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.

3 Requirements

· Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10)

· Internet Explorer 7.0 or later

Internet Explorer 7.0 is required for the software to function properly. Internet Explorer version 8.0 or later is highly recommended for an optimal experience. Internet Explorer does not need to be your primary (default) browser, but it must be installed or the Tournament Director will not function. Most Windows PCs have Internet Explorer installed by default so this is rarely an issue. * Beta versions of Internet Explorer are not supported and will most likely not work!

· Windows Media Player 7 or later

Windows Media Player does not need to be your primary (default) media player, but it must be installed in order for Tournament Director sounds to play. Most Windows PCs have Windows Media Player installed by default so this is rarely an issue.

· 1024x768 screen size or greater

Although smaller screen sizes will work, the Tournament Director is designed for 1024x768. A larger screen size can be beneficial, and some built-in layouts will take advantage of larger screen sizes. The layout has a scaling feature that can make most layouts work on smaller screen sizes as well.

4 What's New

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.

5 Getting Started

A Windows 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 those new to the software. 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 be 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.

6 Using the Tournament Director

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. It is completely configurable, and can display the Tournament Screen, which is composed of one or more screens that you can tailor to your own taste, and several built-in screens: 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. The Settings Window also optionally displays the Dashboard, which gives current tournament information and has some select controls, which allows you to see and control your tournament from anywhere within the Settings Window.

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.

You'll find that most everything in the application is optional, allowing you to tailor the application to fit your personal taste.

6.1 Some Quick Tips

Settings are configuration items related to the tournament itself, or the layout (how the tournament information is presented to your players). When a tournament is saved, all of the tournament's settings are saved.

Preferences are configuration items related to the Tournament Director application, and typically control how the application behaves or how it is presented to you, the user. Preferences are saved independently of tournaments, and are saved automatically by the Tournament Director application. Most preferences are configured on the Preferences Tab of the Settings Window. A few preferences that are specific to certain aspects of the application can be found located where those items are configured. For example, the preference that controls which columns are displayed on the Players Tab of the Settings Window can be found on the Players Tab, not on the Preferences Tab.

On most dialogs in which players (or other items) are listed for selection, typing a player's name will cause the list to jump to the first item beginning with the typed letters.

On most dialogs in which players (or other items) are listed for selection, pressing Ctrl+F will toggle the display of the Find section on the dialog (allowing you to perform searches on the list of players or items).

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 located when you click the right mouse button. 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.

Starting with Internet Explorer version 8, the context menus can sometimes appear partially off-screen (previously, Internet Explorer always ensured the context menus were fully visible on the screen). To counteract this change, you can use the mouse scroll wheel to "rotate" the context menu. If you right-click and part of the context menu that you need to access appears off screen, make sure the mouse cursor is over the context menu and scroll the mouse scroll wheel. This will rotate the context menu and hopefully move it into a more accessible position.

Context menus can also be navigated with the cursor keys and the Enter key on your keyboard. After clicking the right mouse button to open the context menu, pressing the cursor up or cursor down key will move the currently highlighted entry, and pressing the Enter key will select the currently highlighted entry.

Tooltips are hints or instructions that appear when you place 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 place the cursor 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, place the cursor 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).

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 window.

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 selecting Maximize Settings window from the context menu. To restore the Settings Window to its default size, select Restore Settings window from the context menu.

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

8.1 Tournament Information

The Tournament Information section contains basic information about your tournament.

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

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.

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.

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.

8.2 General Financial

The General Financial section configures basic financial information about your tournament.

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.

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

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

Use player bounty chips: Check this box if you will issue a "bounty" chip to each of 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. The hitman only gets the busted-out player's bounty chip that they received at buy-in; they do not collect bounty chips that the busted-out player received from other players. At the end of the tournament the chips are cashed in, 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 chip, and will also cash them in for their cost.

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 a bounty chip to be able to win bounty chips. If this box is NOT checked, anyone busting out another player will win that player's bounty chip. If checked, only players who have themselves purchased a bounty chip can win bounty chips by busting players out. Therefore, if this option is 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 the bounty chip cost.

Points for playing: 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. This value can also be a formula. See Formulas for more information on creating a Points for playing formula.

You can test your Points for playing formula by pressing the Test Formula button. On the Points for Playing Formula dialog, you can adjust and test your formula. By entering test values for the various aspects of the state of a tournament (number of players in the tournament, and a hypothetical player's rank, number of add-ons purchased, number of rebuys purchased, etc.), you can see what value will be calculated by your formula. When you press the Test button, the number of points computed by the formula will appear in the Formula Results section. If something is wrong with your formula, the Points awarded value will indicate this.

Pressing the Test Range button opens the Test Range dialog, which allows you to see the values computed by your formula when one of the variables changes. For example, you can configure the Test Range dialog to change the value of the r variable (which refers to a player's rank), to see a list of the points that would be awarded for each rank.

The Cheat Sheet button will open a page in your default browser that lists all available variables, functions, and formula operators, with descriptions and examples for each one. This is an invaluable tool and should be utilized when creating your formula.

When you have finished configuring your formula, press the OK button to close the dialog and transfer your formula from the testing dialog to the Points for playing input on the Game Tab.

8.3 Buy-in

The Buy-in section contains information pertaining only to the buy-in configuration of the tournament. You can have several buy-in profiles, but only one is necessary. See Profiles for more information.

Fee: The amount each player must pay to enter the tournament.

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

Rake: The amount to be raked (removed) from each player's buy-in fee 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 rake.

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

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.

Allow change at buy-in: Any of the buy-in configuration items can be changed at the time the buy-in is purchased. If this box is checked, all buy-in values will be read-only at the time the buy-in is purchased, disallowing any change.

8.4 Rebuys

The Rebuys section contains information pertaining only to the rebuy configuration of the tournament. This section will be disabled and rebuys will not be allowed unless the box next to the Rebuys label is checked. You can have several rebuy profiles, but only one is necessary. See Profiles for more information.

The first 4 configuration items limit the number of rebuys that can be purchased, or the amount of time in which rebuys can be purchased. When a rebuy is initiated but a limit has been reached, a dialog will be shown that explains the limitation. The dialog will also allow the user to override this limitation and perform the rebuy.

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

Max 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.

Max total: 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.

Min players: 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.

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.

Fee: The price a player pays to rebuy into the tournament.

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

Chips: The number of chips a player receives when he/she purchases a rebuy.

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

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.

Allow change at rebuy: Any of the rebuy configuration items can be changed at the time the rebuy is purchased. If this box is checked, all rebuy values will be read-only at the time the rebuy is purchased, disallowing any change.

8.5 Add-ons

The Add-ons section contains information pertaining only to the add-on configuration of the tournament. This section will be disabled and add-ons will not be allowed unless the box next to the Add-ons label is checked. You can have several add-on profiles, but only one is necessary. See Profiles for more information.

The first 4 configuration items limit the number of add-ons that can be purchased, or the amount of time in which add-ons can be purchased. When an add-on is initiated but a limit has been reached, a dialog will be shown that explains the limitation. The dialog will also allow the user to override this limitation and perform the add-on.

Last 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.

Max 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.

Max total: 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.

Min players: 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.

Fee: The price a player pays to purchase an add-on.

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

Chips: The number of chips a player receives when he/she purchases an add-on.

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

Allow change at add-on: Any of the add-on configuration items can be changed at the time the add-on is purchased. If this box is checked, all add-on values will be read-only at the time the add-on is purchased, disallowing any change.

8.6 Profiles

Profiles are named configurations of buy-ins, rebuys, and add-ons, that allow easy selection of different parameters at the time a buy-in, rebuy, or add-on is purchased. Most tournaments will need only a single buy-in, rebuy, and/or add-on configuration. But if your tournament allows players to buy-in for different fees, or distributes different starting chips to players based on buy-in time or method, you may benefit from configuring additional buy-in profiles.

