Tournament Mode
League Dispatcher includes a full-featured tournament engine. Run structured tournaments with defined participants, brackets, and standings — completely independent of your regular drop-in dispatching.
What is Tournament Mode?
Unlike the continuous dispatch algorithms, tournaments have a fixed structure with defined teams, a set schedule, and a clear winner. When a tournament is active, it takes over the dispatch — regular play pauses until the tournament ends.
Supported Formats
Three tournament formats are available:
Round Robin — Every team plays every other team exactly once. Winner determined by most wins, with head-to-head and point differential as tiebreakers.
Single Elimination — Classic knockout bracket with seeded matchups (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, etc.). Optional 3rd place match and consolation rounds. BYEs are automatically handled for non-power-of-2 team counts.
Double Elimination — Players get a second chance. Losers drop to a lower bracket. The upper and lower bracket winners meet in the Grand Finals.
Team Sizes
Tournaments support any team size: 1 player per team for singles (1v1), 2 for doubles (2v2), 3 for triples (3v3), and so on. The team size is set at creation and applies to all teams in the tournament.
Setting Up
Go to the Tournaments tab, click Create. Give it a name, choose the format (Round Robin, Single Elimination, or Double Elimination), set the number of players per team, and assign players to teams — either manually or let the system generate random teams.
For bracket tournaments, you can choose the seeding mode (random or manual order) and enable optional features like 3rd place matches or consolation rounds. Once everything is set, click Start to begin the tournament.
Integration with Regular Play
When a tournament is active, it takes exclusive control of the dispatch. Regular play is paused — the dispatch button shows tournament matches instead of regular matchups. Tournament games appear on the dashboard with a trophy icon. Players involved in an active tournament match are marked as busy and cannot be dispatched elsewhere.
Scoring and Standings
As you enter scores, standings update automatically. Round-robin shows a cross-table matrix of who beat whom. Brackets update visually with winners advancing to the next round. Tiebreakers work in order: most wins, head-to-head result, then point differential.
Tournament Lifecycle
A tournament goes through four phases: Setup (create teams and configure), Start (locks the tournament and pauses regular play), Play (dispatch matches, enter scores, brackets advance automatically), and Finish (final standings are computed, regular play resumes). Only one tournament can be active per league at a time.