the Preferences Tab.

 

To view statistics, you'll first need to create a statistics filter, then refresh your tournaments.

 

The columns of the Stats Tab are defined as follows. See Configuring Columns for information on selecting which columns you wish to display. All values displayed are calculated from all of the tournaments that were accepted by the filter.

 

Name: The player's name, displayed in the format designated on the Preferences Tab.

Nickname: The player's nickname.

First Name: The player's first name.

Last Name: The player's last name.

Buy-ins: The total number of buy-ins purchased by this player.

Buy-ins Cost: The total cost of all buy-ins purchased by this player.

Bounties: The total number of bounty chips purchased by this player.

Bounties Cost: The total cost of bounty chips purchased by this player.

Fixed Rake <rake name>: The total amount contributed to the named fixed rake by this player.*

Total Fixed Rake: The total amount contributed to all fixed rakes by this player.*

Buy-in Rake <rake name>: The amount raked from all of this player's buy-ins for the named rake.

Total Buy-ins Rake: The total amount raked from all of this player's buy-ins.

Rebuys: The total number of rebuys purchased by this player.

Rebuys Cost: The total cost of rebuys purchased by this player.

Rebuys Rake <rake name>: The amount raked from all of this player's rebuys for the named rake.

Total Rebuys Rake: The total amount raked from all of this player's rebuys.

Average Rebuys: The average number of rebuys purchased by this player per tournament.

Add-ons: The total number of add-ons purchased by this player.

Add-ons Cost: The total cost of add-ons purchased by this player.

Add-ons Rake <rake name>: The amount raked from all of this player's add-ons for the named rake.

Total Add-ons Rake: The total amount raked from all of this player's add-ons.

Average Add-ons: The average number of add-ons purchased by this player per tournament.

Total Cost: The total amount paid by this player.

Total Rake: The total amount raked from this player.

Hits: The number of hits made by this player.

Average Hits: The average number of hits made by this player per tournament.

Times Placed: The total number of times this player has placed in a tournament (won a prize assigned to a specific rank).

Average Placed: The average number of times this player has placed, per tournament.

First: The total number of times this player ranked 1st place.

Second: The total number of times this player ranked 2nd place.

Third: The total number of times this player ranked 3rd place.

Bounties Won: The total number of bounty chips won by this player.

Bounties Kept: The total number of bounty chips this player has kept. A player keeps his/her bounty when the player wins the tournament or is busted out by a player who has not purchased a bounty chip (and the Restrict bounties option has been selected).

Bounty Money Kept: The amount of money this player paid for bounty chips that were kept.

Prize Winnings: The total amount of prize money won by this player.

Bounty Winnings: The amount of money won by this player by collecting bounty chips (by busting other players out of tournaments).

Total Winnings: The total amount of money won by this player.

Average Winnings: The average amount of money won by this player per tournament.

Total Take: The total profit for this player (the total amount won minus the total amount paid).

Average Take: The average profit for this player per tournament.

Points: The total number of points earned by this player.

Average Points: The average number of points earned by this player per tournament.

Overall Score: This player's calculated score. Scores are calculated using formulas defined in the filter. There are five Overall Score columns, allowing you to create up to 5 different scores for each player.

Final Table: Indicates the number of times this player has reached the final table.

Playing Time: The amount of time the player has been in all tournaments.

 

A Sum line and an Avg (average) line are displayed at the bottom of the player list. Each value in the Sum line is the sum of the values in the corresponding column. Each value in the Avg line is the average of the values in the column, or a weighted average of related values. Place the mouse cursor over a value in the Sum or Avg line to see a description of the value.

 

*The fixed rake is taken directly from the pot, and not individually from players. Therefore, the portion of the fixed rake attributable to a player in a tournament is the total fixed rake divided by the number of players in the tournament. For example, if the tournament has 20 people, and the fixed rake is set to $100.00, then the portion of the fixed rake attributable to any player in the tournament is $100.00 divided by 20, or $5.00.

 

The status panel gives a brief summary of the statistics that are displayed.

 

Tourneys found: Indicates the number of saved tournaments that were located.

Tourneys loaded: Indicates the number of tournaments that were loaded. A tournament that is located may not be loaded if the tournament is incomplete (has not ended), or if the tournament file is corrupt.

Tourneys filtered: Indicates the number of tournament files that were accepted by the currently selected filter.

Players filtered: Indicates the number of players that were accepted by the currently selected filter. This will be a subset of the players who participated in the tournaments that were filtered.

Leagues filtered: Indicates the number of leagues (for tournaments or for players) that were accepted by the currently selected filter.

Seasons filtered: Indicates the number of seasons that were accepted by the currently selected filter.

 

In order to view statistics, you first need to create a filter. A filter tells the Tournament Director which tournaments you wish to calculate statistics for, which players you wish to see, and optionally how to compute scores for each player. You can create multiple filters, for different leagues and/or seasons, and quickly display statistics for any filter.

 

There will always be a Default filter named (oddly enough) "Default". This filter accepts all tournaments, players, leagues, and seasons. Therefore, it will calculate statistics over every tournament that is loaded by the Refresh Tourneys button. This is a good filter to start with. Once you have created multiple leagues or seasons, you will probably want to create filter(s) because you will want to calculate statistics over only a subset of your tournaments.

 

Press the Filter button to open the Statistics Filters dialog. The left side of the dialog contains the Filters pane, which displays all of the filters you have created. The right side of the dialog contains the Properties pane, which displays the properties of the filter currently selected in the Filter pane.

 

When you select a filter in the Filter pane, the properties of the filter are displayed in the Properties pane. Filters are automatically updated with any changes you make in the Properties pane.

 

No changes are actually made to filters while the Filters dialog is open. When you have finished updating your filters, press the OK button to commit the changes. Or, press the Cancel button and all changes made in the dialog will be discarded.

 

Filters have the following properties:

 

Tournament Leagues: Indicates the leagues that your tournament must belong to in order to be accepted by the filter. Select the <Any> item to accept all tournaments, regardless of league setting. Select the <None> item to accept only tournaments that do not belong to any league. Or, select the particular league that a tournament must belong to in order to be accepted by the filter. You may select multiple items by holding the Ctrl key while clicking an item with the left mouse button.

 

Player Leagues: Indicates the leagues that your players must be members of in order to be accepted by the filter. Select the <Any> item to accept all players, regardless of the leagues that they may or may not be members of. Select the <None> item to accept only players who are not members of any league. Or, select the particular league that a player must be a member of in order to be accepted by the filter. You may select multiple items by holding the Ctrl key while clicking an item with the left mouse button.

 

Range: You can specify a date range within which the tournament must have started in order to be accepted by the filter. You may specify a Starting Date and/or an Ending Date. If you do not specify a starting date, then "any" starting date is assumed. If you do not specify an ending date, then "any" ending date is assumed. You must use the same format as specified in the Preferences Tab (by default, MM/DD/YYYY). Make sure to enter all four digits for the year (do not enter 05 for 2005).

 

Examples:

 

Starting Date: 11/1/2005

Ending Date: 11/30/2005

Accepts only tournaments that began in the month of November, 2005.

 

Starting Date:

Ending Date: 11/30/2005

Accepts only tournaments that began before December, 2005.

 

Starting Date: 11/1/2005

Ending Date:

Accepts only tournaments that began on or after November 1, 2005.

 

Leave both entries empty to accept all tournaments, regardless of the date the tournament began.

 

Tournament Scoring: Press this button to set the Score formula. See Tournament Scoring and Overall Scoring for more information.

Overall Scoring: Press this button to set the Overall Score formula(s). See Tournament Scoring and Overall Scoring for more information.

 

Tournament Seasons: Indicates the seasons that your tournament must belong to in order to be accepted by the filter. Select the <Any> item to accept all tournaments, regardless of season setting. Select the <None> item to accept only tournaments that do not belong to any season. Or, select the particular season that a tournament must belong to in order to be accepted by the filter. You may select multiple items by holding the Ctrl key while clicking an item with the left mouse button.

 

Description: Enter a brief description here, for your own use.

 

19.2.1      Creating Filters

To create a new filter, press the New button. Enter a unique name for the filter, and press the OK button.

 

19.2.2      Editing Filters

To edit an existing filter, select the filter in the Filters pane. Update the properties of the filter in the Properties pane. The filter is automatically updated with the changes you make in the Properties pane.

 

19.2.3      Deleting Filters

To delete a filter, select the filter in the Filters pane and then press the Delete button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the filter.

 

19.2.4      Copying Filters

To copy a filter, first create a new filter by pressing the New button. Enter a unique name for the filter, and then press the OK button. The selection in the Filters pane will automatically update to select the filter you have just created. Next, press the Copy button. In the Copy Filter dialog, select the filter you wish to copy. The properties of the selected filter will be copied to the current filter.

 

19.2.5      Tournament Scoring and Overall Scoring

To facilitate ranking your players across multiple tournaments, you can create scores for each tournament in which a player plays by specifying a formula for generating a score (similar to a Points for Playing formula). Press the Tournament Scoring button on the Statistics Filters dialog to open the Tournament Score Formula dialog.

 

On the Tournament Score Formula dialog, you can create and test a formula which will generate a Score value for each player, for each tournament in which that player participated.

 

You can find more information about how to create a formula, and which variables are defined for your use, in the Formulas section.

 

To generate an Overall Score for a player, you'll want to create one or more Overall Score formulas. Press the Overall Scoring button on the Statistics Filters dialog to open the Overall Score Formulas dialog.

 

You can create up to five Overall Scores for your players. This allows you to use different methods to create players' scores and compare the results side-by-side.

 

Previous versions of the Tournament Director software allowed you to choose a scoring method, either the Logarithm Method or the Percentile Method. The ability for you to create your own methods was not available.

 

If you have upgraded from a previous version of the software, your existing Statistics Filters will be automatically updated so that they contain the correct formulas to give the same scores as was given using either of previously available scoring methods.

 

For new filters, utilizing one of those two previously available scoring methods can be done simply by creating the correct Tournament Scoring formula and combining it with the correct Overall Scoring formula.

 

19.2.5.1    Logarithm Method

This method averages a player's relative rank across all played tournaments, with a strong advantage for larger tournaments.

Set your Tournament Scoring formula to the following:

 

log((n + 1) / r)

 

Set your Overall Scoring formula to the following:

 

(1-exp(-average(scores))) * 100

 

19.2.5.2    Percentile Method

This method averages a player's relative rank across all played tournaments, with only a slightly higher advantage for larger tournaments.

 

Set your Tournament Scoring formula to the following:

 

(1 - (r / (n + 1))) * 100

 

Set your Overall Scoring formula to the following:

 

average(scores)

 

 

19.3     Refreshing Tournaments

After you have created a filter, you'll want to view statistics using the filter. To do this, the Tournament Director needs to load the data in all of your saved tournaments. Press the Refresh Tourneys button to instruct the Tournament Director to do this.

 

After the tournaments are refreshed, press the OK button on the Refresh Tournaments dialog. The Tournament Director will immediately apply the filter selected in the Statistics Filters dialog to the set of loaded tournaments.

 

To change the filter used to generate statistics, simply press the Filter button, select a different filter in the Statistics Filters dialog, and press the OK button. The Tournament Director will immediately apply the newly selected filter to the loaded tournaments.

 

How often should you refresh your tournaments?

When press the Refresh Tourneys button, the Tournament Director loads your saved tournaments into memory, where they are retained until you exit the Tournament Director. Therefore, each time you start the Tournament Director, you'll need to press the Refresh Tourneys button if you wish to view statistics.

 

If you have already refreshed your tournaments, and then make changes to a completed tournament, you'll want to refresh your tournaments again, if you want the statistics to take into account the changes you made to the tournament. Because only completed tournaments are considered when calculating statistics, changes to an incomplete tournament do not require you to refresh your tournaments.

 

Each subsequent time you press the Refresh Tourneys button, the Tournament Director will check the time each of your tournament files was last modified, and will only reload those that it detects have changed since it last loaded the tournament.

 

The Tournaments Info dialog can help you to tweak your filter, in order to ensure your filter is accepting the tournaments you intended, and rejecting those you did not.

 

Press the Info button to view information on tournaments that were loaded when you pressed the Refresh Tourneys button. Each line of the Tournaments Information dialog displays information about a tournament that was found, whether or not it was loaded into memory, and whether or not the currently selected filter accepted the tournament or not. The following properties of for each tournament are displayed:

 

Status: Whether or not the tournament was loaded. The tournament will be loaded only if it is complete (that is, the tournament has ended). If the tournament is incomplete, or the tournament file appears to be corrupt, it will not be loaded.

Filtered?: Whether or not the tournament was accepted by the filter.

Reason: If a tournament was loaded, but not accepted by your currently selected filter, this will display the reason that the tournament was not accepted.

Version: The version of the Tournament Director with which the tournament was saved.

Event Name: The name of the tournament. This is the Event Name value located on the Game Tab of the Settings Window.

Start Date: The date and time that the tournament started.

End Date: The date and time that the tournament ended.

League: The tournament's designated league. This is the League value located on the Game Tab of the Settings Window.

Season: The tournament's designated season. This is the Season value located on the Game Tab of the Settings Window.

Path: The path and filename of the saved tournament file.

 

Double-click on any line, or right-click on a line and select View Tournament Info to open the Tournament Information dialog. The Tournament Information dialog displays the same set of information for a single tournament, in a format that might be easier to read.

 

The Information section gives some overall information about the tournaments that were loaded and also passed the filter, such as total and average number of players, total and average pot, etc.

 

Double-click on a player in the Players pane, or right-click on a player and select View player to view information on a single player. The Player Statistics dialog is divided into 5 panes. For explanations of the items listed in the Player, Purchases, Rake, and Results panes, see the Stats Tab introduction. The Tournaments pane lists the tournaments that were accepted by the filter and in which this player participated. Double-click on a tournament, or right-click on a tournament and select View Tournament Info to view information on a tournament.