As an example, a tournament host may announce the tournament start time to be 5pm, and players receive 5,000 chips at the start of the tournament. To encourage players to arrive and register for the tournament early, the host may give an extra 500 chips to players registering by 4:30pm. The host may allow players to arrive as late as 6pm, but to discourage late arrival may penalize the player by requiring an additional $10.00 fee. In this sample scenario, 3 buy-in profiles can be created, which we could name "Early Registration", "On-time Registration", and "Late Registration". The "Early Registration" profile has the standard buy-in fee and players receive 5,500 chips. The "On-time Registration" profile has the standard buy-in fee and players receive 5,000 chips. The "Late Registration" profile has a buy-in fee that is $10.00 more than the standard buy-in fee and the players receive 5,000 chips. By creating these buy-in profiles, when buying players into the tournament the tournament registrar only has to select a profile based on the current time, and doesn't have to remember (or change) any of the specific details of the buy-in. Further, the buy-in profile name is stored as part of the buy-in for each player, and thus it becomes an additional information detail we can use. For example, it is then easy to determine which players arrived early, which players arrived on-time, and which players arrived late.

8.7 Auto-save

Changes to your tournament are saved when you press the Save (or Save As...) button on the Game Tab of the Settings Window. Like most applications, if you attempt to exit the application while there are unsaved changes, the Tournament Director application will ask you if you would like to save your tournament first.

By checking the Auto-save box in the Options section of the Game Tab, the Tournament Director application will also automatically save your tournament at regular intervals. See the Preferences Tab for Auto-save preferences (under "Loading / Saving"). The Auto-save checkbox will be colored red if the Auto-save option is disabled; yellow if the Auto-save option is enabled but there are currently unsaved changes to your tournament; and green when the Auto-save option is enabled and all changes have been saved. A reminder will be displayed just below the Settings Window tabs when your tournament has been changed in some way and Auto-save is not enabled.

8.8 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.

When the Tournament Director software has determined there are issues with your tournament configuration that may prevent the start of your tournament, or may cause other unwanted behavior during your tournament, it will alert you by highlighting the Alerts button on the Game Tab. If the Alerts button is not highlighted, the Tournament Director has detected no issues with your tournament.

After your tournament configuration is complete, you may start your tournament in one of several 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; you may start the clock by clicking the "play" button on the Dashboard. 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 (optionally) 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. Select the action you wish to happen when the countdown ends. Select whether or not to start the countdown immediately, or start the countdown with the clock paused. A finally press the OK button to start the countdown.

To cancel a running 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 Level button on the Controls Tab. The tournament will begin at level 1 and the clock will automatically be paused. You may also skip the countdown by pressing the Start Tournament button on the Controls Tab. The tournament will begin at level 1 and the clock will continue running.

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.

8.9 Loading and Saving Your Tournaments

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 for you 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.

8.10 Loading Pre-2.0 Tournaments

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.

8.11 Creating a New Tournament

Press the New button to create a new tournament. You will be given the option to create a new tournament "from scratch", in which all tournament settings will return to their default state, or to select a saved tournament file to use as a template. In this case, the saved tournament file will be loaded and reset to a pre-tournament state, and all players will return to a pre-buy-in state. (The filename will also be "reset" so that, when the tournament is saved, you will be required to supply a filename and thus avoid accidentally overwriting the original tournament you used as a template.)

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

8.12 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. Or to place the tournament history on your system clipboard, press the Copy to Clipboard button.

8.13 Exporting Your Tournament

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:

The Tournament Director
Select this format to print the tournament summary or to export the tournament summary to an HTML file. After selecting this format, you must choose the columns you wish to use when printing exporting the tournament. See Choosing Columns for help in using the column chooser dialog. You may also choose the template to use when exporting the tournament, and the maximum number of players to export or print. A default template will be automatically selected. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

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.

The Poker Leaderboard - Online Poker League Manager

This a web content management system plug-in. By exporting to this format, you can directly upload your exported tournament into your own website running this plug-in.

8.14 Exiting the Tournament Director

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 and your current layout, if necessary.

8.15 Registering the Tournament Director

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.

8.16 About 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, your Support Key (which you may be required to supply to receive technical support), the most recent changes to the software, and your license information.

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.

9.1 Status Panel

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

9.2 Level Properties

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. There are a total of 8 "Limit" values that may be used.

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.

9.3 Adding New Levels

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 section to add a new round or break.

9.4 Editing a Level

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

9.5 Changing the Rounds Tab View

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, or just use the cursor keys to move throughout the schedule. 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.

9.6 Deleting a Level

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.

9.7 Suggesting a Schedule

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.

9.8 Setting the Current Level

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.

9.9 Loading and Saving Templates

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.

9.10 Creating a New Schedule

Press the New button to create a new rounds schedule. You will be given the option to create a new schedule "from scratch" (a blank schedule), or to select a saved rounds schedule to use as a template. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before clearing the schedule or loading a schedule template.

9.11 Exporting the Schedule

You may export your tournament schedule by pressing the Export button. See Exporting Data for information on configuring the format of the export.

9.12 Preferences

Press the Preferences button to open the Rounds Tab Preferences dialog. Here you can configure the columns that are displayed on the Rounds Tab. 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. This mode is appropriate for easier tournament management, or for large tournaments with many players.

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.

Having players in your player database serves several purposes. First, it makes it easy to setup a tournament when you typically play with the same group of players. By having the players in your database, you only have to enter their information into the program once, and you simply choose which players will attend and play from a list of players in your database when setting up your tournament. Second, having players in your player database allows the software to identify the same player in different tournaments, and thus compute statistics for the player over multiple tournaments. Statistics cannot be computed for players that are not in 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.

Status: The player's current status in the tournament (bought-in, busted-out, etc.).

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.

10.2 Simple Mode

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.

10.3 Status Panel

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 section 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.

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 section 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.

10.5 Importing Players

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.

10.6 Removing Players

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 unpaid only link to have the Tournament Director place a check next to only those players who have not yet bought-in to the tournament. Press the check not Paid in Full only link to have the Tournament Director place a check next to only those players who are not marked as Paid in Full. 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. The Details section lists the values to be used when purchasing the buy-in. Selecting a different Profile will change all of the values to match that profile. You may change any of the values for the buy-in, as long as the selected Profile allows changes at buy-in. The final line displays the total amount that should be collected from each player who is buying-in.

If the Auto Seat box is checked players buying into the tournament will be automatically seated randomly. 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.

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.

10.8 Undoing Player Buy-ins

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 red (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.

If the Allow seating of players who have not bought-in setting on the Tables Tab is enabled, you can choose whether or not to unseat players for whom you are undoing the buy-in. If this setting is disabled, the Unseat players box will be disabled.

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, hits, number of seating moves, 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 Winnings adjustment 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 Points adjustment 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.

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

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

The 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 History section 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, as they may have consequences within the context of the tournament as a whole. Note that you may abort changes made by simply canceling the dialog. Changes are not committed until you press the OK button.

The Income section displays details on any income the player has received from the current tournament.

Press the Edit button in the Info section to edit a player's personal information. Press the Add button to add this tournament player to your player database, or press the Change button to change this tournament player's database association. Press the Merge button to merge this tournament player with an existing player in your database, or press the Unmerge button to disassociate this tournament player from a player in your player database. If you perform one of these actions (Add, Change, Merge, or Unmerge) you can press the Undo button to undo the action.

When you make changes to a player on the Edit Game Player dialog, you will see the dialog information update automatically. 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.

10.10 Database Operations

Pressing the Database button opens the Database Operations dialog. Here you can perform several database-related operations on more than one player at a time.

10.10.1 Add to the database players in your current tournament

This feature allows you to quickly add to your database any players in your current tournament that are not already in your player database.

10.10.2 Merge players in your current tournament with players in the database

This feature allows you to merge players in your current tournament that are not already in your player database with players that already exist in your player database.

