ACC Internet Cribbage

A tournament director's perspective

Having been involved with the online ACC tournaments since their inception, I am proud of what has happened and the growth we have experienced. Many of you have been present for a large majority of them, while some are just beginning to experiment with this form of getting your "crib fix".

Personally, I find online cribbage hosting to be exciting and rewarding. Most of the players, however, are unaware of what goes on behind the scenes as we tournament directors (TDs) go through our duties. My purpose here is to give you some insight into what we are doing while you are playing.

We arrive in the scheduled room one hour and 15 minutes before the scheduled start time. During the first 15 minutes, we are setting our clocks, setting up our hosting brackets, double-checking the macros we use during hosting, taking our last potty break and grabbing the cigarettes, coffee, munchies, and whatever else we will need for the next four hours.

One hour before start time, we begin the signup process. Depending on TD preference and skills, we may sign up from the lobby (tables 41–48) or from a table. We set the greet (the alert grey box you see when you come into the room) and begin running our macros in the lobby identifying where signups are occurring.

As players begin to arrive, we check all nicknames against a file known as the Certified Screen Name List. This lets us know who is an ACC member and who isn't. Currently, there are 425 names on that list, sorted in alphanumerical order. It may take one person 30 seconds to look up the name, type it to the table/lobby, and enter in on our brackets. We try to seat players in the order of arrival at the signup tables.

As signups occur, we are also keeping an eye on the lobby to answer questions, participate in discussions, and run our information macros. We work with players that sat at the wrong table, and shift things around when necessary. Then comes the busiest time for us: the last 10 minutes before the tourney starts. This is when we face a rush of players that want to enter the tourney. (It is not uncommon for a full ⅓ of the tourney to arrive in this short timeframe). For each of them, we go through the entire process: check the CSNL, type their name in, assign them to our brackets.

Five minutes before tourney start time: time to run our rules! During this time, we focus entirely on getting the rules out. While we are doing so, potential players are stacking up. Once the rules are complete, we work feverishly to get those players seated and start the tournament on time.

Tourney start time! After notifying players to start, we check all tables to make sure two players are assigned. If one is missing, we note that and try to fill in with people waiting to sign in. At some point, we close the tourney, change the greet and notify latecomers when the next tournament will be held. At the same time, we again check the tables to make sure everyone has started. If they haven't, we do our best to "nudge" them via message and tell them that the tourney has started.

Five minutes after start time: if using a table to receive posts, we hustle to copy the sign-in table, close it, and open the posting table. All the time, we are monitoring the lobby for missing/booted players, and continuing to notify latecomers that the tournament has closed. We are also counting the players and determining the number of byes that are required for round 2. The tournaments we put on for the ACC are different from other online tournaments in that all byes are placed in round 2. We must identify how many players we have, then compare half that number (the advancers) to a power of 2. As an example: if we have 70 players, 35 will advance. The next highest power of 2 is 64, thus we will have 29 round 2 byes! We then prepare our brackets to take in posts and arrange for round 2.

As posts come in, we are getting called to tables for various reasons, answering Zone Messages, explaining that round 2 assignments will be forthcoming, completing our brackets for round 2, still monitoring the lobby. Some players (mostly latecomers) try to post wins after only one game, rather than a best two of three — we need to get them back and resuming the game. In a nutshell, we are doing some serious multitasking! We want to make sure that we get everyone taken care of as soon as we can. The large number of players recently (over 100 in many tournaments) requires us to prepare more than 50 for round 2. This is the primary reason that I, and other TDs, wait until nearly all posts are in before assigning round 2 — accuracy. One wrong move, such as miscounting or assigning byes, and it drastically affects not only brackets but potentially your IRPs.

Finally, all the posts (or nearly so) are in, and we make our round 2 assignments. Again, we check the tables and attempt to notify those that are missing. For the byes, we get them assigned just as soon as we can into round 3. Our priority, however, is making sure that all round 2 players are playing, or we are timing missing players, before moving on.

Once we are confident round 2 is underway, we assign those with round 2 byes to round 3. If there are an odd number, then one of the byes has to wait for a round 2 table to complete their match. From this point on, we move as quickly as we can to get assignments out for the rest of the tournament without much delay.

With some players already a round ahead (those with round 2 byes), there are always going to be some delays when you advance. As the tourney progresses, those players that are quicker will, unfortunately, experience delays as the rest of the tournament catches up. Some players are slower than others, some matches end up going three games, and there is some delay for inexperienced typists, too. The overwhelming majority of you have been quite understanding of this, and we greatly appreciate it!

Finally, the tournament is over and, we hope, we have done the best job we could! For those that made it to the finals, you have been there about 2½ hours. For us, we're approaching the 4 hour mark in front of our monitors, frequently without a break. But our work is still not complete.

Following the tourney's completion, we must compile our results so credit can be given for IRPs, Pegging Pals points, and notification of tournament winners to the Zone for invitation to their online TOC.

Each of us that works as a TD/host does so because we love doing it. We receive no paycheck for our efforts other than your thank-yous and the knowledge that we have helped a large number of great people find a little break in their lives to enjoy one of their favorite pursuits (and ours, also!). We have guidelines to follow for both the ACC and the Zone, and we do our utmost to give everyone the best service we possibly can. We, like everyone else, are not perfect and are going to make our fair share of mistakes. But, we wouldn't be here if we didn't enjoy it — and that enjoyment is made possible by each and every one of you!

Hopefully, you've gained a little impression of what goes on "behind the scenes" as you play. For me it is hard work, but rewarding. On behalf of my fellow tournament directors, we thank you for your understanding and patience and — above all — we thank you for playing with us!!!

- Donald E. Ellis (+_LoneStar__)
  Assistant Internet Statistician and
  ACC Internet Tournament Director

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