 

The up arrow and the down arrow buttons allow you to quickly move from one player to another without closing and reopening the Stats Player dialog. Press the up arrow button to move to the previous player in the player list, or the down arrow button to move to the next player in the player list.

 

Press the Income button to view a detailed list of each source of money and points that the player has earned. Double-click or right-click on an income source and select View Tournament Info to open the Tournament Information dialog with information on the particular tournament from which the income originated.

 

By default, the Stats Tab displays one line for each player, with columns detailing various statistics for that player computed over the set of tournaments that passed the filter. This is the Normal view.

 

If you wish to see details about a specific statistic, you can change the view mode to Single field view. In this mode, you pick a particular statistic, such as Points or Take, and the values of that field for each tournament are displayed.

 

For example, player Jack played in 6 tournaments and earned 165 points. In the Normal view, you only know that Jack has earned a total of 165 points, and typically this is all that is necessary to know. However, changing to Single field view and choosing the field Points would display the amount of points that Jack earned in each of the 6 tournaments.

 

19.7     Configuring Columns

The properties of the players that are visible on the Stats Tab is configurable. Press the Columns button to select which columns you wish to see, and in which order. See Choosing Columns for information on using the column chooser dialog.

 

The columns may also be rearranged directly on the screen. Simply click on a column and slide your mouse left or right to initiate a 'drag' of the column. Red arrows will appear to indicate where the column can be dropped, in relation to the other columns. Release the mouse button to drop the column in the designated place.

 

Columns may also be renamed. You could, for example, change the "Name" column to read "Player", or change the "Hits" column to read "Knockouts". To rename columns, press the Column Names button. You can also rename a column by right-clicking on the column itself and selecting Rename column.

 

You may export your player statistics to a file by pressing the Export button. The Export Stats dialog gives you the option to export your player statistics to HTML or CSV format. CSV stands for Comma-Separated Values. This format is suitable for import into other programs, such as Excel. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export

 

Press the Preferences button to open the Stats Tab Preferences dialog. Here you can set the preference to view your player list in a paged format, or in a single list displaying all players. Note that listing all players in a single list, rather than having the list of players displayed on separate pages, can cause an increase in the time it takes to update the player list. The time to update the list depends on which columns are configured to be displayed, the number of players in the list, and the speed of the computer on which you are running the Tournament Director software.

 

 

20     Preferences Tab

The Preferences Tab allows you to tailor the Tournament Director's behavior to your specific preferences. Here you can configure how monetary values are displayed, how dates are displayed, what player information you intend to collect, etc. Changes to preferences are saved automatically.

 

If at any time you wish to reset the preferences to their default values, press the Reset Preferences button. You may choose to reset specific portions of the preferences, or all of the preferences.

 

In the Currency / Numbers pane, you can configure the Tournament Director to display currency, dates, and chips in the format you choose.

 

Currency symbol: Enter the currency symbol you wish to use for currency amounts.

Symbol placement: Select left or right, indicating which side of monetary values the currency symbol should be placed.

Decimal point: Enter the symbol to be used to indicate a decimal point.

Decimal comma: Enter the symbol to be used to indicate a decimal comma. To eliminate the display of commas in monetary values, simply leave this value empty.

Numeric input alignment: All numeric inputs will be left- or right-aligned according to this preference.

Date format: Enter the preferred date format here. By default, dates are displayed in the MM/DD/YYYY format, where MM indicates the month, DD indicates the date, and YYYY indicates the year. You may only use MM, DD, and YYYY indicators. Examples: DD/MM/YYYY, MM-DD, MM.DD.YYYY.

Points precision: The number of decimal places to display when displaying Points values (default is 2).

Score precision: The number of decimal places to display when displaying Score and Overall Score values (default is 4).

Use plain numbers for input values: By default, the Tournament Director displays numbers adorned with commas, monetary symbols (if the value is money), percent symbols (if the value is a percentage), etc. For example, by default, the value of one thousand dollars is displayed as "$1,000.00". If this box is checked, values displayed in input boxes will not be adorned. Using the same example, the value of one thousand dollars would be displayed as "1000.00". Other numeric values (those NOT in input boxes) will remain adorned.

Use whole numbers for chip values: Check this checkbox to indicate that chip values can only be whole numbers, and cannot contain fractional amounts. If this box is checked, all chip values will be rounded off (down) to the nearest whole number (for example, a chip value of 1.25 will be rounded down to 1, and will display as 1). If this box is unchecked, fractional chip values are allowed, and all chip values will be displayed to the nearest hundredth (for example, a chip value of 1 will be displayed as 1.00).

Show chip values as currency: Check this checkbox to display chip values as monetary values. For example, a chip value of 100 will display as 100 if this box is unchecked, but will display as $100 if this box is checked.

Use 24-hour clock: To use a 24-hour (military style) clock, check this checkbox.

Show dates: Check this checkbox to display dates alongside of times, where ever times are displayed, such as when players bust out of tournaments.

 

The Tournament Director includes a screen saver that can be enabled for the Game Window. When activated, the screen saver inverts color values displayed on the screen for a brief amount of time.

 

To enable the screen saver, place a check in the Enable screen saver checkbox. Enter a value (in seconds) in the How often entry, to indicate how often the screen saver will activate. Next, enter a value in the For how long entry to indicate how long the screen saver should remain activated.

 

The default values are 300 for How often, and 5 for For how long. This indicates that every 300 seconds (or every 5 minutes), the screen saver will activate (screen colors will invert) and remain that way for 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, the screen saver will deactivate (screen colors will return to normal), and the cycle will reset.

 

The How often count begins anew each time you enter a new screen in the Game Window, or when the screen displayed changes due to a new screen set becoming active, or due to screen cycling.

 

The Database pane allows you to select which data items you intend to collect about your players. Place a check next to each item you wish to collect. The Database Player dialog on the Database Tab and the Player Details dialog on the Players Tab will reflect the preferences you set here.

 

There are two additional preferences in the Database section:

 

Sort ID field numerically: Check this box to use a numeric sort when sorting by the ID field. If unchecked, an alphabetic sort is used when sorting by the ID field.

Warn if player ID exists: Check this box to have a warning displayed when an ID is entered that is a duplicate of an existing ID.

 

Full screen mode: Check this checkbox to use full-screen mode, or leave the checkbox empty to run the Tournament Director inside of a resizable window. You'll need to exit and re-start the Tournament Director for this change to take effect.

Make backups when saving tournaments: The Tournament Director can make a backup copy of your tournament each time it saves. If checked, when your tournament is saved (either by you, or automatically by the Tournament Director), the currently saved tournament is copied to a backup file with the date and time appended to it, and the tournament is saved to the tournament filename. For example, if your tournament has been saved as "mytourney.tdt", the next time the tournament is saved, the existing saved tournament file will be renamed to "mytourney.tdt.<date>-<time>", and the tournament will then be saved to the original filename "mytourney.tdt".

Alert if new version is available: Check this checkbox to have the Tournament Director automatically alert you when a new version is available on the Tournament Director website (http://www.thetournamentdirector.net). The automatic alert will only occur when the Tournament Director is started.

Show mini-clock on Player Rankings Screen: Check to display a small box with the current round number, the clock, and a stop/start button in the upper-left corner of the screen when on the Player Rankings Screen.

Show mini-clock on Seating Chart Screen: Check to display a small box with the current round number, the clock, and a stop/start button in the upper-left corner of the screen when on the Seating Chart Screen.

Show mini-clock on Player Movement Screen: Check to display a small box with the current round number, the clock, and a stop/start button in the upper-left corner of the screen when on the Player Movement Screen.

Show mini-clock on Blinds Schedule Screen: Check to display a small box with the current round number, the clock, and a stop/start button in the upper-left corner of the screen when on the Blinds Schedule Screen.

Automatically update players' chip counts: When checked, the Tournament Director will automatically update players' chip counts whenever players buy-in, rebuy, add-on, or bust out.

Pause the clock at the end of rounds: Check to have the clock automatically pause at the end of a round.

Pause the clock at the end of breaks: Check to have the clock automatically pause at the end of a break.

Pause the clock at the start of rounds: Check to have the clock automatically pause at the start of a round.

Pause the clock at the start of breaks: Check to have the clock automatically pause at the start of a break.

Pause the clock for player movement: Check to have the clock automatically pause when the Bust Players Out dialog is opened.

Pause the clock when busting players out: Check to have the clock automatically pause when the Tournament Director suggests player movement (table balancing).

Auto save after events: Check to have the auto-save feature automatically save the tournament after significant events, such as players buying-in, adding-in, rebuying, or busting out.

How often to auto save: Enter the amount of time, in seconds, that should pass before the Tournament Director should automatically save your tournament (if Auto save is enabled).

Hand Timer default time: Enter the amount of time, in seconds, that the hand timer will display by default when opened.

Seconds between levels: The tournament clock automatically pauses when the time reaches 0:00, to allow for players to recognize that the current level has ended. By default, the clock pauses for four seconds and then the next level automatically commences. You can change the amount of time the clock is paused using this preference. One second is the minimum value allowed.

Allow selection of hitman when busting players out: Uncheck this option if, when players are busted out of the tournament, you do NOT wish to designate a hitman. Note that bounty prizes and bounty chips cannot be automatically awarded if a hitman is not designated when players are busted out.

Warn when busting players out without designating a hitman: If checked, the Tournament Director will warn you if you attempt to bust a player out of the tournament without designating a hitman. Note that bounty prizes and bounty chips cannot be automatically awarded if a hitman is not designated when players are busted out.

Warn when busting players out if hitman is not at the same table: Check to have the Tournament Director warn you if you attempt to bust a player out and designate a hitman who is not sitting at the same table as the busted player.

Display screen lock icon: Uncheck to prevent the screen lock icon from displaying when the screen is locked.

Display keyboard lock icon: Uncheck to prevent the keyboard lock icon from displaying when the keyboard is locked.

Display unbalanced tables icon: Uncheck to prevent the unbalanced tables icon from displaying when the tables are unbalanced.

Display saving tournament icon: Uncheck to prevent the floppy disk icon from displaying when the tournament is automatically saved.

Paid in Full is checked by default: If checked, the Paid in Full checkbox on the Buy-in Players dialog will be pre-checked each time the dialog opens.

Buy-in players is checked by default (on Add Players dialog): If checked, the Buy-in Players checkbox on the Add Players to Tournament dialog will be pre-checked each time the dialog opens.

Automatically seat players at buy-in: If checked, players will automatically be assigned a random seat when they buy-in to the tournament. "Table balancing" is not considered at this time. A player will be assigned any unoccupied seat defined in your Tables. A warning will be issued if no seat is available at buy-in.

Allow Find on player dialogs: If checked, the Find functionality will be enabled for player dialogs such as Add Players to Tournament, Buy-in Players, Remove Players from Tournament, etc.

Increment by one in Simple mode: This option is only relevant when hosting your tournament in Simple mode, a mode in which players are not tracked (see Players Tab). If checked, actions such as buying players in, busting players out, purchasing player rebuys, and purchasing player add-ons, will simply increment or decrement the respective counts by one, instead of opening a dialog and asking for a quantity.

Confirm manual level changes: If checked, initiating a level change (i.e., manually moving to the next or previous levels) will display a dialog to confirm your intended actions.

Save dialog locations: If checked, the location of each dialog will be remembered, and when the dialog is opened again, it will be displayed in its previous location. If unchecked, dialogs will be opened in the center of the Tournament Director window. Exceptions are the Hotkeys dialog and the Help dialog, which always open in their last location.

Auto-close Settings window: If checked, the Settings Window will close when you press one of the Game Window buttons (Tournament , Player Rankings, Seating Chart, Player Movement, Blinds Schedule) at the top of the Settings Window, or when you press a hotkey to enter one of those screens.

 

The Rakes pane allows you to define the how many rakes will be collected from your players. Why would you need more than one rake? By defining more than one rake, money can be more easily collected and tallied for multiple items. For example, suppose you collect $5 from each player to help pay for the expense of hosting a tournament. Suppose also that you wish to hold an end-of-season tournament for your players. You might wish to collect $5 from each player for each tournament, which is collected and then added to the end-of-season tournament pot. By defining two rakes, one for the hosting expense, and one for the end-of-season tournament, it's easy to divide and tally the money that has been collected. When you generate statistics on your tournaments, the rakes are summed individually and automatically for you.

 

20.7     Tournament File Locations

The Tournament File Locations pane allows you to specify where you save your tournaments, for the purpose of generating statistics. When statistics are generated, the folders listed in this pane are scanned (and any sub-folders) for tournament files. If you save all of your files in the default location (the "saves" folder), then you will not need to update anything in this pane. However, if you save your tournaments to different locations, you'll want to add those folders to the list so that the Stats Tab can load those tournaments as well when generating statistics.

 

20.7.1      Adding a Save Folder

To add a folder to the list, right-click in the Tournament File Locations pane and select New Save Folder. In the Tournament Files Locations dialog, enter the path to the folder in which your saved tournaments are located. Or, press the Browse… button to browse for the folder. When browsing for a tournament file location, browse to the desired folder and select a saved tournament file within the folder, then press the Open button. Press the OK button on the Tournament Files Location dialog when you have selected your saved tournaments folder.

20.7.2      Editing a Save Folder

Double-click on an existing folder, or right-click on a folder and select Edit Save Folder to edit a save folder.

20.7.3      Deleting a Save Folder

To delete an existing save folder, right-click on the folder and select Remove Save Folder. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before removing the folder from the list of Tournament File Locations.

 

Status messages are messages that are displayed on the Tournament Screen to alert you to a condition that either prevents your tournament from starting, or that you should be aware of before starting your tournament. Examples include a message that prizes have not been configured, or that players have not bought-in, or that players haven't been seated. A status message is also displayed when the tournament clock has been paused.

 

Status messages are displayed in a square plaque on the Tournament Screen, and can be made to flash on and off. You can tailor the look of the status messages as well as the messages themselves on the Status Messages dialog.