10.10.3 Add to a league players in your current tournament

This feature allows you to quickly add one or more players in your current tournament to an existing league in your player database.

10.10.4 Remove from a league players in your current tournament

This feature allows you to quickly remove one or more players in your current tournament from an existing league in your player database.

10.11 Selecting a Player at Random

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.

10.12 Adding Players to your Database

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 button in the Info section. 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 Database button, then press the Add to the database players in your current tournament button.

10.13 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 button in the Info section. 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.

10.14 Merging Players

Sometimes you may add a player to your tournament that is not in your player database, and later realize that the player was 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 in the Info section. 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 Database button and then press the Merge players in your current tournament with players in the database 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.

10.15 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 Unmerge button in the Info section. 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.

10.16 Adjusting Player Rankings

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.

10.16.1 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.

10.16.2 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.

10.17 Time Shifting

The Time Shift feature allows you to shift all recorded dates and times in a tournament. This is useful if the computer's clock was incorrect at the time the tournament was run. Press the Time Shift button to adjust the times recorded in a tournament.

10.18 Setting Chip Counts

A player's chip count is the amount of 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.

10.19 Transactions

Press the Transactions button on the Players Tab to open the Transactions dialog. This dialog displays all transactions made (buy-in, rebuy, add-on) during the course of the tournament. Transactions may be sorted and/or filtered by type, making it easy to find a particular transaction or set of transactions. By checking boxes next to more than one player, changes can be made to multiple transactions at one time.

Double-click a row to edit a single transaction. Place checks in several boxes and then press the Edit Multi button to edit multiple transactions at once. When editing multiple transactions, some fields may show actual values while others show the text "multiple values". Fields with actual values indicate that all transactions being edited have the same value for that particular field. Fields with the text "multiple values" indicate that two or more transactions being edited have different values for that field. Only fields that you make changes to will be changed. All other fields will remain unchanged for all transactions being edited.

Transactions with no receipt will have a Create Receipt button. When the Create Receipt button is pressed, a receipt ID is assigned to the transaction, but a receipt file is not created and a receipt is not printed. Transactions already having a receipt ID will have a Print Receipt and Create Receipt File button, which can be used to reprint the receipt or recreate the receipt file, respectively.

10.20 Settings

Press the Settings button to open the Players Settings dialog. Here you'll find settings related to players in your tournament. Settings are saved with a tournament, and thus may change from tournament to tournament. The default value of a setting is usually controlled by a preference that can be changed on the Preferences Tab.

Give full credit for fractional hits: The Tournament Director software allows a player to be busted out by more than one hitman. Usually this results in partial credit for the hit being awarded to each hitman. For example, if a player is busted out by 2 hitmen, each hitman will receive 0.5 hits (one half). If the Give full credit for fractional hits setting is enabled, all partial credit hits are rounded up, and thus each hitman in the this example would receive 1 hit.

10.21 Preferences

Press the Preferences button to open the Players Tab Preferences dialog. Here you can set preferences specific to the Players Tab. Preferences typically affect how the application looks and behaves, and do not affect your tournament.

View all players on one page: By default the list of players is displayed in pages. By checking this preference, the list of players will be displayed in a single, scrollable page.

Edit Columns: Press this button to select which columns you wish to see, and in which order. See Choosing Columns for information on using the column chooser dialog.

Edit Column Names: Press this button to rename any of the player information columns. You can also rename a column by right-clicking on the column itself and selecting Rename column.

Edit Status Attributes: Press this button to edit the text and colors of the various Status column values. The Status column displays an indication of a player's status in the tournament (bought-in, busted-out, etc.). You can change the text used for each value, as well as the colors, to make it easier to tell at a glance the status of your players.

10.22 Importing and Exporting Players

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 or CSV file, create a sign-in sheet, or export player email addresses.

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.

10.23 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 Sign-in sheet. The default value of 40 Rows per page is the maximum number of rows that can fit on a typical 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.

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.

11.1 Status Panel

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.

Automatic: Whether or not the Automatic Prizes feature is enabled.

Prizes [not] rounded: Whether or not the prize amounts have been rounded.

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.

Fixed amount prizes are subtracted from the pot first. Percentage amount prizes are then computed from the remaining pot.

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.

Prizes may also award points to their receipient. 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

The Recipient section designates the player that will receive the prize.

Select Rank 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 knocks 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). If (Random Player) is selected as the bounty player, 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.

If Random player is chosen as the prize recipient, 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.

For other types of prizes, select Manual. 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 the prize 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. 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.

Check the box next to Display prize on Tournament Screen if you want 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 number of points awarded with the prize. If your prize recipient is set to Manual, you will need to use the Recipient override in order to award the prize.

11.3 Rounding Prize Amounts

When running tournaments, dealing with prizes that include fractional amounts is sometimes undesirable. Often, 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 Amount Rounding dialog.

11.4 Sorting Prizes

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. Or press the Sort Prizes button to open the Sort Prizes dialog.

11.5 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 Configure button to see the prize levels that will be used when the Tournament Director suggests prizes, or to change the configuration file used.

See the Configuring Prize Levels section for information on configuring your own prize suggestions.

11.6 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.

The Automatic Prizes feature can use other criteria for determining the prize levels. See the Configuring Prize Levels section for information on configuring your own automatic prizes.

11.7 Loading and Saving Prize Templates

Your prizes can be saved independently from other tournament settings. Use the Load Template and Save Template buttons to load or save prize templates. 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.

11.8 Clearing the Prize List

Pressing the Clear button will open the Clear Prizes dialog, giving you options to clear (delete) all prizes, or aspects of prizes, quickly and easily. The Tournament Director will ask for confirmation before allowing the prizes to be cleared. Pressing the New button will allow you to create a new prizes configuration by deleting all existing prizes, or by loading a template.

11.9 Using an Estimated Pot

You may wish to fine tune your prizes before all of your players have bought-in to the tournament. You can use an estimated 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 and enter the necessary information to compute an estimated pot. If Use an estimated pot on the Prizes tab is checked, the values for prizes on the Prizes Tab will be computed from the estimated pot information, but the values for prizes shown elsewhere in the application (in the Game Window, for example) will be the actual prize values computed from buy-ins, etc. If Use the estimated pot in place of the real pot is checked, all prize values throughout the application will be computed from the estimated pot information.

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, press the Estimate Pot button again and uncheck the Use an estimated pot on the Prizes tab checkbox.

11.10 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 their selves.

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 ranks of the players who busted out simultaneously. For example, for a tournament in which prizes are awarded to 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th places, two players who bust out together in 10^th place technically chop 10^th and 11^th places. However, because no prize is awarded for 10^th or 11^thplaces, 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 4^th place, when the players are busted out the Tournament Director will prompt you to configure the chop, which divides the 4^th and 5^th place prizes between these two players. Because both players busted out in 4^th place, they both receive a 4^th place ranking (by default), and the next ranking player receives 6^th 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 1^st (and 2^nd) 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 1^st place ranking to player 1 and the 2^nd 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 than the actual prize amounts.

The arrow buttons will copy the values for each player from the Cash section to the Points section, 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 section or the Points section. The Redistribute button will re-divide the chop among the players. The Redistribute button only re-divides the currently selected Method amounts.

The ranking of the players can be altered by entering a relative ranking value into the Ranking section. 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 1^st through 3^rd. By default, each player will have a relative ranking of 0, giving each player a ranking of 1^st (and the last person who busted out of the tournament before the chop a ranking of 4^th).

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 1^st, and players B and C 2^nd. 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 1^st, and player A 3^rd. To do this, change the relative ranking of player A to 1.

The Ranking section 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. Negative relative ranking values are valid.

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

11.11 Exporting Prizes

You may export your prizes to a file in HTML format or print the prizes by pressing the Export button. 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 section displays the tables that you have configured for use in your tournament. The Unseated Players section displays all players who are eligible to be seated, but are not currently seated at a table.

