Tournament Scheduling

[Unome]

Can anyone give me a good description of the various ways to schedule Mission for a tournament (e.g. team arrive 30 min before individual signup time, 6-10 teams run in a single hour-long block, etc) and their pros and cons, when they're most useful, etc?

[chalker]

Can anyone give me a good description of the various ways to schedule Mission for a tournament (e.g. team arrive 30 min before individual signup time, 6-10 teams run in a single hour-long block, etc) and their pros and cons, when they're most useful, etc?

You've pretty much hit the 2 options: individual signups (although note typically teams START setup at their signup time, not 30 mins before) or blocks . I've seen both work at big tournaments equally well, but generally I prefer the individual online signups if you have the ability to support those. Note that just because there are individual slots doesn't mean they are guaranteed to stay on time anymore than having blocks assures that - delays always happen, which is why it's important to have 'buffer time' between blocks. If you go with blocks, generally all teams start setup at the same time, then whichever if ready first gets judged while the others have to sit around and wait (which can be annoying to the competitors). You also generally have to give the teams a minute before judging to turn on any electric devices, because you don't want them running down the batteries while they stand around waiting for judges to become available.

[Unome]

Can anyone give me a good description of the various ways to schedule Mission for a tournament (e.g. team arrive 30 min before individual signup time, 6-10 teams run in a single hour-long block, etc) and their pros and cons, when they're most useful, etc?

You've pretty much hit the 2 options: individual signups (although note typically teams START setup at their signup time, not 30 mins before) or blocks . I've seen both work at big tournaments equally well, but generally I prefer the individual online signups if you have the ability to support those. Note that just because there are individual slots doesn't mean they are guaranteed to stay on time anymore than having blocks assures that - delays always happen, which is why it's important to have 'buffer time' between blocks. If you go with blocks, generally all teams start setup at the same time, then whichever if ready first gets judged while the others have to sit around and wait (which can be annoying to the competitors). You also generally have to give the teams a minute before judging to turn on any electric devices, because you don't want them running down the batteries while they stand around waiting for judges to become available.

So about how often can individual times be run? Would 6-8 per 50 minutes be alright?

[chalker]

So about how often can individual times be run? Would 6-8 per 50 minutes be alright?

8 would be too much if you have only 1 set of judges. Keep in mind the device run time is 2-3 minutes, but it takes a while before that for the team to walk the judges through each step of the TSL to see that it corresponds to the device. Lots of tournament run with 2 sets of judges in order to ensure there is enough time to examine each device.

[Unome]

So about how often can individual times be run? Would 6-8 per 50 minutes be alright?

8 would be too much if you have only 1 set of judges. Keep in mind the device run time is 2-3 minutes, but it takes a while before that for the team to walk the judges through each step of the TSL to see that it corresponds to the device. Lots of tournament run with 2 sets of judges in order to ensure there is enough time to examine each device.

Ok, thanks. I'll have to ask the people more familiar with Mission if they can get that many people; if not, we should be able to manage with another slot.

[texas]

So about how often can individual times be run? Would 6-8 per 50 minutes be alright?

8 would be too much if you have only 1 set of judges. Keep in mind the device run time is 2-3 minutes, but it takes a while before that for the team to walk the judges through each step of the TSL to see that it corresponds to the device. Lots of tournament run with 2 sets of judges in order to ensure there is enough time to examine each device.

Ok, thanks. I'll have to ask the people more familiar with Mission if they can get that many people; if not, we should be able to manage with another slot.

At nationals this year, there were 60 teams doing Mission Possible and 6 time slots. I'm not sure how many judges there were, because I wasn't there. At my state tournament, though, there were 2-3 event supervisors at a time, but only one of them was actually judging us.

[Unome]

8 would be too much if you have only 1 set of judges. Keep in mind the device run time is 2-3 minutes, but it takes a while before that for the team to walk the judges through each step of the TSL to see that it corresponds to the device. Lots of tournament run with 2 sets of judges in order to ensure there is enough time to examine each device.

Ok, thanks. I'll have to ask the people more familiar with Mission if they can get that many people; if not, we should be able to manage with another slot.

At nationals this year, there were 60 teams doing Mission Possible and 6 time slots. I'm not sure how many judges there were, because I wasn't there. At my state tournament, though, there were 2-3 event supervisors at a time, but only one of them was actually judging us.

Based on previous years, I think Nationals usually uses three sets of judges (or at least they did in the early 2000s). The lists of event supervisors from recent years also seems to support this.