 

On the Preferences Tab, press the Status Msgs button to open the Status Messages dialog.

 

The Status Messages Set pane displays the status message sets that are defined. A Default status message set is built-in to the Tournament Director and cannot be changed. You can, however, create new status message sets and tailor them to your preference.

 

The Properties pane displays the properties of the status message set currently selected in the Status Messages Set pane:

 

Background color: The color of the background of the status message plaque.

Foreground color: The color of the foreground (text) of the status message plaque.

Font: The font to use for the text of the message.

Font size: The font point size to use for the text of the message.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Opacity: The opacity, or transparent quality, of the status message plaque. The lower the number, the less opaque (and more transparent) the plaque will be.

Location: The location on the screen at which the status message plaque will be displayed. If you wish to specify exact coordinates, select Specify and enter X and Y values.

Flash messages: Check to make the status message plaque flash on and off when displayed.

 

The right side of the Properties pane displays the messages of the status message set. You can update the HTML used for each message. The check box indicates whether or not the status message will be displayed when the conditions are appropriate.

 

To create a new status message set, press the New button. To delete a status message set, select the status message set and press the Delete button. To copy the properties of another status message set, select the status message set to which to copy the properties and press the Copy button. On the Copy Status Message Set dialog, select the status message set from which to copy properties. Press the OK button to copy the properties.

 

To easily disable ALL status messages, check the Disable all status messages checkbox at the bottom of the dialog.

 

* When you press the OK button on the Status Message dialog, the status message set currently selected in the Status Message Set pane will be selected for use.

Press the Name Format button to open the Name Format Preferences dialog. Here you can select the format in which you wish to see players' names displayed.

 

20.10  Config Files

The Config Files dialog allows you to configure which files will be used for the default tournament, prize suggestions and automatic prizes configuration files, and the various export templates.

 

20.10.1   Default Tournament

Default tournament: Sets the "default" tournament to the internal, blank tournament, or to a saved tournament of your choosing. The default tournament is the tournament configuration that is used when the Tournament Director starts, or when you press the New button on the Game Tab. If you choose to use one of your own saved tournaments as the default tournament, you will still have the option of using the internal, blank tournament when you press the New button on the Game Tab. Double-click the default tournament selection, or right-click the default tournament selection and select Edit Default Tournament, to edit the default tournament preference.

 

20.10.2   Prizes Configuration Files

Here you can set the configuration files that the Tournament Director will use when suggesting prizes, or when the automatic prizes feature is enabled. See the Suggesting Prizes, Automatic Prizes, and Configuring Prize Levels for more information.

 

20.10.3   Export Templates

The export templates are the template files that are used when exporting data from the Tournament Director. Each export feature has its own corresponding template file. You can specify your own export templates files in this section. See Exporting Data for information on tailoring the template files.

 

The Tournament Director includes only English language files, but the application is internationalized and may be translated into other languages. If you have installed a language pack, you may select the default language by pressing the Language button.

 

Purchase and refund (undo purchase) actions can generate and print receipts. Receipts are generated as files saved on your computer, using a template you can modify to reflect your organization and/or conform to your receipt printer. Press the Receipts button to modify receipt issuing and printing.

 

20.12.1   Settings

Issue receipts: If checked, receipt files will be generated when players buy-in, rebuy, or add-on. Refund (negative) receipts will also be generated when these actions are undone.

Print receipts: Check to have receipts printed when they are generated.

Next receipt number: Set the next receipt number to be issued here. The receipt number is automatically incremented as each receipt is generated.

Receipts folder: Select the folder to which receipt files will be saved.

Receipts template: Specifies the template file to be used to generate receipts.

20.12.2   Sales People

When receipt creation is enabled, a Sales Person input will be included on each dialog that issues a receipt. The Sales Person input is a "combo box", meaning it is a list of sales people from which a single sales person can be selected, and it is also an input box, allowing you to input a new sales person if the sales person is not already in the list. Any sales person input will automatically be added to the Sales People.

 

To edit your existing list of sales people, press the Sales People button. Here you can add, remove, and edit sales people in the list, as well as order the list to your taste.

20.12.3   Modifying the Receipt Template

The receipt template is similar to export templates. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the receipt template.

20.12.4   On Receipt Printing

See Printing for more information on the limitations of printing directly from the Tournament Director application.

 

If your PC is configured for multiple displays, you can place the Game Window on one display (visible to your players) and the Settings Window on a separate display (visible only to you, the tournament host). This allows for your players to see the Game Window without interruption, while you manage the tournament on a separate display.

 

Display software for many multiple display hardware configurations includes utilities for managing the displays. The utilities may include tools for moving and/or position windows on the displays, for configuring which display an application defaults to, and how the displays are virtually positioned relative to each other. Because not all include each of these types of utilities, the Tournament Director includes an Extended Display feature to help you manage the Tournament Director application on your multiple display setup.

 

If you are able to place the Game Window and the Settings Window in the locations appropriate for your configuration using the tools provided by your video software, then you will not need the Extended Display feature of the Tournament Director. However, if you are unable to place the windows in the appropriate locations, use the Extended Display feature to help you position the windows.

 

Press the Extended Display button on the Preferences Tab to open the Extended Display dialog.

 

First, set the dimensions of your extended display. The dimensions of your main display are automatically detected by the Tournament Director application.

 

Next, for Extended display location, select where the extended display is virtually positioned relative to the main display. For most multiple display configurations, the extended display is virtually positioned to the right of the main display. You can test this by moving the mouse cursor off of the physical display in one of the four directions, and noting when the mouse cursor appears on the extended display.

 

In Extended display offset, enter the number of pixels that the edge of your extended display is offset from the edge of the main display. This is usually 0, so if you are unsure, enter 0. For example, if your extended display is to the right of the main display, the top edge of both displays should be even. However, if the top edge of the extended display is below the top edge of the main display, enter the number of pixels lower the extended display is positioned. If the top edge of the extended display is above the top edge of the main display, enter a negative value.

 

Check Open dialogs on Main display if you want the Tournament Director to open all dialog windows on your Main display.

 

Once you have entered the above information, you can use the Move to Main Display and Move to Extended Display buttons to move the Game Window back and forth between the two displays.

 

You can also use the Manually Move Game Window button to manually position the Game Window.

 

 

21     Hotkeys Tab

Hotkeys are keys that perform an action when pressed. Most actions that you will perform while your tournament is running, such as stopping and starting the clock, or busting players out of the tournament, are (or can be) accomplished with a hotkey.

 

Hotkeys for various actions are configured by default, but on the Hotkeys Tab, you can configure the hotkeys entirely to your preference.

 

All hotkeys are active in the Game Window and in the Settings Window when the Controls Tab is selected. Hotkeys that are assigned to the function keys (F1 through F12) are active everywhere in the application.

 

Changes to hotkeys are saved automatically.

 

Please note that when this user manual refers to hotkeys that perform specific actions, it is referring to the default hotkey configuration. For example, busting players out of the tournament can be accomplished by pressing the X key when the Game Window is in focus, or when the Settings Window is open and the Controls Tab is selected. However, you could change the hotkey configuration such that X performs a different action.

When you create a hotkey, you are essentially binding an action to a key, or a combination of keys. To create a new hotkey, press the New Hotkey button, or right-click in the Hotkeys pane and select New hotkey.

 

On the New Hotkey dialog, select the Key that will initiate the action. Optionally, you can select a Shifter, one of Ctrl, Alt, or Shift, which will be pressed while you press the Key to initiate the action. For example, if you select the Key K and the Shifter Ctrl, then you'll hold the Ctrl key while pressing the K key to initiate the action. Select the Action to be performed. Finally, if you choose the Select Screen action, choose a Modifier. The Select Screen action causes the screen to immediately change to the screen designated by the modifier, and engages the screen lock. See the Layout Tab for information on screens. Press the OK button to create the new hotkey.

 

To edit an existing hotkey, double-click on a hotkey, or right-click on a hotkey and select Edit hotkey.

 

To delete an existing hotkey, right-click on a hotkey and select Delete hotkey. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before deleting the hotkey.

 

If you make changes to the hotkeys and wish to return to the default hotkey configuration, press the Reset Hotkeys button. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before resetting the hotkeys. If you confirm the hotkey reset, any changes you made to the hotkey configuration will be lost and the default hotkey configuration will be restored.

 

The Hotkeys Dialog can be displayed by pressing the ? key (by default). The Hotkeys Dialog displays all of the currently configured hotkeys.

 

You can export the hotkey list to HTML. This is useful if you wish to print the hotkey assignments for quick reference. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

 

 

22     Help Tab

The Help Tab contains the Tournament Director user guide. Your position in the documentation is retained when you move to another page and return to the Help Tab.

 

You can also open a dialog containing the help file by pressing the F12 key.

 

To search the user guide, press Ctrl+F from the Help Tab or from the Help Dialog.

 

To print the user guide, press Ctrl+P from the Help Tab or from the Help Dialog.

 

 

23     Links Tab

The Links Tab is a place for you to find additional help in running your tournament. It functions like your internet Favorites or Bookmarks, located in a convenient place should you need to refer to an online reference while running your tournament.

 

Click on a link to open your default internet browser to the internet site designated by the link. Several helpful links have been included.

The links displayed on the Links Tab are defined in the file helplinks.txt, which is located in the folder in which you installed the Tournament Director, typically "C:\Program Files\The Tournament Director 2". If you wish to edit any of the pre-defined links, delete a link, or add your own links, you'll need to edit this file.

 

Each line of the file represents a link, and is of the format:

<link name>=<URL>

 

For example:

The Tournament Director=http://www.thetournamentdirector.net

 

This line will display as "The Tournament Director". When clicked, the default browser will open to the URL "http://www.thetournamentdirector.net".

 

The links will display in the order listed in helplinks.txt.

 

24     Controls Tab

The Controls Tab is a convenient collection of the most commonly used information and controls necessary to run your tournament. All of the controls on this tab can be found in other locations throughout the application. They are grouped here to serve as a central control panel for the tournament host.

 

This tab is especially useful for multi-display configurations. If your PC is configured for multiple displays, the Game Window can be placed on the display that is visible to your tournament players, while the Settings Window remains on the display that is visible only to the host. The Controls Tab usefulness becomes apparent in this configuration, as the host can control everything during the tournament from the Controls Tab, while the Game Window remains in unobstructed view of your players.

 

The Game Window is the main application window of the Tournament Director. This is the window you will display to your players. The Game Window consists of the following screens:

 

The Tournament Screen contains all of the information your players want to see, including tournament timer, round and blind information. The Tournament Screen is completely customizable. You can modify anything displayed on this screen, add over 100 other pieces of information, and create your own screens.

 

The Player Rankings Screen displays the rankings your players receive, as well as money they've won or lost, bounties they've won, who busted them out of the tournament, and a whole lot more.

 

The Seating Chart Screen displays a layout of your tables and who is sitting where, to allow your players to easily find their seats, or to give onlookers a who's who of your tournament.

 

The Blinds Schedule Screen displays the tournament schedule, or the ordering of levels (rounds and breaks), and information about each level.

 

The Player Movement Screen displays a list of players who were moved when the last player movement suggestion was made (and accepted).

 

While the Settings Window is where you typically configure and manage the tournament, you can also perform most actions necessary in running your tournament directly from the Game Window.

 

The tournament begins when you start the clock for the first time, either by using the Spacebar to start the clock, or automatically at the end of a countdown. See Starting Your Tournament for more information.

 

The clock is can be paused and un-paused at any time using the Spacebar. You may also right-click and select Start Clock or Stop Clock.

 

You can reset the time on the clock by right-clicking and selecting Reset Clock. This will set the clock to the duration of the current round or break, as if the round or break has just begun.

 

To set the clock to an arbitrary length of time, right-click and select Set Clock. The Set Clock dialog will open, and the clock will automatically pause. Set the hours, minutes, and seconds corresponding to the amount of time you wish to have remaining on the clock. Press the OK button when done. The clock will be set to the time you specified and remain paused until you un-pause it.

 

The tournament will automatically progress through the rounds schedule when the clock is running. If you wish to skip ahead to later round, press Ctrl+N, or right-click and select Next Round. If you wish to move the tournament back to repeat a previous round, press Ctrl+P, or right-click and select Previous Round. The Tournament Director will confirm your action before changing the round, unless the preference Confirm manual level changes has been disabled. See the Preferences Tab for more information.

 

Press Ctrl+A to add to your tournament players from your player database. Press Ctrl+Z to add new players to your tournament. See Adding Players for more information.

 

Press Ctrl+B, or right-click and select Buy-in players to buy players into the tournament. See Buying Players In for more information.

 

Press X, or right-click and select Bust Players Out to bust player(s) out of the tournament. You may also right-click on a player's name and select Bust <player name> Out where ever the player's name appears in the Game Window.

 

On the Bust Players Out of Tournament dialog, select one or more players to be busted out of the tournament in the Players pane. Then, select the player who busted this player out of the tournament in the Hitman pane. You are not required to select a hitman, but it is recommended that you do (bounty chips and bounty prizes will not be awarded if you do not). The Tournament Director will warn you before proceeding if you do not select a hitman. You can enable or disable this warning on the Preferences Tab. The Tournament Director will also warn you if the selected hitman is not seated at the same table as one or more of the players busting out. Again, you can enable or disable this warning on the Preferences Tab. Press the OK button to bust the player(s) out of the tournament.

 

You should only bust multiple players at simultaneously if you intend for the players to tie in rank and chop (divide) any prizes awarded to their final rank. If, for example, two players (players A and B) bust out in the same hand and you wish for those players to have the same rank, bust the players out at the same time by selecting both players in the Players pane. If, however, player A had a larger chip stack than player B before busting out, and your tournament rules indicate that player A should receive a higher rank than player B, you should first bust out player B, then return to the Bust Players Out of Tournament dialog and bust out player A.