Seating and moving of players is easy. Simply drag-and-drop players from seat to seat, or you can allow the Tournament Director to perform 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.

12.1 Status Panel

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.

Hidden tables: Indicates the number of tables currently configured but not displayed on the Tables Tab (empty tables may be hidden if desired).

12.2 Creating Tables

Press the New Table button or right-click in the Tables section 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.

You can quickly add the appropriate number of uniformly sized tables to accommodate all of your players by pressing the Add Tables button. Enter the number of tournament buy-ins and the number of seats per table, and the Needed tables value will be calculated for you. You may modify the Needed tables value if you wish to override the computed value. Pressing OK will create the number of tables specified in the Needed tables input, each with a number of seats corresponding to the Seats per table value.

12.3 Editing Tables

To edit a table, double-click the black bar containing the table name or right-click and select Edit <table name>. On the Edit Table dialog, you can change the name and/or seating capacity of the table.

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 at the table.

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.

12.4 Deleting Tables

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.

Automtatically accept player movement suggestions: When the Tournament Director determines your tables are unbalanced, it will suggest player movement (if the Automatically suggest player movements settings is enabled) and allow you to accept or reject the movement suggestion. If this option is enabled, player movement suggestions will automatically be accepted.

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 enabled, players who are 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 the tournament has not yet started.

12.6 Manual Seating Management

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 section. 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 section 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).

12.7 Sorting Tables

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.

12.8 Placing Dealer Buttons

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 or click the middle mouse button on any seat. 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.

The Tournament Director can automatically place dealer buttons at each table for you. Press the Set Dealer Buttons to open the Set Dealer Buttons dialog. Using this dialog you can set the dealer buttons manually by clicking any seat, or you can 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.

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 set the dealer buttons when the Tournament Director suggests player movement. On the Unbalanced Tables dialog, press the Set Dealer Buttons button and set the dealer buttons. When you press the OK button on the Set Dealer Buttons dialog, the Unbalanced Tables dialog will automatically update with a new player movement suggestion that is calculated with respect to the dealer buttons.

12.9 Locking Players

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.

To lock a player in 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.

12.10 Making Seats Unavailable

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.

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

Double-click a seat marked unavailable to change the text displayed.

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 section 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.

12.11 Controlling How Your Tables Collapse

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, or of different quality, or in a more desirable physical location. 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 are removed from play as early as possible, move the table(s) to the Collapse these tables first list. To ensure that one or more tables remain in play as long as possible, move the table(s) 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.

12.12 Compressing Seating

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.

12.13 Viewing the Last Balance

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.

12.14 Randomizing the Seating

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.

12.16 Unseating a Table

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. Pressing the New button will allow you to create a new tables configuration by deleting all existing tables, or by loading a template.

12.18 Undoing / Redoing Actions

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.

12.19 Loading and Saving Table Templates

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 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.

12.20 Exporting Tables

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

12.20.1 Diagram Format

Select Diagram in the Format section to export a diagram of the tables, much like what is displayed on the Tables Tab. Enter the number of tables that should be included per row. If you are printing, enter the number of rows that should be included per page. Then in the Tables to Export section place a check in the box next to each table you wish to export.

12.20.2 Player List Format

Select Player List in the Format section to export an alphabetical listing of all players with their seating assignment. Select the method to use for sorting the player list. Then place a check in the box next to each table you wish to highlight. The name of each table selected for highlight will be displayed at the top of the exported page, and players at those tables will be highlighted in bold type

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.

13.1 Built-in Layouts

The Tournament Director software includes several built-in layouts. To choose a built-in layout, press the Built-in button in the Layout Controls section. Each built-in layout has several screenshots to give you an idea of how the layout looks. Some built-in layouts are designed for specific screen sizes, but because each layout has an optimal resolution setting, they can easily be scaled to other screen sizes using the Layout Scaling feature.

13.2 Layout Concepts

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

Screen: One particular screen definition. There are two screen types: Standard and HTML. Standard screens are made up of Cells, which are arranged by the use of Rows and Columns. HTML screens are composed entirely of HTML that is either entered directly into the Tournament Director application, or saved to a file on your file system.

Screen Set: A collection of Screens. When a Screen Set is in use, the Screens it contains display in a predefined order, each for a defined amount of time. Screen Sets have Conditions that define when the Screen Set should be displayed.

Cell: A unit of display on a Screen. Cells contain Property Sets which describe how the Cell looks.

Row and Column: A container for Cells. Screens contain Rows and Columns, which contain Cells, in order to arrange the Cells on 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 other Rows, and vice-versa.

Property Set: A container for display properties for a Cell. A Property Set contains 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. Property Sets have Conditions that define when the Property Set should be used to display the Cell.

Token: A textual code 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 Set: A 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)

Banner: An image to be displayed in a Cell.

Banner Set: A collection of Banners. When a Banner Set is in use, the Banners it contains display in a predefined order, each for a defined amount of time

On the Layout Tab, the Screen section displays a preview of the selected screen. The Toolbox section displays all available cells. Screens do not actually contain cells, but instead they contain references to cells. This allows more than one screen to 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 continuously 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 the property sets of each cell on the current screen, and will display the property set whose conditions best match the tournament state for each cell at any given moment in your tournament.

The Layout Tab is drag-and-drop enabled. This makes it easy to create new screens, or rearrange or modify existing screens. Simply click on an item with the left mouse button (and hold the button down) to grab it, move the mouse to a desired location, then release the mouse button. To add to the screen, drag an item from the Toolbox onto the screen. To remove an item from the screen, drag the item from the screen onto the Toolbox. To rearrange the screen, drag an item from the screen to a new location within the same screen. Valid drop locations within the current screen will highlight in a green pattern when you drag an item onto the screen. You can also right-click on an item and select Copy (or Cut), then right-click another location and select Paste to copy an item to a new location.

13.3 Working with Screen Sets

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

To edit the conditions of a screen set, select the screen set and then 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.

13.4 Working with Screens

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

13.4.1 Standard Screens

When creating a new Standard screen, you only need to give the new screen a name.

To insert a row or column, right-click in the desired location within the screen and select Insert new row or Insert new column. Or, drag an Empty Column or Empty Row from the Toolbox onto the screen.

To insert a cell, right-click in the desired location within the screen and select Insert cell, or drag a cell from the Toolbox onto the screen. 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>, or drag the cell from the screen onto the Toolbox. 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, rows, or columns around within the layout simply drag the item to a new location.

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.

13.4.2 HTML Screens

When creating new HTML screen, enter a name for the new screen, then select the screen's Source type. HTML screens are made entirely of HTML with Tournament Director layout tokens embedded within. The HTML can either be stored internally to the layout itself, or as an external file stored on your file system.

13.4.3 Row and column properties

Dimensions: The width, height, and padding of the row or column. By default, rows and columns expand automatically to fill the available space. If you specify a width and/or height, the row or column will expand to the specified dimensions. 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).

Border: The border of the row or column. Click the Border section to open the Border dialog, which allows you to specify the design, size, and color of each of the four borders of the row or column.

Background: The background of the row or column. Click the Background section to open the Background dialog, which allows you to specify a background color and/or a background image. By default, the background 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.

HTML Styles: The HTML Styles section allows you to specify additional HTML styles that will apply to the row or column. See Working With HTML Styles for more information.

13.5 Creating and Modifying Cells

To insert a cell into screen, right-click on the screen in the location you wish to insert the cell and select Insert 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 copy of an existing cell.

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

To insert a new cell, on the Insert Cell dialog, select an existing cell in the New section 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, and the cell's property sets.

13.5.1 Cell Properties

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

Description: A short description of the cell.

The Property Sets section displays the property sets defined for this cell. When the Tournament Director selects the property set that will be used at any given moment, the property sets of a cell are scanned in the order that they are displayed on the Cell Properties dialog. When a property set whose conditions match the current tournament state is found, its properties are used to display the cell. If no property set is found, the Default property set is used.

Pressing the Used By… button will display all screens on which the cell being edited is found.

13.5.2 Property Set Properties

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

Hide cell: If this box is checked, the cell will not display when this property set is used.

Contents: The contents to be displayed in the cell. Click the Contents section to edit the contents of the cell. The contents of a cell are composed using HTML. 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. To insert a token, press the Insert Token button. 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, then select an image, and the HTML for displaying the image will be inserted automatically for you.

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

Use banner set: Check to display one of your defined banner sets in this cell instead of text. If you check this box, the Contents of the cell will be disabled.

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 cells at the same time. To use a global property set, check this box and then select the appropriate global property set. When checked, other properties in the Formatting section will be disabled.

Font: The font and related properties to be used for the cell. Click the font sample to open the Font dialog.

Alignment: The horizontal and vertical alignment of the contents of the cell.

Dimensions: The width, height, and padding of the cell. By default, a cell will expand automatically to fill the available space. If you specify a width and/or height, the cell will expand to the specified dimensions. 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 row or column and the border of the row or column (or the edge, if the border is not displayed).

Border: The border of the cell. Click the Border section to open the Border dialog, which allows you to specify the design, size, and color of each of the four borders of the row or column.

Background: The background of the cell. Click the Background section to open the Background dialog, which allows you to specify a background color and/or a background image.

HTML Styles: The HTML Styles section allows you to specify additional HTML styles that will apply to the row or column. See Working With HTML Styles for more information.

13.6 Using Global Properties

Sometimes you may have groups of cells that display different information, but share the same appearance on the screen. In other words, they display different text (or HTML), but have the same background color, foreground color, font, etc. Should you decide, for example, to change the colors, it can be tedious to update the properties of these cells (especially when you factor in that each cell might have multiple property sets).

A solution is to use global property sets. If each property set was configured to use a single global property set, then changing the colors of this group of cells would be easy, since it would require changing only the colors 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 set, then check the Use global property set checkbox. In the Global Property Set selector, select the global property set you wish to use. When a global property set is selected, the other properties in the Formatting section will reflect the values of the selected global property set, and will be disabled (you will be unable to edit those properties).

To edit global property sets, press the Global Properties button on the Layout Tab.

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

13.7 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, click the HTML Styles section to open the HTML 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 section and then modify the value of the style in the Value section.

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

CSS styles reference: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref

13.8 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 Contents of a cell. The Tournament Director makes this easy by the use of the Insert Image button on the Edit Cell Contents 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 used as the background of a screen. See Screen Properties for more information.

13.9 Inserting Tokens

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

Tokens are 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 Contents for a cell. For example:

Round: <round>

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

Round: 3

The <round> token is replaced with the current round number. The and 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 Contents of any cell, and more than one token can be placed in the Contents of a cell. Another example:

Round: <round> Next Break: <nextbreak>

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:

Round: 3 Next Break: 10:00

Again, the and elements are HTML elements, indicating the text between them should be rendered on one line. The 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:

This token would be replaced automatically with HTML that graphically renders the defined chips. 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.

The above example is almost 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:

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 Token Builder dialog. The Tokens section displays the list of all available tokens. The Attributes section displays a description of the token currently selected in the Tokens section, along with any attributes of the token. Select the token you wish to insert, enter values for the token's attributes, and then press the OK button to insert the token.

The token will be inserted into the Contents, at the current cursor position. If text in the Contents 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 Token Builder 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 Contents.

The Cheat Sheet button will open a page in your default browser that lists all available tokens and their attributes, with descriptions for each.

13.10 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 section displays the defined banner sets. The Banner section displays the banners defined in the banner set currently selected in the Banner Set section. The Banner Properties section displays properties of the banner currently selected in the Banner section.

13.10.1 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.

13.11 Screen Properties

The Screen Properties dialog allows you to set certain properties of each of the Custom Screens you created as well as the Built-in Screens. In addition, properties of the Status Icons that are displayed on the Game Window, and properties of the Hand Timer can be modified here.

13.11.1 Custom Screens

The properties available for custom screens vary depending on the screen type.

13.11.1.1 Standard Screens

For Standard custom screens, you can modify the screen's background color, background image, and whether or not the screen should stretch to fill the physical screen dimensions.

Background: The Background section displays a preview of what the background color and image will look like. To edit these properties, click the Background section. See below for details.

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 (if the Stretch option is enabled). 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.

Stretch: If enabled, the screen will stretch to fill the physical screen dimensions (or the window's dimensions, if running in window mode). If disabled, the screen will only be as large as the cells making up the screen require.

Background properties:

Color: The color of the background.

File: Enter the path and filename of an image file to display in the background in the File input, or use the Browse… button to locate an image (or click on the image section itself). If a background image is used, it will display over the background color defined above.

Tiling: Select one of the tiling options to indicate how the background image, if specified, will be tiled. Select the Stretch option to make the image stretch to fill the entire screen.

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

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

13.11.1.2 HTML Screens

For HTML custom screens, you can modify the source and the actual HTML or the path to the HTML file, depending on which source is selected.

Source: The source determines where the HTML code that defines the screen is stored.

HTML: When HTML is selected for the source, the HTML that defines the screen is stored directly within the layout. Click the HTML section to edit the HTML.

File: When File is selected for the source, the HTML that defines the screen is stored externally in a file on your file system.

Token Builder: When File is selected for the source, the Token Builder button opens the Token Builder dialog, which is helpful in constructing layout tokens to be inserted into the HTML for displaying tournament information.

13.11.2 Built-in Screens

Built-in screens each have unique properties you can modify as well as properties common to all built-in screens, such as header and footer text, and background color and image. 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.

13.11.3 Status Icons

Four of the property sets are for status icons displayed in the Game Window:

Screen Lock icon: displayed when the screen is locked
Keyboard Lock icon: displayed when the keyboard is locked
Unbalanced Tables icon: displayed when the tables are unbalanced
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. When editing the properties of the status icons, the Preview section will display your changes immediately.

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.

Preview background color: The background color of the Preview section. This has no effect on the actual status icon, but allows you to view the status icon against differently colored backgrounds that may more closely match screens in your layout.

13.11.4 Hand Timer

The font and color aspects of the Hand Timer can be configured here.

Font: The font and related properties to be used for the cell. Click the font sample to open the Font dialog.

Background: The background of the Hand Timer window. Click the Background section to open the Background dialog, which allows you to specify a background color and/or a background image.

13.12 Overriding Token Values

The values of layout 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 section displays the tokens that you have defined, and the Value section displays the value of the token currently selected in the Tokens section.

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 section. 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 section, 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, 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 section, 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.

13.13 Testing Your Layout

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~~). For screens of type HTML, the preview will display the screen as it should appear in the Game Window, but without layout token replacement.

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.

In Layout Design Mode, tournament operations are suspended and the Game Window will display the screen that is currently selected on the Layout Tab, using the conditions that are selected on the View For… dialog. This is a good way to see how your layout will look under various tournament conditions. To enter Layout Design Mode, press the Enter Design Mode button on the Layout Tab. Press the button again to exit Layout Design Mode.

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.

13.14 Clearing the Layout

To clear the layout, press the Clear button in the Layout Controls section. 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.

Pressing the New button in the Layout Controls section will allow you to create a new layout by deleting all layout settings, or by loading a saved layout.

13.15 Loading and Saving Layouts

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.

13.16 Exporting Layouts

If your layout doesn't contain any images, stylesheets, or other external elements, simply copying the saved layout file from one PC to another is sufficient to use the layout on another PC. If your layout does contain any of these elements, exporting a layout provides a convenient way to package all of the items used by the layout to transfer the layout to another PC.