 

If you check the Only show hitmen at the same table as players busting out checkbox, then the Hitman pane will only display players who are seated at the same table as the players selected to bust out. Selecting this option makes busting players out quicker and easier.

 

If rebuys are enabled, the Tournament Director will immediately prompt you on rebuying the player(s) into the tournament. If rebuys are no longer allowed, you will still be prompted, giving you the option to override the settings that disallow rebuys at the current time. You can disable this feature by checking the Don't show this dialog again checkbox. You may of course rebuy any busted-out player at any time that rebuys are allowed. However, rebuying a player immediately after busting them out will allow the player to retain their current seat.

 

To undo a bust-out, press S, or right-click and select Undo Bust Player Out. You may also right-click on a player's name and select Undo Bust Out for <player name> where ever the player's name appears on the Game Window. You may only undo a player's bust out if the player is currently busted out (for example, if a player busts out, then rebuys, you cannot undo the player's bust out unless you first undo the player's rebuy).

 

Press V, or right-click and select Rebuy Player to rebuy player(s) back into the tournament. You may also right-click on a player's name and select Rebuy <player name> where ever the player's name appears on the Game Window.

 

On the Rebuy Players dialog, select one or more players to rebuy back in the Players pane. In the Details pane, you may enter or change the values for the rebuy fee, the number of chips received for the rebuy, the amount raked from the rebuy, the number of points received for the rebuy, and the bounty chip cost, if the option to use player bounties was selected (on the Game Tab). These values are filled in automatically for you from the information given on the Game Tab. You may change the values here, however, overriding them for the specific players you are rebuying back into the tournament. The final line displays the total amount that should be collected from each player who is rebuying. Press the OK button to perform the rebuy.

 

To undo a rebuy, press F, or right-click and select Undo Rebuy Player. You may also right-click on a player's name and select Undo Rebuy for <player name> where ever the player's name appears on the Game Window.

 

Press B, or right-click and select Add-on Player to purchase add-ons for players. You may also right-click on a player's name and select Add-on <player name> where ever the player's name appears on the Game Window.

 

On the Add-on Players dialog, select one or more players for which to purchase an add-on in the Players pane. In the Details pane, you may enter or change the values for the add-on fee, the number of chips received for the add-on, the amount raked from the add-on, the number of points received for the add-on. These values are filled in automatically for you from the information given on the Game Tab. You may change the values here, however, overriding them for the specific players that are purchasing an add-on. The final line displays the total amount that should be collected from each player who is adding-on. Press the OK button to perform the add-on.

 

To undo a rebuy, press G, or right-click and select Undo Add-on Player. You may also right-click on a player's name and select Undo Add-on for <player name> where ever the player's name appears on the Game Window.

 

Table balancing occurs automatically if you have automatic seating management enabled. However, if you this option is disabled, or if you have chosen to ignore a table rebalance at some point, you may wish to manually initiate a table balance action. The Tournament Director displays a tilted table icon in the upper-right corner (by default) of the Game Window when it detects that your tables are unbalanced. Press Ctrl+T to initiate table balancing. See Automatic Seating Management for more information.

 

During a tournament, if a player is taking a long time to make a betting decision, a player may be "put on the clock", which is to say the player may be forced to make a decision. Usually, when the decision is made to place a player on the clock, the player is then given a specific amount of time in which to make their decision. If the player does not make a decision in the allocated time, their hand is folded.

 

The Tournament Director provides a hand timer to facilitate this procedure. Press H to bring up a hand timer. By default, the hand timer will be set to the amount of time specified on the Preferences Tab. However, the Hand Timer dialog provides buttons for manipulating the amount of time it will count down. The +60, +10, +1, -1, -10, and -60 buttons will add 60 seconds, 10 seconds, 1 second, or subtract 1 second, 10 seconds, 0r 60 seconds from the hand timer, respectively. The Start Timer and Stop Timer buttons will start and stop the timer, respectively. The Done button will close the hand timer.

 

The Hand Timer dialog is a "modeless" dialog. That means it will stay on top of the Tournament Director application, but you can return focus to the Tournament Director application by clicking outside of the dialog. Please note that hotkeys only function when the Tournament Director application has focus. If a Hand Timer dialog has focus, hotkeys will not work.

 

You can utilize more than one hand timer at a time. Press H again to bring up additional hand timers.

 

When the Tournament Screen is displayed in the Game Window, the screen displayed on the Tournament Screen is entirely dependent on the Layout. If the selected screen set contains multiple screens, the screens displayed will cycle according to the screen set. If at any time you wish to halt screen cycling, you can lock the screen. To lock the screen, press Ctrl+L. A screen lock icon will be displayed in the upper-right corner of the Game Window indicating the screen lock is engaged. To unlock the screen cycling, press Ctrl+L again. The screen lock icon will be removed. Note that if the configured display time for the current screen elapses while the screen lock is engaged, the screen will cycle to the next screen immediately when the screen lock is disengaged.

 

Also note that the screen lock icon is displayed according to properties of the layout. You can change the icon's location, color, size, etc. See the Layout Tab for information on changing the screen lock icon properties.

 

When the Player Rankings Screen, the Seating Chart Screen, the Player Movement Screen, or the Blinds Schedule Screen is selected, the screens will not rotate and therefore the screen lock is not necessary. However, note that any of these screens may be included as part of a layout, and can therefore be displayed as part of screen rotation when the Tournament Screen is selected. In this case, the screen lock can be enabled when one of these screens is displayed.

 

Sometimes it might be desirable to lock the keyboard, to keep other players from accidentally (or on purpose) making changes to the tournament. To engage the keyboard lock, press Ctrl+K. To disengage the keyboard lock, press Ctrl+K again. When the keyboard lock is engaged, a keyboard lock icon will appear in the upper-right corner (by default) of the Game Window indicating that the keyboard is locked, and all hotkeys will be disabled.

 

You can manually cycle through the screens of the current screen set. Press Ctrl+Cursor Right to cycle forward one screen. Press Ctrl+Cursor Left to cycle backward one screen.

 

You can also manually select a particular screen you wish to display, regardless of the current screen set. Press the keys 1 through 9 to select a screen. The key you press corresponds with the screen number displayed on the Layout Tab. When you select a screen this way, the screen lock is automatically engaged to prevent the screen from immediately returning to the previous screen, in the case that the screen that you choose is not part of the current screen set. Note that you may only select a screen when the Tournament Screen is selected.

 

Chops occur when two or more players bust out of the tournament simultaneously. This can occur when two or more players have bet all of their chips in a single hand against another player and lose the hands. This can also occur if the final players of a tournament agree to stop playing and chop (divide) the remaining prizes among themselves.

 

If you bust two players out of the tournament simultaneously, they (usually) receive the same rank, but you can override this and rank the players manually. However you rank the players, they "occupy" more than one rank. For example, if there are 5 players remaining in the tournament, and two players bust out simultaneously, they will both be ranked 4th place by default. However, they will both also "occupy" 5th place, since the player who busted out just before them had a rank of 6th.

 

If you bust two or more players out of the tournament simultaneously, and the ranks they occupy have one or more prizes associated with them, you will be asked to chop the prizes among the players.

 

If your final players decide to stop playing and end the tournament, you can initiate a chop for them by pressing Ctrl+C. This will open the Chop dialog. Please note that this will essentially end the tournament by busting out the final players together. The chopping players will divide the prizes allocated to the ranks they occupy.

 

See Editing Chops for information on the Chop dialog.

 

The Tournament Screen displays the running status of your tournament in the Game Window. Here you'll see information on your tournament, such as the tournament clock, the number of entries, the current number of players, the pot, the prize amounts, the blinds, etc. Tthe look of this page is controlled by the Layout. Therefore, what you see here will depend on which layout you choose to use.

 

To enter the Tournament Screen, press the Tournament button located at the top of the screen on the Settings Window. Also, pressing the F2 key (by default) will enter the Tournament Screen.

 

When you enter the Tournament Screen, the appropriate screen set is selected according to the state of your tournament. The first screen in the selected screen set is always displayed upon entering the Tournament Screen, and screen rotation is reset.

 

27     Player Rankings Screen

The Player Rankings Screen displays the players who bought-in to your tournament in their final ranking order.

 

By default, the Player Rankings Screen displays the players in the tournament, their rank, the time in which they busted out of the tournament, and the round in which they busted out of the tournament. However, you may configure what is displayed.

 

If the list of players is too long to display on the screen, a scroll bar will be displayed. The rankings will scroll automatically up and down to reveal the entire list. If you wish to turn automatic scrolling off, right-click and select Don't Scroll Rankings.

 

To configure what is displayed and how the page looks, right-click and select Player Rankings Properties. You can also reach this dialog by pressing the Other Properties button on the Layout Tab. The Other Properties dialog allows you to modify various other property groups. Note that changes made to the Player Rankings Screen are saved as part of the layout.

 

Header row background color: The background color of the row of column headers.

Header row text color: The foreground (text) color of the row of column headers.

Text color: The text color.

Font: The font to use for the text of the page.

Font size: The font point size to use for the text of the page.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Show all players: Check to show all players who have bought into the tournament, including those not yet busted out.

Show only busted out players: Check to show only players who have busted out of the tournament.

Sort by rank, name, chip count: Check to cause the player rankings to be sorted by rank, and have any players having the same rank to be further sorted by their name, and finally by their current chip count.

Sort by rank, chip count, name: Check to cause the player rankings to be sorted by rank, and have any players having the same rank to be further sorted by their current chip count, and finally by their name.

Edit Columns: Press to edit the columns that are listed on the page. See Choosing Columns for more information.

Edit Column Names: Press to override the names of the columns listed on the page with names of your own choosing.

Stretch horizontally: If the player rankings listing is narrower than the screen width, you can check this option to have the listing stretched horizontally to fill the screen.

Omit seconds: Check this option to display the Time Out column in HH:MM format (default is HH:MM:SS).

Screen background color: The screen background color.

Image filename: Enter the path to an image file to display it in as the screen background. If no file is specified, or if the file is not found, not image will be displayed.

Repeat: Select one of the repeat options to indicate how the background image, if specified, will be tiled.

Horizontal Alignment: Select the horizontal position of the background image.

Vertical Alignment: Select the vertical position of the background image.

Header: The text displayed at the top of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

Footer: The text displayed at the bottom of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

 

 

28     Seating Chart Screen

The Seating Chart Screen displays a diagram of the tables and where your players are currently seated.

 

By default, the Seating Chart Screen displays the tables in a diagram format. However, you may configure what is displayed.

 

If the seating chart is too tall to display on the screen, a scroll bar will be displayed. The seating chart will scroll automatically up and down to reveal the entire set of tables. If you wish to turn automatic scrolling off, right-click and select Don't Auto Scroll Seating Chart.

 

To configure what is displayed and how the page looks, right-click and select Seating Chart Properties. You can also reach this dialog by pressing the Other Properties button on the Layout Tab. The Other Properties dialog allows you to modify various other property groups. Note that changes made to the Seating Chart Screen are saved as part of the layout.

 

Table edge background color: The background color of the table border and table name.

Table edge foreground color: The foreground (text) color of the table border and table name.

Table edge font: The font to use for the table name.

Font size: The font point size to use for the table name.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text of the table name bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Table background color: The background color of the table.

Table foreground color: The foreground (text) color of the table.

Table font: The font to use for the text inside the table (player names, etc).

Font size: The font point size to use for the text inside the table (player names, etc).

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop

Highlight background color: The background color used for players who moved in the last accepted player movement suggestion.

Highlight foreground color: The foreground color used for players who moved in the last accepted player movement suggestion.

Highlight recently moved players: Select whether or not to highlight players who were moved in the most recently accepted player movement suggestion. Select Always to keep players highlighted until the next movement suggestion is accepted. Select Never to prevent players from being highlighted. Select Time and enter an amount of time (in seconds) that the players should be highlighted following an accepted player movement suggestion.

List format: Selecting List format will display an alphabetical listing of players along with their table name and seat number. This format might be easier for players to initially find their seats. Player names will be on the left side of the listing, and table name and seat number will be on the right side.

Use dots sequence: Select this option to display a series of dots (…) between player names and their corresponding table and seat number (List format only). This may make it easier for players to see their corresponding table and seat number.

Use alternating colors: Select this option to display alternating background colors for successive rows in the players list (List format only). This may make it easier for players to see their corresponding table and seat number.

Color: The alternating background color to use (only if Use alternating colors is checked).

Diagram format: Selecting Diagram format will display a diagram of the tables and where each player is seated is displayed.

Show empty tables: Check to show all defined tables, or uncheck to show only tables at which players are seated (Diagram format only).

Show dealer buttons: Check to display the dealer button placement on tables (Diagram format only).

Number of columns: The number of columns in which to display the seating chart (Diagram format only).

Screen background color: The screen background color.

Image filename: Enter the path to an image file to display it in as the screen background. If no file is specified, or if the file is not found, not image will be displayed.

Repeat: Select one of the repeat options to indicate how the background image, if specified, will be tiled.

Horizontal Alignment: Select the horizontal position of the background image.

Vertical Alignment: Select the vertical position of the background image.

Header: The text displayed at the top of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

Footer: The text displayed at the bottom of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

 

28.2     Configuring Images for Tables

In addition to changing the various colors and fonts used to display tables on the Seating Chart Screen (in Diagram mode), you can use separate images for the background of each table, or use images for the tables themselves.

 

When you use an image for a table background, the table is rendered in the same way as it is without a background image (box with table name at the top, and seat numbers with player names listed vertically below the name). But instead of a solid color behind the seat numbers and player names, your designated image will be displayed.

 

You can also use a table "Blueprint", which displays the table using an image, and can position player names arbitrarily over the image. This allows you to use a picture or graphic of an actual table, and place the player names in their respective seats around the table.