Exporting a layout will bundle the layout file, as well as any referenced image, HTML, and/or stylesheet 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 current Data Store folder. Any files that your layout, your events template, or your chips template reference that are not within the current Data Store folder will not be included in the exported ZIP file.

To export your layout, press the Import / Export button, then press the Export the current layout 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 before the export can be completed. If you are working with an unsaved layout, you will be prompted to save your layout before continuing.

13.17 Importing Layouts

The Import Layout feature provides an easy way to import specific items from another layout into your current layout, and to import an entire exported layout into your Data Store.

13.17.1 Importing items from another layout

To import specific items from another layout, press the Import / Export button in the Layout Controls section, then press the Import layout items from another layout button. Select the layout from which to import and press the Open button. The layout from which you wish to import items must be saved in your current Data Store.

On the Import Layout Items dialog, select individual items you wish to import. When an item is selected that depends on another item in the layout, the other item will automatically be selected. For example, if you choose a screen to be imported from another layout, all cells that make up that screen will automatically be selected. Press the OK button to import the items. Any items with the same name as items already existing in your current layout will be renamed automatically.

13.17.2 Importing a layout into your Data Store

A layout can be exported to a ZIP file, and will include any supporting files required by the layout, such as image files or stylesheets. For the layout to function correctly, the layout file and the supporting items must be placed in your Data Store.

To import an exported layout into your Data Store, press the Import / Export button in the Layout Controls section, then press the Import an exported layout into your Data Store button. Select the exported layout that you wish to import and press the Open button. The ZIP file will be extracted into your current Data Store.

13.18 Conditions Dialog

The Conditions Dialog is used to define a particular tournament state for which a Screen Set or a Property Set should be used. Each condition on the Conditions Dialog is "anded" with every other condition to produce a specific set of conditions. 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 sets 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.

Conditions may also be specified using a Formula. Place a check in the box next to Use advanced conditions to specify conditions as a formula. See Formulas for more information on creating formulas.

13.19 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 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 effective 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 cells 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.

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.

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), which can affect the screen's size. You will want to make sure to test your layout under different tournament conditions to ensure the layout fits the physical screen.

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.

13.20 Optimal Size and Scaling

Most layouts are created with a typical screen size in mind. The four layouts that are delivered with the first version of the Tournament Director software were designed for a screen size of 1024x768, which was the most common "safe" screen size at the time ("safe" meaning a high percentage of PCs are able to display this screen size). Screen sizes change over time and different devices have different screen sizes. Most of the built-in layouts will automatically stretch to fill larger screens, but that doesn't always translate to a good look. Likewise, some layouts designed for larger screen sizes will not fit on smaller screen sizes.

The Tournament Director software can scale a layout so a larger layout can fit on a smaller screen size, or so that a layout designed for a smaller screen looks good on a larger screen. In order for scaling to work properly, a layout must have a designated Optimal Resolution, which is the screen size for which the layout was designed (and looks best). All of the built-in layouts have an optimal resolution, allowing for the layouts to be scaled to any other screen size. For any layout that doesn't have an optimal resolution, you will simply need to choose an optimal resolution in order to enable scaling.

To set a layout's optimal resolution, press the Settings button in the Layout Controls section. Select one of the pre-defined resolutions, or select Custom and enter a custom resolution.

To enable layout scaling, press the Preferences button in the Other Controls section. In the Layout Scaling section, check the box next to Enable layout scaling, then select an optimal resolution for the layout. If you check the box next to Use optimal resolution setting of the current layout, then the optimal resolution set in the Layout Settings (if set) will be used.

13.21 Preferences

Press the Preferences button in the Other Controls section to modify preferences related to the Layout Tab.

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 the Event's Actions being carried out).

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 section 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, click in the Hotkey input and then press the key combination you wish to trigger the sound. 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.

14.2 Sorting Sounds

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.

14.3 Creating Events

To create a new event, press the New Event button or right-click in an empty space in the Events section 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 section 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 subsequently triggered 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 automatically 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 Pausing the clock

Selecting this action type will cause the tournament clock to be paused when the event is fired.

14.3.5.4 Pausing the clock

Selecting this action type will cause the tournament clock to be paused when this event is fired.

14.3.5.5 Saving the tournament

Selecting this action type will cause tournament to be saved to disk when the event is fired.

14.3.5.6 Running a program

When this action is carried out, an external program is launched when the event is fired. Select the path to the program file and any arguments that will be passed to the program. There are two Launch methods: Exec and Run. In general, both methods are the same and will launch the external program, but you may experience different side effects from each. For example, when launching a program the Exec method may display a command shell window, and the Run method may not, but the Run method might produce security warnings while the Exec method may not. Your results may vary, and you should experiment with each method to achieve the best results.

14.3.5.7 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.

14.3.5.8 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.

14.4 Importing Sounds

If you have many 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 its sub-folders) 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.

14.5 Editing Sounds and Events

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.

14.6 Deleting Sounds and Events

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

14.7 Clearing Sounds and Events

Pressing the New button will allow you to create a new events configuration by deleting all existing sounds and events, or by loading a template.

14.8 Stopping Sounds That are Playing

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.

14.9 Disabling Events

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

14.10 Event Priority

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.

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.

14.12 Message Queue

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.

14.13 Loading and Saving Event Templates

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.

14.14 Restoring Default Events

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.

14.15 Sound Volume

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. The volume control can also appear on the Dashboard.

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 section:

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 this is the color of the chip.

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 section and select New chip.

On the New Chip dialog, you may select one of the pre-defined colors for the chip or select Other and choose the color yourself. You may also use an image for your chip by selecting Image.

The Display on tournament screen checkbox controls whether or not the chip will be displayed on the Tournament Screen for layout tokens that display chips. See the Layout Tab for information on layout tokens.

15.2 Creating Chipsets

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

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

On the New Chipset dialog, the Contents section defines the quantities of each chip that this chipset contains.

15.3 Editing Chips and Chipsets

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.

15.4 Deleting Chips and Chipsets

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. 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.

15.6 Determining Tournament Capacity

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 section.

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 section 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.

15.7 Sorting 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 open the Sort Chips dialog.

15.8 Displaying Chips on the Tournament Screen

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

Pressing the New button will allow you to create a new chips configuration by deleting all existing chips and chipsets, or by loading a template.

15.10 Loading and Saving Chips Templates

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.

16.1 Editing Rules Tokens

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

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 section, 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, to change the font characteristics (size, color, type), or <UL> to display bulleted lists.

16.2 Displaying Rules on the Tournament Screen

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.

16.3 Clearing Rules Tokens

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. Pressing the New button will allow you to create a new rules configuration by deleting all existing rule values, or by loading a template.

16.4 Loading and Saving Rules Templates

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 Summary Information

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 amount 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 the 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 but not won, and the number of bounty chips bought but 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 section 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.

17.2 Exporting the Tournament Summary

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.

A nickname or a first name is required for every player. 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.

Players who are added to your current tournament are highlighted in red.

The default league, if defined, is highlighted in green. When a new tournament is created, the initial league setting for that tournament will be the default league. The default league has no other meaning.

Seasons are helpful for organizing your tournaments. By configuring tournaments to belong seasons, it is easy to quickly create a profile that will allow you to gather stats on the tournaments of a particular season. Stats profiles may also filter tournaments based on the tournament's date, so using seasons is not required for filtering tournaments based on time period.

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.

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

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 computes statistics based on a filter. The filter allows you to take a set of tournaments, and narrow down the results to just a subset of the tournaments and/or players.

Statistics are generated via a Stats Profile. Profiles tell the Tournament Director software where to find your tournament files, which tournaments you wish to include (based on league, season, or date), and how to compute some additional custom statistics. A default profile is supplied that will compute statistics from all of the tournaments saved in your currently selected Data Store.

To generate statistics, press the Refresh Stats button and select a Stats Profile. If you have already refreshed statistics and then make changes to a completed tournament, you'll want to refresh the stats 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.

Double-click a player to view information on a single player.

The Info button will open the Tournaments Information dialog, which gives information on tournament files that were found by the Stats Profile. If statistics are not displayed, or they don't appear as you think they should, you can use this dialog to help determine which saved tournament files may or may not be included in the results.

The Single Field view is a way to drill down into a single statistic. In the Normal view, many statistics will be displayed for each player. In the Single Field view, values for a single statistics, 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 over 6 tournaments. However, changing to Single field view and choosing the field Points will display the amount of points that Jack earned in each of the 6 tournaments.

19.1 Tournament Scoring and Overall Scoring

There are many ways to rank you players against each other over a series of tournaments. For example, you may use something as simple as who has the most tournament wins, or you may average the rank each player receives. If you award points to players in your tournaments, you may simply rank players based on the total number of points they have received. These and many other data points are provided automatically.

The Stats Profile also allows you to create up to 5 of your own custom methods for ranking your players. In the Stats Profile you can provide up to 5 Overall Score formulas which will each generate a corresponding Overall Score value. The Overall Score formula has access to all of the statistics that are automatically generated, so you may use any combination of those statistics to create your own Overall Score values.

You can also create a custom Tournament Score value for every player in every tournament in your statistics. The Tournament Score Formula is similar to the Points for Playing formula. It will create a value for each player, for each tournament, called a "score", in the same way the Points for Playing formula creates a "points" value for each player, for each tournament. Since the Points for Playing formula is defined in a tournament, you can define a different formula for each tournament. However, if you decide to use the same formula for each tournament and later decide to make a change to that formula, you will have to load each tournament, make the change to the Points for Playing formula, and save the tournament. Since the Tournament Score Formula is defined in the Stats Profile, the same formula must be used for all tournaments the Stats Profile includes for stats. However, should you later decide to change the formula, you only have to change the formula in one place.

You can find more information about how to create a formula, and which variables are defined for your use, in the Formulas section.

Previous versions of the Tournament Director allowed the use of only two built-in ranking methods (equivalent to the Overall Scores formula), described below. The default Stats Profile uses the Logarithm Method.

19.1.1 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

19.1.2 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)

19.2 Stats Tab Columns

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 1^st place.

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

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

First: The number of times this player ranked 1st in a tournament.

Second: The number of times this player ranked 2nd in a tournament.

Third: The number of times this player ranked 3rd in a tournament.

Fourth: The number of times this player ranked 4th in a tournament.

Fifth: The number of times this player ranked 5th in a tournament.

Sixth: The number of times this player ranked 6th in a tournament.

Seventh: The number of times this player ranked 7th in a tournament.

Eighth: The number of times this player ranked 8th in a tournament.

Ninth: The number of times this player ranked 9th in a tournament.

Tenth: The number of times this player ranked 10th in a tournament.

Dead Last: The number of times this player ranked last in a tournament.

On the Bubble: The number of times this player ranked "on the bubble", in a tournament. A player is considered "on the bubble" if he ranks just one place away from a ranked prize. For example, if prizes are awarded for ranks 1st through 5th, then the player who ranks 6th is considered "on the bubble".

Last Played: The start date and time of the most recent tournament in which this player participated.

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.

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.

Most preferences have a brief description either directly displayed, or via a "tooltip". Hover the mouse cursor over the preference to display the description, or right-click on the preference and select Show Tooltip. Some of the more advanced preferences will be described in the following sections.

Changes to preferences are saved automatically.

20.1 Resetting Preferences to their Default Values

Each preference section has a Reset These Preferences button that will reset to their default values only the preferences in that particular section. To reset preferences associated with Status Messages, Config Files, the Name Format, Dialog Locations, or to reset all preferences, press the Reset button.

20.2 Screen Saver

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. This is intended to prevent or reduce the likelihood of "burn-in", which can occur when a video display shows the same image over a long period of time.

20.3 Rakes

The Rakes section allows you to define the rakes that will be collected from your players. You can simply rename the default rake, or add additional rakes. 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.

20.4 Status Messages

Status messages are messages that are displayed in the Game Window to alert you to conditions that you should be aware of or that prevent your tournament from starting. 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 the Game Window 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.

The Status Messages dialog allows you to modify the content of the various status messages as well as the look and location at which they are displayed. You can create multiple Status Message sets allowing you to easily select a set most appropriate to your tournament and/or layout.

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 section will be selected for use.

20.5 Name Format

The Name Format dialog controls how player names are displayed throughout the application.

20.6 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.

20.6.1 Default Tournament

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. By using one of your own saved tournaments as the "default" tournament, most or all of tournament settings you typically use will automatically be set when you start the application or press the New button on the Game Tab.

20.6.2 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. These can also be set on the corresponding dialogs on the Prizes Tab.

20.6.3 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. These can also be set on the various export dialogs throughout the application.

20.7 Receipts

Purchase and refund (undo purchase) transactions can generate and print receipts. Receipts are generated as files saved on your computer, using templates you can modify to reflect your organization and/or conform to your receipt printer. You can configure which transactions generate and/or print receipts, and can configure different templates for each transaction type.

See Exporting Data for information on configuring the receipt template.

See Printing for more information on the limitations of printing directly from the Tournament Director application.

20.8 Display Management

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 a Display Management feature to help you manage the Tournament Director application on your multiple displays.

20.9 Dashboard

The Dashboard is a configurable control panel that is displayed above the tabs in the Settings Window. It provides a convenient place to see the current tournament status and control various aspects of the running tournament (pausing/unpausing the clock, busting players out, etc.) while you are navigating the Settings Window, without having to return to the Controls Tab or close the Settings Window.

The Dashboard can be customized to include only the information or controls that you want. Simply drag items to and from the Dashboard Layout and Toolbox. You can add or remove Columns and Rows by pressing the buttons labeled with a plus or minus.

The Dashboard can be enabled or disabled from the Preferences Tab, or by right-clicking anywhere in the space above the tabs and selected Show Dashboard or Hide Dashboard.

20.10 Auto Print

The Tournament Director application has limited print functionality because it is hosted within the Internet Explorer application. Any print operation initiated from the Tournament Director application must be confirmed by the user. That is, when the Tournament Director application initiates a print operation, Internet Explorer will present the user with a Print dialog, forcing the user to confirm that they do indeed wish to print.

To work around this limitation, the Auto Print feature can attempt to press the "OK" button on the confirm dialog automatically for you.

Auto Print can be selectively enabled for only receipts or for other print jobs as well.

Most Auto Print preferences should remain at their default value. Only if the feature does not appear to be working properly should changes be made.

Print dialog title: The confirmation dialog is identified using the dialog's title. In most cases, the title of the dialog will be "Print". If the print confirmation dialog has a different title on your PC, set this field to the title.

Keystrokes to send: In most cases, the print confirmation dialog will have a Cancel and a Print button. The Print button has a keyboard shortcut of Alt+P, which means if Alt+P is pressed while the print confirmation dialog is open, the dialog will act as if the Print button has been pressed. The value "%p" means to send the Alt+P key combination to the print confirmation dialog. If the print confirmation dialog on your PC has different buttons and/or requires a different key combination to confirm the operation, enter the keystrokes necessary to confirm the dialog here. Special keystroke designations can be found on the following page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8c6yea83.aspx.

Attempt to confirm the print job for ___ seconds: Once the Tournament Director application initiates the print operation, it may take a few moments for the print confirmation dialog to open. Therefore, the Tournament Director application must, for a period of time, attempt to locate the dialog and send the appropriate keystrokes to confirm the operation. This field represents the maximum amount of time that should be spent attempting to locate the print confirmation dialog before giving up.

Attempt to confirm print job every ___ milliseconds: This is the frequency at which the Tournament Director application attempts to locate the print confirmation dialog. The default value of 100 milliseconds means the application will attempt to locate the print confirmation dialog 10 times per second, and should provide an adequate response time. Changing this value could have adverse effects and isn't advised unless directed by Tournament Director technical staff.