 

Layout information (how the Game Window looks) is kept separately from tournament data so that the look and feel of the Game Window can be changed at any time without affecting the tournament. For this reason, when you specify images (or blueprints) for tables, you designate an image for a table based on the table's relative position (1st table, 2nd table, etc) and not based on a table's name. This allows you to use specific images for specific tables without directly tying the layout to the tournament itself.

 

To configure table images, open the Other Properties button on the Layout Tab, and select the Seating Chart Screen properties. You can also reach this dialog by right-clicking on the Game Window when the Seating Chart Screen is displayed and selecting Seating Chart Properties.

 

On the Seating Chart Screen properties, press the Edit Table Images button.

 

To add a new table image (or blueprint), press the Add button. Then enter the file path to the image in the File input, or use the Browse... button to locate the image file.

 

This image will be used for the first table defined on the Tables Tab. Press the Add button again to add a second table image. This image will be used for the second table defined on the Tables Tab.

 

If you leave the File input empty, you are designating that an image should NOT be used for that particular table. This allows you to designate an image, for example, for tables 1 and 3, and no image for table 2 (by leaving the File input empty).

 

You can use the arrow buttons to re-order the table images, and the delete button to delete one or more table images.

 

Check the Use for all tables checkbox to re-use table images when you have more tables than images configured. For example, if you have 10 tables, and have only 2 table images configured, they will be displayed for the first 2 tables defined on the Tables Tab. The remaining 8 tables will have no image. However, if you check Use for all tables, then tables 3 through 8 will also use the 2 configured images, cycling through them one after another. Table 3 will use the first image configured, table 4 will use the second image configured, table 5 will use the first image configured, and so on.

 

Several table Blueprints have been included with the Tournament Director software. However, if you wish to use your own table image, and place player names in specific places on that image, you will need to create your own table Blueprint file. Creating your own blueprint is not difficult, but requires some knowledge of XML files, and this section assumes this knowledge.

 

To start, you should first take a look at one of the table blueprints included with the software. This will give you a general idea of the structure of the blueprint XML file. The table blueprints are located in the "templates" folder.

 

Below is a simple table blueprint:

 

<table>

<image>

<path>images/racetrack.gif</path>

<size width="752" height="350" />

</image>

<labels>

<font name="Tahoma" size="15" bold="true" italic="true" shadow="true" />

<text color="#ffffff" backgroundColor="transparent" align="center" highlightColor="white" highlightBackgroundColor="blue" />

<size width="150" height="26" />

<options showSeatNumber="inuse" />

<name>

<location x="280" y="140" />

<size width="200" height="75" />

<font name="Tahoma" size="40" bold="true" italic="false" shadow="true" />

</name>

<unavailable>

<text color="red" />

</unavailable>

<seat number="1">

<location x="50" y="55" />

</seat>

<label>

<location x="280" y="220" />

<text>Final Table</text>

</label>

</labels>

</table>

 

 

The following four elements, size, location, font, and text, are used in various places within the blueprint file.

 

<size>

The size element defines the size, in pixels, of a label or the image. Both the width and the height attributes are required. It contains no text or sub-elements.

 

<location>

The location element defines a position within the image, based on the x/y coordinate system. The upper left-hand corner of the image is position (0, 0). Ten pixels to the right and 25 pixels down is position (10, 25). For an image that is 200 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall, the lower right-hand corner of the image is position (199, 99). Both the x and y attributes are required. Additionally, the x attribute may be set to "left", "center", or "right", and the y attribute may be set to "top", "center" or "middle", or "bottom". It contains no text or sub-elements.

 

<font>

The font element describes the font to be used to render a particular label. The name attribute should contain the font name. The size attribute should contain the font point size. The bold, italic, and shadow attributes should contain either "true" or "false". None of the attributes are required, and any attributes omitted will be inherited from font elements higher in the element hierarchy (or be given default values if no font element exists higher in the hierarchy). It contains no text or sub-elements.

 

<text>

The text element describes the foreground and background colors of text to be rendered, and optionally the text itself. The color attribute describes the foreground color, and the backgroundcolor attribute describes the background color. highlightColor and highlightBackgroundColor are the colors that should be used when the label that this text element describes is highlighted (such as when players are moved from one seat to another). Each of these values should be an HTML Color. The align attribute describes the horizontal alignment of the text within the label in which the text is rendered. Valid values are "left", "right", and "center". If omitted, "center" is the default value. The text of this element will be displayed on the label for which this text element is configured. This element contains no sub-elements.

 

 

 

<table>

The topmost element must be the table element. It has no attributes.

 

<image>

Inside the table element, there must be an image element. This element describes where the image for the table resides, and the dimensions of the image. It must contain a path and a size element. It has no attributes.

 

<path>

The path element gives the path to the image file itself. This path may be relative or absolute. Relative paths are preferred because they make the blueprints more portable (from one computer to another) but are in no way required. This element has no attributes.

 

<labels>

The labels element contains all elements that will produce a label that will overlay the image, such as player names or the table's name. It has no attributes. Sub-elements it may contain are font, text, size, name, seat, unavailable, and label. If font, text, and/or size elements are included directly under the labels element, sub-elements name, seat, unavailable, and label will inherit attributes described in the font, text, and/or size elements. font, text, and size elements included directly within name, seat, unavailable, and label elements will override attributes inherited from the labels level.

 

<options>

The options element allows you to specify additional display options for the table. Currently, the only attribute is showSeatNumber, which may be set to "yes", "no", or "inuse". If set to "yes", seat numbers will be displayed on all seats at all times (whether a player is seated there or not, and when the seat is marked as unavailable). If set to "no", seat numbers will not be displayed on any seat. If set to "inuse", seat numbers will only be displayed on seats in which a player is sitting or that are marked as unavailable. The options element is not required. If not specified, showSeatNumber will default to "no".

 

<name>

The name element describes where to place and how to render the table's name. It has no attributes. It must contain a location element. Optionally, it may contain a size, text, and/or font element. It must contain a size element if a size element does not exist at the labels level.

 

<seat>

The seat element describes where to place and how to render the player's name stationed at a particular seat. It must contain a number attribute indicating which seat number this element describes. It may optionally contain a showSeatNumber attribute, which will override showSeatNumber if set in the options element (see options element above). It must contain a location element. Optionally, it may contain a size, text, and/or font element. It must contain a size element if a size element does not exist at the labels level.

 

<unavailable>

The unavailable element describes how to render labels for seats that are marked as unavailable. It may contain text and font elements. location and size elements are not required because they will be taken from the seat element which has been marked as unavailable. If the unavailable element is not specified, the text for the unavailable seat will be rendered using the characteristics of the corresponding seat element. It has no attributes.

 

<label>

The label element allows you to add arbitrary text anywhere else on the image that you wish. It must contain a location element, and optionally may contain text, font, and size elements. It must contain a size element if a size element does not exist at the labels level. It has no attributes.

 

Once you have created your blueprint, you will want to test it. See Configuring Images For Tables for steps on using your blueprint file(s) on the Seating Chart Screen. Note that each time the Seating Chart Screen is entered, or the Seating Chart Screen is displayed and its properties are modified, the Tournament Director will re-read all blueprint files that are configured. Therefore, if you make changes to your blueprint file, you can quickly and easily see the results of your changes simply be re-entering the Seating Chart Screen.

 

29     Player Movement Screen

The Player Movement Screen displays the players that last moved, either by a user-initiated table balance or by an automatic table balance.

 

If the player movement list is too tall to display on the screen, a scroll bar will be displayed. The list will scroll automatically up and down to reveal the entire list of player moves. If you wish to turn automatic scrolling off, right-click and select Don't Auto Scroll Player Movement.

 

To configure what is displayed and how the page looks, right-click and select Player Movement Properties. You can also reach this dialog by pressing the Other Properties button on the Layout Tab. The Other Properties dialog allows you to modify various other property groups. Note that changes made to the Player Movement Screen are saved as part of the layout.

 

Header row background color: The background color of the row of column headers.

Header row text color: The foreground (text) color of the row of column headers.

Text color: The text color.

Font: The font to use for the text of the page.

Font size: The font point size to use for the text of the page.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Sort by name: Select to sort the list by the [player] Name column.

Sort by Current seat: Select to sort the list by the Current Seat column (the seat from which the player is moving).

Sort by Moving to: Select to sort the list the Moving To column (the seat to which the player is moving).

Stretch horizontally: If the player movement listing is narrower than the screen width, you can check this option to have the listing stretched horizontally to fill the screen.

Omit current seat: If checked, the Current Seat column will not be displayed.

Use alternating colors: Select this option to display alternating background colors for successive rows in the player movement list. This may make it easier for players to see their corresponding movement directions.

Color: The alternating background color to use (only if Use alternating colors is checked).

Edit Column Names: Press to override the names of the columns listed on the page with names of your own choosing.

Screen background color: The screen background color.

Image filename: Enter the path to an image file to display it in as the screen background. If no file is specified, or if the file is not found, not image will be displayed.

Repeat: Select one of the repeat options to indicate how the background image, if specified, will be tiled.

Horizontal Alignment: Select the horizontal position of the background image.

Vertical Alignment: Select the vertical position of the background image.

Header: The text displayed at the top of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

Footer: The text displayed at the bottom of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

 

30     Data Stores

The Data Store is the folder on your computer's hard drive in which the Tournament Director stores its data, including the player database and any files you save, such as tournaments, templates, exported data files, etc.

 

The default Data Store is "%My Documents%\The Tournament Director 2\Data". "%My Documents%" represents the path to the "My Documents" folder for the currently logged-in Windows user.

 

You can create and use multiple Data Stores. However, it is recommended you use the Default Data Store for simplicity and ease of use.

 

While you are permitted to save most files anywhere you choose, the dialogs in which you choose the name and location for the file you are saving will always default to the active Data Store. It is recommended that you always save files within your Data Store folder. This helps to ensure that your data is "portable". If you need to transfer the data to a different PC, portability will help to ensure that everything "just works" after being transferred.

 

Initializing a Data Store creates common folders and copies sample files included with the software to the new Data Store for convenient access. It is recommended, but not required, that you initialize a new Data Store.

 

Three Data Stores are pre-configured, and may never be removed from the list of Data Stores. These are:

 

Default
This is the default Data Store, and will be the active Data Store the first time you use the Tournament Director. This is the preferred Data Store. Most people will find they never need to use any other Data Store.

Install Folder
Versions of the software prior to 2.5.6 used the install folder as the folder to save all data. Saving data in the install folder should be avoided when possible. However, if you have upgraded from a version prior to 2.5.6 and find that your player database seems to be missing, you should make this Data Store active and check your player database again. (See Upgrading from Version 2.5.5 or Earlier for more information.)

Vista Virtual Store
Starting with Windows Vista, versions of the Tournament Director prior to 2.5.6 could have data written to this folder in some circumstances. It is not recommended that you use this Data Store. However, if you have upgraded from a version prior to 2.5.6 and find that your player database seems to be missing, you should make this Data Store active and check your player database again. (See Upgrading from Version 2.5.5 or Earlier for more information.)

 

To view or modify your Data Store preferences, press the Data Stores button on the Preferences Tab of the Settings Window.

 

There can be any number of Data Stores, but only one can be active at any given time. The active Data Store is the Data Store that is currently being used by the Tournament Director application. You may change the active Data Store at any time.

 

When you change the active Data Store, the player database in the current Data Store is closed, and then re-opened from the newly active Data Store. All "load" and "save" dialogs are also reset to point to the newly active Data Store. This means, for example, that if you then go to the Game tab and load a saved tournament, the "Load" dialog will open in the newly active Data Store. You can still navigate to any valid storage location - only the folder which the Load dialog initially displays will have changed.

 

To change the currently active Data Store, right-click on one of the Data Stores listed in the Data Stores dialog and select Make active.

 

To create a new Data Store, press the Add button. Enter a Name for the Data Store and select a valid folder for the Data Store (the folder must exist). Press the Browse… button to browse your file system for the folder.

 

To edit a Data Store, double-click a Data Store or right-click a Data Store and select Edit. Note that the three pre-configured Data Stores (Default, Install Folder, and Vista Virtual Folder) cannot be edited.

 

To delete a Data Store, right-click on a Data Store and select Delete. Note that the three pre-configured Data Stores (Default, Install Folder, and Vista Virtual Folder) cannot be deleted.

 

Initializing a Data Store creates common folders in the Data Store and copies sample files included with the software to the new Data Store for convenient access. It is recommended, but not required, that you initialize a new Data Store.

 

When sample files are copied to the Data Store during an initialization, files are copied from the Tournament Director install folder. Files that already exist in the Data Store folder will be overwritten only if the file being copied is newer than the file that already exists. This will prevent files that you have modified in your Data Store folder from being overwritten if you initialize the Data Store.

 

Each time you start the Tournament Director application, the Default Data Store and the active Data Store (which may be the same) are initialized. This ensures that any files that may have been updated since the last time you used the software are copied to your Data Store. This may occur, for example, when you install an update to the software.

 

30.6     Upgrading From Version 2.5.5 or Earlier

Data Stores are a new feature added to the Tournament Director in version 2.5.6. Prior to this version, the Tournament Director stored all of its data in the folder in which the software is installed (typically "C:\Program Files\The Tournament Director 2"). This is considered a bad practice, and Microsoft discourages this behavior. Therefore, starting with version 2.5.6, the Tournament Director stores its data outside of the install folder.

 

When you upgrade the software from a version prior to version 2.5.6 (or later), it may appear that your player database and saved tournament files, etc, have disappeared. However, updates to the software will never delete any of your saved tournament files, custom templates that you have created, audio files, images files, your player database, etc. The data may appear to have disappeared because the software is now utilizing the Data Store feature, and is simply looking in a different location on your computer's hard drive for the data.

 

To recover your data, follow these steps:

 

First, locate your saved data. Your data is most likely in one of two locations (in one of the two additional Data Stores pre-configured for you). An easy way to locate your data is to simply make each of the pre-configured Data Stores active, and then view the Database tab. If the player list you are familiar with appears, you have found your data. If you saved your tournament files but did not use the player database, you can view the Game tab and press the Load button to locate a saved tournament.