20.11 Status Updates

The Status Updates feature provides a way for the Tournament Director application to report the status of a running tournament to another application or website at predefined intervals of time.

The Status Updates feature can write the status of the current tournament to a file, or send the status to a website via a URL. The tournament status is sent in the form of formula variables, written one per line. For example:

roundnum=1

breaknum=0

level=0

isround=1
isbreak=0

The full list of variables can be found by opening the Points for Playing dialog: in the Settings Window, select the Game Tab, then press the Test Formula button below the Points for Playing formula entry, then press the Cheat Sheet button.

A sample web application is included with the Tournament Director application. It is installed in the examples folder, where the Tournament Director application is installed. This will typically be:

C:\Program Files\The Tournament Director 3\examples

Or, on a 64-bit version of Windows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\The Tournament Director 3\examples

PHP and ASP examples are provided. Some coding knowledge is required to modify these files, and some coding knowledge may be required in order to deploy these files on your own website.

TournamentStatus.html: The page to point your web browser to in order to view the current status of the tournament.

TournamentStatus.js: The Javascript required by TournamentStatus.html. This must be in deployed in the same folder as TournamentStatus.html.

TournamentStatus.css: The stylesheet required by TournamentStatus.html. This must be in deployed in the same folder as TournamentStatus.html.

statusListener.php: The page that listens for status updates from the Tournament Director application. Once deployed, you must set the Status Updates Destination to point to this page. This is the PHP version of this page.

statusListener.asp: The ASP version of the statusListener.php page.

All files should be deployed to the same folder on your website. To deploy the files in different locations will require modification.

The status listener will write the status received from the Tournament Director application to a local file. You must configure your website to allow the status listener page to write to the folder in which it is installed. To write the status to a different location will require modification.

The Status Updates feature allows both the GET and POST methods when sending the status to a URL. Either method should work, but the POST method is recommended. Should the amount of data sent to the URL exceed the maximum length of a URL, an error could occur.

To test the Status Updates feature, use the Attempt update now button.

20.12 Screen Transitions

Screen Transitions are simple animations used when the Game Window changes the screen that is currently displayed.

The Screen Transitions preference allows you to enable or disable any transition, and set the amount of time the transition animation lasts. Durations are given in seconds, and fractions of a second valid.

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 when the Settings Window is closed, and in the Settings Window when the Controls Tab is selected. If the preference Allow hotkeys on all Settings Window tabs that do not have inputs is enabled, then hotkeys are also active on all Settings Window tabs that do not have text input controls. Hotkeys that are assigned to the function keys F1 through F12 are active in the Game Window and in the Settings Window, regardless of the aforementioned preference.

Hotkeys are preferences and therefore 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 and the Settings Window is closed. However, you could change the hotkey configuration such that X performs a different action.

22 Help Tab

The Help Tab provides a window into this user guide and serves as a convenient way to access this guide while using the Tournament Director application. The Help Tab provides buttons for opening the user guide in its own window, for opening the user guide in a separate Internet Explorer window, and for printing the user guide. By default, the hotkey F12 will also open the user guide in its own window, or bring the user guide window into focus if it is already open.

To search the user guide, press Ctrl+F 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.

23.1 Editing Links

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, which is typically C:\Program Files\The Tournament Director 3.0. 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:

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 various sections on the Controls Tab can be hidden, rearranged, and color-coded for easy identification. Right-click on the Controls Tab to access the various options.

25 Game Window

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 by using hotkeys (or buttons, if your layout has been configured with buttons).

25.1 Starting the Tournament

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.

25.2 Managing the Clock

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 a specific 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.

25.3 Changing Rounds

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.

25.4 Adding Players to the Tournament

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.

25.5 Buying Players into the Tournament

Press Ctrl+B, or right-click and select Buy-in players to buy players into the tournament. See Buying Players In for more information.

25.6 Busting Players Out

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 a 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 section. Then, select the player who busted this player out of the tournament in the Hitman section. 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 section. 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 section 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).

25.7 Performing Rebuys

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 a player's name appears on the Game Window.

On the Rebuy Players dialog, select one or more players to rebuy in the Players section. In the Details section, you may enter or change any of the rebuy values. The values in the Details section are filled in automatically for you from the information given on the Game Tab, but you may change the values here, 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.

If the preference Allow buying multiple add-ons or rebuys per-player at one time is enabled, a Quantity column will also appear on the Rebuy Players dialog. You may change the number of rebuys to be purchased on a per-player basis. If the preference Show Amount Due column is also enabled, an Amount Due column will also be displayed giving the appropriate amount due from each individual player.

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 a player's name appears on the Game Window.

25.8 Performing Add-ons

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 a 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 section. In the Details section, you may enter or change any of the add-on values. The values in the Details section are filled in automatically for you from the information given on the Game Tab, but you may change the values here, 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 purchasing an add-on.

If the preference Allow buying multiple add-ons or rebuys per-player at one time is enabled, a Quantity column will also appear on the Add-on Players dialog. You may change the number of add-ons to be purchased on a per-player basis. If the preference Show Amount Due column is also enabled, an Amount Due column will also be displayed giving the appropriate amount due from each individual player.

To undo an add-on, 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 a player's name appears on the Game Window.

25.9 Balancing the Tables

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.

25.10 Using the Hand Timer

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 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. The Hand Timer dialog can be customized on the Layout Tab.

25.11 Locking the Screen

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.

25.12 Locking the Keyboard

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.

25.13 Changing Screens

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.

25.14 Chopping

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 their selves.

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 4^th place by default. However, they will both also "occupy" 5^th place, since the player who busted out just before them had a rank of 6^th.

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.

26 Tournament Screen

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. The 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 Settings Window. Pressing the F2 key will also 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.

To edit the properties of any screen in the Game Window, right-click and select Screen 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 all of the built-in screens are saved as part of the layout.

When the information displayed is too large for the Game Window, each of the built-in screens will automatically scroll to display all information. To disable the automatic scrolling, right-click and select Disable Auto Scroll.

27 Player Rankings Screen

The Player Rankings Screen displays the players who bought-in to your tournament in their final ranking order.

28 Seating Chart Screen

The Seating Chart Screen displays current tournament seating. The Seating Chart Screen can display seating as a diagram of the tables with players listed at appropriate seats, or as a list of players along with their table name and seat number.

28.1 Configuring Images for Tables

In Diagram mode, the Seating Chart Screen displays each table as a simple chart, listing each player at their appropriate seat. In addition to changing the various colors and fonts used to display the charts, you can place a background image for each chart, or use images in place of the charts.

When you use an image for a chart background, the chart is rendered in the same way as it is without a background image (as a chart with the table name at the top, and seat numbers with player names listed vertically below the name). Instead of a solid color behind the seat numbers and player names, your designated image will be displayed.

You can also use an image instead of a chart. This is referred to as a table "Blueprint", which displays the table using an image, and can position player names on top of the image (at positions appropriate to where the player is seated at the table). 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, edit the Seating Chart Screen properties by right-clicking on the Game Window when the Seating Chart Screen is displayed and selecting Screen properties. On the Seating Chart Screen properties, press the Edit Table Images button.

Press the Add button to add a new table image or Blueprint. The image or Blueprint selected will be used for the first table defined on the Tables Tab. Press the Add button again to add a second table image or Blueprint. This image or Blueprint 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. A table chart will be used where no image or Blueprint has been designated. This allows you to designate an image or Blueprint, for example, for tables 1 and 3, and a chart for table 2 (by leaving the File input empty).

Check the Use for all tables checkbox to re-use table images and Blueprints 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. If Use for all tables is checked 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.

28.2 Creating Your Own Table Blueprints

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>

</image>

<name>

</name>

</unavailable>