 

Once you have found your data, you may simply continue to use the Data Store in which your data was found.

 

However, it is recommended that you do not use the Install Folder Data Store or the Vista Virtual Folder Data Store. It is recommended that you use the Default Data Store.

 

If you located your saved data in either the Install Folder Data Store or the Vista Virtual Folder Data Store, you should copy the data to the Default Data Store, and then re-activate the Default Data Store.

 

To copy your data:

 

  1. Make sure you have exited the Tournament Director
  2. Open Windows Explorer (press the Windows Start Button, then select All Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer)
  3. Navigate to the folder for the Data Store in which you located your data
  4. Select the following folders (don't worry if not all folders are listed; select those that are): "db", "images", "receipts", "saves", "sounds", "templates". To select multiple items, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the item with your mouse
  5. Press Ctrl+C to copy
  6. Navigate to the folder for the Default Data Store (My Documents\The Tournament Director 2\Data)
  7. Press Ctrl+P to paste (press Yes to overwrite any files that are already there)
  8. Restart the Tournament Director and activate the Default Data Store

 

If you need assistance, email support@thetournamentdirector.net.

 

31     Blinds Schedule Screen

The Blinds Schedule Screen displays the tournament blinds schedule, which is configured on the Rounds Tab.

If the blinds schedule list is too tall to display on the screen, a scroll bar will be displayed. The list will scroll automatically up and down to reveal the entire list of rounds and breaks. If you wish to turn automatic scrolling off, right-click and select Don't Auto Scroll Blinds Schedule.

 

To configure what is displayed and how the page looks, right-click and select Blinds Schedule Properties. You can also reach this dialog by pressing the Other Properties button on the Layout Tab. The Other Properties dialog allows you to modify various other property groups. Note that changes made to the Blinds Schedule Screen are saved as part of the layout.

 

Header row background color: The background color of the row of column headers.

Header row text color: The foreground (text) color of the row of column headers.

Text color: The text color.

Break rows background color: The background color of rows displaying scheduled breaks.

Break rows text color: The foreground (text) color of rows displaying scheduled breaks.

Font: The font to use for the text of the page.

Font size: The font point size to use for the text of the page.

Bold, Italic, Shadow: Check these boxes to make the text bold faced, italic, or to place a drop shadow behind the text.

Show level durations as 1:30: Select to show level duration times in typical HH:MM clock format.

Show level durations as 1h 30m: Select to show level duration times in hours and minutes format (1h 30m).

Stretch horizontally: If the blinds schedule listing is narrower than the screen width, you can check this option to have the listing stretched horizontally to fill the screen.

Use alternating colors: Select this option to display alternating background colors for successive rows in the blinds schedule list.

Color: The alternating background color to use (only if Use alternating colors is checked).

Edit Columns: Press to edit the columns that are listed on the page. See Choosing Columns for more information.

Edit Column Names: Press to override the names of the columns listed on the page with names of your own choosing.

Screen background color: The screen background color.

Image filename: Enter the path to an image file to display it in as the screen background. If no file is specified, or if the file is not found, not image will be displayed.

Repeat: Select one of the repeat options to indicate how the background image, if specified, will be tiled.

Horizontal Alignment: Select the horizontal position of the background image.

Vertical Alignment: Select the vertical position of the background image.

Header: The text displayed at the top of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

Footer: The text displayed at the bottom of the page. Any valid HTML is acceptable.

 

32     Configuring Prize Levels

When the Tournament Director suggests prizes, or updates the prize list when the Automatic Prizes feature is enabled, the software consults a configuration file that consists of Prize Levels.

 

A prize level is essentially a clause that states "when the number of tournament entries is within this range, use this set of prizes". When the Tournament Director consults this list, it scans each clause until it finds one that matches the tournament size, and then replaces the tournament prizes with the prizes listed in the clause.

 

You can modify the prize suggestions by modifying this configuration file, or by providing one of your own. It is recommended that you do NOT modify the configuration file that is included with the Tournament Director software but instead provide your own for two reasons: (1) By keeping the original, you always have an example to refer to, or a working copy to fall back on; and (2) if you update the software to a new version, the original configuration file will be updated. Therefore, if you have modified the original configuration file, it will be overwritten when the Tournament Director software is updated, and you will lose your modifications.

 

To configure the file that is used for prize suggestions or automatic prizes, press the Config Files button on the Preferences Tab.

 

The prize configuration file is an XML file, with a fairly simple format. You should have a basic familiarity with XML files and their structure before attempting to implement your own prize suggestions.

 

The prize configuration file is made up of only 3 elements: prizeLevels, prizeLevel, and prize. The file may contain only one prizeLevels element. The prizeLevels element may contain any number of prizeLevel elements. And each prizeLevel element may contain any number of prize elements.

 

32.2.1      prizeLevels

This element is the main element. It may contain any number of prizeLevel elements. It has no attributes.

32.2.2      prizeLevel

The prizeLevel attribute describes a single prize level. That is, it describes a single range of tournament entries and a set of corresponding prizes.

 

Attributes:

minPlayers: The minimum number of players in the range. This is the minimum number of players that must be bought-in to the tournament in order for this prizeLevel to be chosen. This attribute is required.

maxPlayers: The maximum number of players in the range. This is the maximum number of players that can be bought-in to the tournament in order for this prizeLevel to be chosen. This attribute is required.

 

When the number of tournament entries falls in between this range (inclusively), the prize level will be chosen. The prizeLevel element can contain any number of prize elements.

32.2.3      prize

Each prize element describes one or more identical prizes to be created.

 

rank: The rank of the prize. This should be a numeric value, such as "1". This can also be a range, such as "3-5". If a range is used, a prize will be created for each rank in the range. This attribute is not required. If this attribute is omitted, the prize will be of type "manual", meaning it will have to be manually awarded.

name: The name of the prize. This attribute is required if the prize is "manual", optional otherwise. If omitted (when optional), a name will be generated (such as "1st Place", if the rank is 1). The string {1} in the name will be replaced with the rank name (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc). The string {2} in the name will be replaced with the rank number (1, 2, 3, etc).

percent: Specifies that the award will be a percentage of the pot, and specifies the percent of the pot the prize is assigned. One of the attributes percent, fixed, or nonmonetary is required.

fixed: Specifies that the award will be a fixed amount of the pot, and specifies the amount. One of the attributes percent, fixed, or nonmonetary is required.

nonmonetary: Specifies that the award will be a non-monetary, and specifies the description of the award. One of the attributes percent, fixed, or nonmonetary is required.

shareLeftover: Whether or not the prize should share in leftover pot money. This attribute is optional. If omitted, defaults to false.

points: Specifies the amount of points to be awarded to the winner of the prize. Negative amounts are allowed. This attribute is optional. If omitted, defaults to 0.

adjustby: An amount by which to adjust the final prize amount. Negative amounts are allowed. This attribute is optional. If omitted, defaults to 0.

display: Whether or not the prize should be displayed on the Tournament Screen. This attribute is optional. If omitted, defaults to true.

 

 

The easiest way to test your prize configuration file, whether it is intended for use by the Suggest Prizes feature or by the Automatic Prizes feature, is to set the Suggest Prizes feature to use your configuration file, and then press the Suggest Prizes button on the Prizes Tab. Enter a value for the number of tournament entries and press the OK button. Verify that the intended prize level is chosen. Press the Cancel button and repeat with various values to make sure the software chooses the correct prize level each time.

 

It is important to note that the prize configuration files are loaded (1) when the software is started and (2) when you press OK on Config Files dialog. Therefore, if you are testing your prize configuration file and make changes to the file, you will need to either restart the Tournament Director, or press the OK button on the Config Files dialog so that the Tournament Director software will reload your configuration file.

 

 

33     Formulas

Formulas are mathematical expressions that evaluate to some value. The value can be used to award your players points for playing in a tournament, or assign a score to a player based on their performance over many tournaments, allowing you to compare the performance of players.

 

Formulas are used in three places in the Tournament Director application: to award Points for Playing on the Game Tab, to award a Score for a particular tournament on the Stats Tab, and to award an Overall Score on the Stats Tab. Your formulas will have access to player and/or tournament information in each case, such as a player's rank, their winnings, or how many hits they've made, allowing you to combine this information to arrive at a value.

 

Making sure your formula does what you intend it to do can be a difficult task. For each place you can utilize a formula, you will find a dialog for testing the formula, where you can enter values for various player statistics (such as rank) in order to test your formula.

 

In addition to player values, formulas also have available to them functions that perform specific tasks, such as calculating the square root of a number, or the average of a set of numbers.

 

Formulas can be simple or complex, but must always evaluate to a single value. You may use numerous "statements" to arrive at that value. Each statement must either be terminated with a semi-colon (;), or be placed on a separate line.

 

Here is an example of a simple formula, created for the Points for Playing property:

 

n - r + 1

 

In this example, n represents the number of players in the tournament, and r represents a player's rank. This formula awards first place a number of points equivalent to the number of players in the tournament. Each subsequent rank is awarded one less point than the rank before it. In the case of 20 players in the tournament, first place would receive 20 points, second place would receive 19 points, third place would receive 18 points, and so on, down to last (twentieth) place receiving 1 point.

 

A more complex formula:

 

if(sqrt(numberOfHits * max(rank, 7)) < 15, 1, 0)

 

Stated in English: take the maximum of either the player's rank or 7, and multiply it by the number of hits the player made. Find the square root of that number. If that value is less than 15, the resulting value is 1. Otherwise, the resulting value is 0.

 

A more complex formula using multiple statements:

 

assign("v", n + nr)

assign("percent", switch(r, 1, .3, 2, .2, 3, .12, 4, .1, 5, .08, 6, .06, 7, .04, 8, .03, 9, .025, 10, .02, 11, .015, 12, .01, 0))

assign("hits", switch(nh, 1, 20, 2, 50, 3, 90, 4, 125, 5, 160, 6, 200, 7, 250, 0))

assign("points", 0)

 

if((v >= 10) && (v <= 12), assign("points", (v * 100 * percent) + if(r < 4, v, 0)))

 

points + hits

 

This formula creates new variables using the assign() function. This makes the formula less complex, and allows the variables created to be used over and over without having to repeat the expression that created the variable. For example, the variable v is given the value "n + nr". Note that variable v is then utilized 4 times in the if() function. Instead of assigning v the value of "n + nr", we could simply replace v with "n + nr" in those 4 places it is included. This, however, would make the formula more complicated, and thus the assignment makes the formula simpler and easier to understand.

 

Note also that the final statement, "points + hits", will evaluate to a single value.

 

Numeric values in formulas must be entered using a period (.) for a decimal point, no commas (,) should be used (except where required for math functions, listed below), and no currency symbols should be used.

 

The following table lists operators that may be used in your formulas.

 

+

Addition. Adds the operand on the left to the operand on the right and returns the sum. Example 17 + 33 returns 50.

 

-

Subtraction. Subtracts the operand on the right from the operand on the left and returns the difference. Example 17 - 12 returns 5.

 

/

Division. Divides the operand on the left by the operand on the right and returns the quotient. Example 51 / 3 returns 17.

 

*

Multiplication. Multiplies the operand on the left by the operand on the right and returns the product. Example 12 * 4 returns 48.

 

=

Equals (equivalency). Compares two operands, resulting in true (or 1) if the operands are equivalent, or false (or 0) if not. Example: rank == 1 returns true if the player's rank is 1, false otherwise.

 

==

Equals (equivalency). Same as =.

 

not

Not (negation). Inverts the following operand, turning true (or 1) into false (or 0). Example: !1 returns 0.

 

!

Not (negation). Same as not.

 

!=

Does not equal. Compares two operands, resulting in true if the operands are not equivalent, or false if they are equivalent. Example: 1 != 1 returns false; 10 != 20 returns true.

 

> 

Greater than. Compares two operands, resulting in true if the operand on the left is greater in value than the operand on the right. Example: 10 > 20 returns false.

 

< 

Less than. Compares two operands, resulting in true if the operand on the left is less in value then the operand on the right. Example: 10 < 20 returns true.

 

>=

Greater than or equal to. Compares two operands, resulting in true if the operand on the left is greater than or equal in value to the operand on the right. Example: 10 >= 5 returns true; 10 >= 10 returns true.

 

<=

Less than or equal to. Compares two operands, resulting in true if the operand on the left is less than or equal in value to the operand on the right. Example: 10 <= 5 returns false; 10 <= 10 returns true; 10 <= 20 returns true.

 

and

Logical and. Compares two operands, resulting in true if both the operand on the left and the operand on the right are true (or non-zero). Example: 1 and 0 returns false; 1 and 1 returns true; (10 > 5) and (20 != 10) returns true.

 

&&

Logical and. Same as and.

 

or

Logical or. Compares two operands, resulting in true if either operand is true (or non-zero). Example: 1 or 1 returns true; 1 or 0 returns true; 0 or 0 returns false; (10 > 5) or (20 = 10) returns true

 

||

Logical or. Same as or.

 

 

The following table lists functions that may be used in your formulas.

 

abs()

Returns the absolute value of a number. Example: abs(-3) returns 3.

 

acos()

Returns the arccosine of a number (in radians). Example: acos(.1) returns 1.4706289056333368.

 

asin()

Returns the arcsine of a number (in radians). Example: asin(.1) returns 0.1001674211615598.

 

atan()

Returns the arctangent of a number (in radians). Example: atan(.1) returns 0.09966865249116204.

 

ceil()

The ceiling of a number, or the smallest integer greater than or equal to a number. Example: ceil(2.2) returns 3; ceil(2) returns 2.

 

cos()

The cosine of a number. Example: cos(1) returns 0.5403023058681398.

 

exp()

The E (Euler's constant) raised to the power of a number. Example: exp(1) returns 2.718281828459045.

 

floor()

The floor of a number, or the largest integer less than or equal to a number. Example: floor(2.2) returns 2; floor(2) returns 2.

 

log()

The natural logarithm (base E) of a number. Example: log(2) returns 0.6931471805599453.

 

log10()

The logarithm (base 10) of a number. Example: log10(2) returns 0.3010299956639812.

 

max()

The greater of two numbers. Example: max(2, 5) returns 5.

 

min()

The lesser of two numbers. Example: min(2, 5) returns 2.

 

pow()

An exponent of a number. This function takes two parameters: a base and an exponent. The value returned is the base raised to the power of the exponent. Example: pow(2, 5) returns 32 (2 raised to the power of 5); pow(5, 2) returns 25 (5 raised to the power of 2).

 

power()

This function is the same as the pow() function, and is provided only for convenience.

 

random()

A random number between 0 and 1. Example: random() returns a value such as 0.14851873902445567.

 

round()

The value of a number rounded to the nearest integer. Example: round(2.2) returns 2; round(2.7) returns 3.

 

sin()

The sine of a number. Example: sin(1) returns 0.8414709848078965.

 

sqrt()

The square root of a number. Example: sqrt(16) returns 4.

 

tan()

The tangent of a number. Example: tan(1) returns 1.5574077246549023.

 

if()

The if() function takes 3 parameters, a conditional expression and 2 result parameters. Based on the conditional expression, one of the 2 result parameters is returns. The first parameter is the conditional expression, the second and third parameters are result parameters. If the conditional parameter evaluates to true (or a non-zero number), the first result parameter is returned; otherwise, the second conditional parameter is returned.

 

Example: if(rank < 3, 10, 0) returns 10 if the player's rank is less than 3, and returns 0 otherwise.

 

switch()

The switch() function works similarly to the if() function. It takes a variable number of parameters. The first parameter is a conditional value. Further parameters should be provided in pairs. The first parameter of each pair is a comparison value, and the second parameter of each pair is a result value.

The switch() function compares the conditional value with the first (comparison) value of each pair of parameters following it. When it locates a matching value, it returns the result parameter of that matching comparison value.

Example: switch(3, 1, 10, 2, 20, 3, 30, 4, 40)
In this example, the conditional parameter is the first parameter (3). The following parameters are pairs of comparison and result values. The conditional parameter is compared to each of the comparison parameters (1, 2, 3, and 4). When a match is found (3), the pair's result parameter (30) is returned. Therefore, in this example, 30 would be returned.

If no match is found, 0 is returned. A final parameter may be supplied if you wish a default value (of something other than 0) to be returned when no matching comparison value is found.

Example: switch(6, 1, 10, 2, 20, 3, 30, 4, 40, -1)
In this example, the conditional parameter (6) doesn't match any of the comparison parameters (1, 2, 3, 4). Therefore, the final (default) parameter is returned, -1.

 

assign()

The assign() function allows you to assign a value to a variable. The first parameter is the variable name, and the second parameter is the value. Using the assign() function, you may create new variables, or assign values to existing variables. Note that the variable name must be enclosed in quotation marks. Example: assign("a", 6) assigns the value 6 to the variable a. Example: (assign("a", 6); assign("b", 3); a * b) returns 18.

 

sum()

The sum() function returns the sum of all of its parameters. A list may also be provided as a parameter (see Overall Score). Example: sum(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) returns 21.

 

product()

The product() function returns the product of all of its parameters. A list may also be provided as a parameter (see Overall Score). Example: product(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) returns 720.

 

average()

The average() function returns the average of all of its parameters. A list may also be provided as a parameter (see Overall Score). Example: average(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) returns 3.5.

 

count()

The count() function returns a count of the parameters passed to it. A list may also be provided as a parameter (see Overall Score). Example: count(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) returns 6.

 

top()

The top() function takes a count parameter, followed by any number of additional parameters, and returns a list (rather than a typical value). The first parameter specifies how many items in the list to return. The list returned will contain only the highest, or top, count values of the list. Example: top(5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) returns the list [2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

 

bottom()

The bottom() function is identical to the top() function, except that it returns the lowest, or bottom, count values of the list. Example: bottom(5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) returns the list [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

 

oneof()

The oneof() function returns true if a given value is present in a set of values, and false otherwise. The first parameter is the value we are searching for, and the remaining parameters (any number of parameters can be used) are the values in which to search. Example: oneof(r, 2, 4, 12, 24) returns true if the variable r is equal to 2, 4, 12, or 24, and returns false otherwise.

 

 

Variables you may use in your formulas are automatically created for you, depending on which property you are defining.

 

33.4.1      Points for Playing

The Points for Playing entry allows you to award points to a player based on any combination of factors. The following table lists variables that are predefined for your Points for Playing formula.

 

numberOfPlayers, n

The number of players in the tournament.

 

numberOfLeagueMembers, nm

The number of players in your tournament who are members of the league to which the tournament is assigned.

 

prizepool, pp

The amount of money in the pot.

 

totalnumberofaddons, tna

The total number of add-ons purchased by all players in the tournament.

 

totalnumberofrebuys, tnr

The total number of rebuys purchased by all players in the tournament.

 

inthemoneyrank, mr

The lowest rank a player must achieve to be "in the money" (also represents the number of players who will rank "in the money"). If you award prizes to first, second, and third place finishers, then this variable will have a value of 3, meaning a player must be ranked at least third to be considered "in the money".

 

buyinCost, bc

The amount the player paid to buy-in to the tournament.

 

buyinRake, br

The amount raked from the player's buy-in.

 

numberOfBountyChips, nbc

The number of bounty chips the player bought.

 

bountychipcost, bcc

The total cost of any bounty chips purchased by the player.

 

numberOfRebuys, nr

The number of rebuys a player has purchased.

rebuycost, rc

The amount the player paid for all rebuys purchased during the tournament.

 

rebuyRake, rr

The total amount raked from all rebuys purchased by this player.

 

numberOfAddOns, na

The number of add-ons a player has purchased.

addOncost, ac

The amount the player paid for all add-ons purchased during the tournament.

 

addOnRake, ar

The total amount raked from all add-ons purchased by this player.

 

totalcost, tc

The total amount the player paid for participating in the tournament.

 

totalrake, tr

The total amount raked from all money this player has paid into the tournament.

 

numberOfHits, nh

The number of hits a player has made.

 

numberOfBounties, nb

The number of bounty chips a player has won.

 

bountywinnings, bw

The amount of money won by this player by busting other players out of the tournament.

 

numberOfBountiesKept, nbk

The number of bounties a player has kept. A player keeps his/her bounty when he wins the tournament or is busted out by a player who has not purchased a bounty chip (and the Restrict bounties option has been selected).

 

bountyMoneyKept, bmk

The total amount of money this player paid for bounty chips, but kept because the bounty chips purchased were not won by other players.

 

prizewinnings, pw

The amount of money won by this player by qualifying for one or more prizes.

 

totalwinnings, tw

The total amount of money won by this player in this tournament.

 

take, t

The total profit for this player (the total amount won minus the total amount paid).

 

rank, r

A player's final ranking in the tournament.

 

position

The position in which the player busted out of the tournament (the inverse of the rank). The player who is the first to bust-out of the tournament will have a position of 1. The player who busts-out second will have a position of 2. And so on.

 

inthemoney, m

True (or 1) if this player has ranked 'in the money', false (or 0) otherwise. A player is 'in the money' if they have been awarded a prize based on the rank they have achieved.

 

fixedRake

The portion of the Fixed Rake that can be attributed to this player (the fixed rake divided by the number of players).

 

finalTable

1 (true) if this player made the final table, 0 (false) otherwise.

 

playingTime

The number of seconds that this player was active (not busted out) in the tournament.

 

roundOut, ro

The round in which this player busted out of the tournament.

 

inLeague

1 (true) if this player is a member of the league to which the tournament is assigned, 0 (false) otherwise.

 

leagueRank

If this player is a member of the league to which the tournament is assigned, then this value ranks this player relative to other players who are also members of the league. This value is 0 otherwise.

 

Note that some variables have both a long and short name, and both are recognized (and will contain the same value). Therefore, the variables r and rank both have the same value, and can be used interchangeably.

 

Some examples:

 

Let's say you want to award the top 10 players in your tournament with points, and any player receiving a rank greater than 10 with no points. Let's also say you wanted 1st place to get 10 points, 2nd place to get 9 points, etc, down to 10th place getting only 1 point. Here's how this could be accomplished using the if() function:

 

if(rank <= 10, 11 - rank, 0)

 

The result of this function will be 11-rank if the player's rank is 10 or less. The result will be 0 if the player's rank is greater than 10. If the player's rank is 10, the result will be 1; if the player's rank is 9, the result will be 2; etc.

 

This result could also be achieved with the following formula:

 

max(11 - rank, 0)

 

When the player's rank is greater than 11, the results of 11 - rank will be negative. However, the max() function will return the greater of the two numbers, so 0 will always be the result when the value of 11 - rank is negative.

 

Let's add one more stipulation. Let's say that in order to receive points, the player must rank in the top 10 and must have busted at least one other player out of the tournament:

 

if((rank <= 10) and (numberOfHits > 0), 11 - rank, 0)

 

In this formula, if the player's rank is greater than 10 or the player has no hits (has not busted any other players out of the tournament), then the condition will evaluate to false (or 0), and therefore the result of the function will be 0. However, if the rank is less than or equal to 10 and the player has more than 0 hits (has busted at least one player out), then the condition will evaluate to true (or 1), and the result will be 11 - rank.

 

Functions can also be nested (inside one another):

 

if(sqrt(numberOfHits * max(rank, 7)) < 15, 1, 0)

 

Additional examples:

 

n - r + 1

 

This formula gives each player 1 point for playing, plus 1 point for each player that busts out before they do.

 

 

n - r

 

Same as above, but does not include the 1 point for playing.

 

 

(n - r) * 2

 

This formula gives each player 2 points for each player that busts out before they do.

 

 

(1 - (r / (n + 1))) * 100

 

This formula gives each player a number of points in the range of 0 to 100, based proportionally on their ranking in the tournament.

 

 

round(10 * sqrt(n) / sqrt(r)) - 9

 

This formula gives higher ranking placers substantially more points, with more points given for larger tournaments.

 

 

33.4.2      Score

When computing statistics, you may assign a Score value to a player for each tournament in which the player participated. The Scores for each tournament may then be applied to an Overall Score formula. The variables that are available to your Scores formula are the same as with the Points for Playing formula, with the addition of the following:

 

points

The number of points awarded to the player.

 

 

33.4.3      Overall Score

The Overall Score formula allows you to combine the individual Scores a player received for each tournament in which they participated to arrive at a final score value for the player. The following table lists variables that are pre-defined for your Overall Score formulas.

 

 

numberOfTournaments, n

The total number of tournaments that passed the filter. This may not reflect the total number of tournaments in which a particular player participated. For example, a player may have played in only 5 of 10 total tournaments for a season.

 

scores

A list of score values for the tournaments in which the player participated. This variable is ideal for use in one of the functions that take a list of values as parameters, such as sum(), product(), and average().

 

 

Some Overall Score examples:

 

average(scores)

 

This formula would simply return the average score for a player.

 

assign("c", count(scores))

average(top(c-1, scores))

 

This formula would return the average score for a player if the lowest score the player achieved was dropped.

 

assign("c", count(scores))

average(top(c-2, bottom(c-1, scores)))

 

This formula would return the average score for a player if the lowest and highest scores the player achieved were dropped.

 

 

34     Choosing Columns

The Column Chooser dialog is utilized in a number of places. The dialog allows you to choose which columns you wish to display or export, and in which order you wish them to appear.

 

The left-hand side of the dialog lists the columns that will be displayed (or exported), while the right-hand column lists the columns that will not be displayed (or exported). The arrow up and arrow down buttons move the selected column names in the "Show These" list up or down, respectively. The arrow left button moves the selected column names in the "Don't Show These" list to the "Show These" list. The arrow right button moves the selected column names in the "Show These" list to the "Don't Show These" list.

 

To select multiple columns, click a column name and drag the mouse up or down. Or, hold the Ctrl key while clicking other column names.

 

Press the OK button when you have the desired columns in the desired order in the "Show These" list. To restore the columns to their default settings, press the Reset to Default button.

 

 

35     Importing Players

The Tournament Director can import players from a CSV (comma-separated values) file. Players can be imported into your player database, or directly into a tournament.

 

To import players, you must begin with a CSV compatible file. If, for example, your player roster is kept in Excel, you can easily save this file as a CSV file, and then import it into your player database (be sure to save the file in CSV format first - the Tournament Director cannot import files in Excel's native file format (.xsl).

 

Press the Import button on the Database Tab to import players into your player database. Press the Import button on the Players Tab to import players directly into your tournament. The Import Players from CSV File Wizard will open and guide you through the import process.

 

First, you'll need to specify the CSV file. Press the Next button after specifying the CSV file from which to import.

 

Next, the first line of the selected file will be displayed and you'll need to indicate whether the first line is a line of column names or if it is a player to be imported. This prevents the import from importing the column names line as a player, if one is present in the CSV file. For example, if your CSV file looks like this:

 

Nick-name,First,Middle initial,Last,Email address

Joe S,Joe,H,Smith,joe@abc.com

Jane D,Jane,C,Doe,jane@abcd.net

 

You would select Column names, because the first line represents names of each of the columns of data. If your CSV file looks like this:

 

Joe S,Joe,H,Smith,joe@abc.com

Jane D,Jane,C,Doe,jane@abcd.net

 

You would select Player data, since the first line is actually a player to be imported.

 

After specifying the first line, press the Next button.

 

You will next need to map the columns of the CSV file to the fields used by the Tournament Director. The dialog will display the columns of the first line of the CSV file on the left. On the right, select the player information field that corresponds to the column on the left. If you do not wish to import a specific column from the CSV file, leave the corresponding selection set to <None>. In the first example above, you would map "Nick-name" to "Nickname", "First" to "First Name", "Last" to "Last Name", "Email address" to "Email 1", and leave "Middle initial" mapped to "<None>", since the Tournament Director does not have a field corresponding to a player's middle initial.

 

Press the Next button to move to the final step of the import. Here, the Tournament Director will give an overview of what will occur when the CSV file is imported.

 

If you are importing players into your player database, a League selection will be shown. Select the league to which you wish the imported players to initially belong. Or select <None> if you do not wish to assign the players to a league initially. You can always update each player's league membership after the import.

 

The list of players to be imported will be displayed next. Use the checkbox next to each player to indicate whether or not the player should be imported. Players are checked by default when importing, unless the Tournament Director has detected a name conflict. If the player being imported has the same nickname or the same first and last name as another player (either in your database or your current tournament, depending on where you are importing), the player will not be checked by default. Likewise, if the CSV file contains more than one player with the same nickname or the same first and last name, the player will not be checked by default. This is done to help prevent duplicate players. You are not prevented from importing duplicate players. Simply place a check in the box next to any player to import that player.

 

If any lines in the CSV file could not be processed by the import wizard, they will be displayed next.

 

Review the dialog and press the Import button to import from the CSV file. The Import button will remain disabled until at least one player is selected to be imported from the CSV file.

 

 

36     Exporting Data

You can export data from the Tournament Director in different ways. Most export features offer to export the data in CSV or HTML format. CSV stands for Comma-Separated Values, and is suitable for import into other programs, such as Microsoft's Excel.

 

For some of the export features, you will be asked to choose columns of data to be exported. See the Choosing Columns dialog for information on selecting columns.

 

The export format you choose is saved as part of your preferences. The next time you export from the same export feature, your last chosen export format will already be configured.

 

For export features that allow you to export to HTML, a template file is used to generate the resulting exported HTML file. The template file is read, tokens in the file are replaced with data from the tournament and the new file is saved. Listed below are the various export features, their corresponding (default) HTML template files, and the tokens supported by each export feature. All default export templates are located in the templates folder inside of the currently selected Data Store.

 

You can modify the template file to your own preferences, or provide one of your own. It is recommended that you do NOT modify the template files that are included with the Tournament Director software but instead provide your own for two reasons: (1) By keeping the original, you always have an example to refer to, or a working copy to fall back on; and (2) if you update the software to a new version, the original template files will be updated. Therefore, if you have modified the original template files, they will be overwritten when the Tournament Director software is updated, and you will lose your modifications. See Config Files for information on specifying your own template file(s).

 

Default template file: TournamentExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

league: The tournament's league.

season: The tournament's season.

buyininfo: A description of the buy-in amount. For example, "$50 Buy-in".

rebuyinfo: A description of the rebuy amount. For example, "$100 to Rebuy, through round 3", or "No Rebuys".

addoninfo: A description of the add-on amount. For example, "$50 to Add-on, through round 3", or "No Add-ons".

rebuys: The number of rebuys purchased during the tournament.

addons: The number of add-ons purchased during the tournament.

players: The number of players who participated in the tournament.

pot: The total value of the prize pool.

payouts: The number of prizes awarded to specific ranks.

starttime: The time the tournament started.

endtime: The time the tournament ended.

playerRankingsColumns: The first row of the players information table, containing only the column names.

playerRankingsRows: The players information table (not including the column names).

elapsedtime: The amount of time that has elapsed since the tournament started.

playingtime: The amount of actual play time that has elapsed since the tournament started. Note that this sums the time for each round up to the current point in the tournament. If you change the schedule, set or reset the clock, or skip levels during a tournament, this value will not necessarily be accurate.

history: The tournament history (see Tournament History).

actionsummary: A concise summary of the actions that have occurred in the tournament (see Action Summary).

 

Default template file: RoundsExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

roundsColumns: The first row of the rounds information table, containing only the column names.

roundsRows: The rounds information table (not including the column names).

 

Default template file: PlayersExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

playersColumns: The first row of the players information table, containing only the column names.

playersRows: The players information table (not including the column names).

 

Default template file: PrizesExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

prizesColumns: The first row of the prizes information table, containing only the column names.

prizesRows: The prizes information table (not including the column names).

 

Default template file: TablesExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

tables: The tables diagram.

 

Default template file: SummaryExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

buyins: The total amount paid by all players to buy-in to the tournament.

buyinscount: The total number of buy-ins.

rebuys: The total amount paid for all rebuys.

rebuyscount: The total number of rebuys.

addons: The total amount paid for all add-ons.

addonscount: The total number of add-ons.

totaltakein: The total amount of money collected from players.

totaltakeincount: The total number of buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons.

buyinsrake: The amount of money raked from buy-ins.

rebuysrake: The amount of money raked from rebuys.

addonsrake: The amount of money raked from add-ons.

fixedrake: The amount of fixed rake.

totalrake: The total amount of money raked.

housecontribution: The amount of money contributed to the pot by the house.

totalpot1: The total amount of money available for the pot (from buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons).

guaranteedpot: The amount that the house guarantees the pot will be. If the sum of the money collected from players and the house contribution minus the rake is less than the guaranteed pot, the house will make up the difference.

houseadds: The amount that must be added (typically by the house) to the pot in order to reach the guaranteed pot amount.

totalpot2: The total amount in the pot (from buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons, plus any house contribution).

prizesvariable: The total amount of prize pool money allocated to variable prizes.

prizesvariablecount: The total number of variable prizes.

prizesfixed: The total amount of the prize pool money allocated to fixed prizes.

prizesfixedcount: The total number of fixed prizes.

prizesnonmonetarycount: The number of non-monetary prizes.

totalprizes: The sum of the prizes allocated.

totalprizescount: The total number of prizes allocated.

bountiesbought: The sum of all bounty chips bought.

bountiesboughtcount: The total number of bounty chips bought.

bountieswon: The sum of all bounty chips won.

bountieswoncount: The total number of bounty chips won

bountieskept: The sum of all bounty chips bought and not won. A player keeps their bounty chip when they either win the tournament, or they are busted out by a player who did not purchase a bounty chip.

bountieskeptcount: The total number of bounty chips bought and not won

starttime: The time that the tournament started.

endtime: The time that the tournament ended.

firstplayerout: The first player to bust out of the tournament.

winner: The winner of the tournament.

actionsummary: The list of actions that have occurred in the tournament.

 

Default template file: DatabaseExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

playersColumns: The first row of the players information table, containing only the column names.

playersRows: The players information table (not including the column names).

Default template file: StatsExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

eventname: The tournament name.

description: The tournament description.

stats: The players information table (including columns names and sum line).

 

Default template file: HotkeysExport.html

 

timestamp: The current date and time.

hotkeys: The hotkeys and their definitions, in table format.

 

Default template file: Receipt.html

 

eventname: The tournament name.

date: The current date.

time: The current time.

receiptnumber: The receipt number.

salesperson: The sales person.

nickname: The Nickname field of the player.

firstname: The First name field of the player.

lastname: The Last name field of the player.

streetaddress: The Street address field of the player.

city: The City field of the player.

state: The State field of the player.

zipcode: The Zipcode field of the player.

country: The Country field of the player.

phone1: The Phone1 field of the player.

phone2: The Phone2 field of the player.

email1: The Email1 field of the player.

email2: The Email2 field of the player.

notes: The Notes field of the player.

id: The ID field of the player.

tablename: For buy-in receipts, if the player is already seated (in the case that your settings allow the seating of players who have not yet bought-in to the tournament, or you utilize the Auto Seat option), this will represent the name of the table at which the player is seated.

seatnumber: The seat number at which the player is seated. See previous token tablename.

 

 

Note that player information is only available in Track Players mode.

 

Default template file: PlayerMovement.html

 

eventname: The tournament name.

date: The current date.

time: The current time.

player: The name of the player to be moved.

currentseat: The current seat of the player to be moved.

movingto: The new seat of the player to be moved.

 

This template has a special element with both a starting and ending tag: <movement> and </movement>.

This pair signifies what each line in which a player movement is listed should look like. The text between these two tags will be repeated for each player in the listing. The tags themselves will be removed from the final output.

 

 

37     Printing

Due to limitations in the framework on which the Tournament Director software is built, the Tournament Director does not support printing directly from the application. In most cases, printing is accomplished via the exporting of data from the program to an appropriate format (such as HTML), opening the exported file in another application (such as Internet Explorer), and printing from that application.

 

However, in a few areas a print operation can be initiated directly from the Tournament Director. Because Internet Explorer is used for printing, there are a few limitations.

First, items are not automatically printed. When an item is printed, a print will be initiated, and a print dialog will open. It remains up to the user to press the Print button on the print dialog.

 

Second, Internet Explorer automatically generates headers and footers for printed content. The format of the header and footer cannot be modified from within the Tournament Director program. They must be modified from Internet Explorer. In Internet Explorer, select Page Setup from the File menu. Here you can modify the header and footer, as well as the margins. You may need to restart the Tournament Director for Page Setup changes to take effect.

 

For items that can be printed from within the Tournament Director application, modifying the look of the printed item is done in exactly the same way as is done when exporting data. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the printed item.

 

 

38     HTML Colors

Where ever colors are specified, you may enter any valid HTML color. HTML colors are specific color names (listed below), or an RGB triple preceded with #, consisting of three numbers (in hexadecimal) representing the intensity of red, green, and blue, respectively. For example:

 

#00FF00 or blue (these are equivalent)

 

Any valid HTML color is acceptable, including "transparent".

 

The standard HTML colors are listed below. You may use one of them or an RGB triple. However, knowing how to use either of these is unnecessary, as anywhere a color is accepted, a button to open the Color dialog is included, so that you may choose colors directly.

 

aliceblue, antiquewhite, aqua, aquamarine, azure, beige, bisque, black, blanchedalmond, blue, blueviolet, brown, burlywood, cadetblue, chartreuse, chocolate, coral, cornflowerblue, cornsilk, crimson, cyan, darkblue, darkcyan, darkgoldenrod, darkgray, darkgreen, darkkhaki, darkmagenta, darkolivegreen, darkorange, darkorchid, darkred, darksalmon, darkseagreen, darkslateblue, darkslategray, darkturquoise, darkviolet, deeppink, deepskyblue, dimgray, dodgerblue, firebrick, floralwhite, forestgreen, fuchsia, gainsboro, ghostwhite, gold, goldenrod, gray, green, greenyellow, honeydew, hotpink, indianred, indigo, ivory, khaki, lavender, lavenderblush, lawngreen, lemonchiffon, lightblue, lightcoral, lightcyan, lightgoldenrodyellow, lightgreen, lightgrey, lightpink, lightsalmon, lightseagreen, lightskyblue, lightslategray, lightsteelblue, lightyellow, lime, limegreen, linen, magenta, maroon, mediumaquamarine, mediumblue, mediumorchid, mediumpurple, mediumseagreen, mediumslateblue, mediumspringgreen, mediumturquoise, mediumvioletred, midnightblue, mintcream, mistyrose, moccasin, navajowhite, navy, oldlace, olive, olivedrab, orange, orangered, orchid, palegoldenrod, palegreen, paleturquoise, palevioletred, papayawhip, peachpuff, peru, pink, plum, powderblue, purple, red, rosybrown, royalblue, saddlebrown, salmon, sandybrown, seagreen, seashell, sienna, silver, skyblue, slateblue, slategray, snow, springgreen, steelblue, tan, teal, thistle, tomato, turquoise, violet, wheat, white, whitesmoke, yellow, yellowgreen

 

 

39.1.1      Become familiar with all of the facets of running a tournament using the Tournament Director before your first tournament!

This can mean the difference between a smooth running tournament and a problematic tournament. You should run a mock tournament beforehand:

Add players to your database

Configure the parameters of the tournament

Buy players in

Start the clock, pause the clock, advance the round

Bust players out

Rebuy players and/or add-on players, if your tournament allows

Undo busting players out, rebuying and adding-on

 

39.1.2      Auto save is a good thing.

Remember to check the Auto save checkbox. Another good option is to make backups. See the Preferences Tab for information on making backups of saved tournaments.

 

39.1.3      Always write tournament information down.

Be prepared for the absolute worst. The power goes out. Your hard-drive crashes. Someone spills a beer on the laptop.

 

 

See the FAQ section of the website for the most current Frequently Asked Questions:

 

http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/faq.html

 

 

 

When in window mode (not in full-screen mode), if you click the windows close button (the X button located in the upper-right corner of the window title bar) on the Game Window, the Tournament Director will confirm that you wish to exit the Tournament Director application, allowing you to continue to exit (by pressing the OK button), or cancel and return to the Tournament Director application (by pressing the Cancel button). If you have Internet Explorer 7 or later installed, the Tournament Director may exit regardless of which button you press. This is a known bug in Internet Explorer 7, and there is no known workaround at this time.

If you have Internet Explorer 7 or later installed, and have ClearType enabled, some text may be rendered in ClearType and other text may be rendered in standard windows type. This is a known bug in Internet Explorer 7, and there is no known workaround at this time.

The title bar for the Settings dialog typically displays the path and filename of the current tournament, and an * when the settings have been modified and not saved. The title bar will only display this information if you have Internet Explorer 7 or greater installed.

 

For the latest information, please see the Frequently Asked Questions list at the Tournament Director website:

http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/faq.html

 

 

The Tournament Director software began as a tool to use in my own poker tournaments, and those of my coworkers. It has evolved into what it is today primarily as a result of hundreds of suggestions and enhancement requests sent from users all over the world. Throughout the development of the software, there were many users who went far beyond the extra mile in helping to track down, debug, and ultimately solve software bugs, compatibility issues, Internet Explorer deficiencies, Windows Media Player quirks, HTML idiosyncrasies, and general usability issues. To attempt to name individual contributors would inevitably result in the inadvertent omission of some, so I won't attempt it. Let me instead extend a collective Thank You to everyone who has helped.