Author Topic: Automatically seating players  (Read 3797 times)

jrwilson1946

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Automatically seating players
« on: June 10, 2015, 10:58:06 PM »
My tournaments have 3 to 4 table of 8 players. My issue is that if I have 29 players, almost always when I have the program automatically seat the players from the Randomize Seating button of the Table tab, table 1 will have 7 players while table 2, 3 or 4 will have the one table of 8 players.

Does anyone have a suggestion or know how to force TD to seat table 1 with the most players? Also is there a way to force seating compression at the beginning of the tournament when the tables are not balanced?

My table sort order is; table 1, table 2, table 3 and then table 4

My table collapse order is just the opposite; 4, 3, 2 and then 1
Jerome R. Wilson

Corey Cooper

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Re: Automatically seating players
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2015, 11:48:42 AM »
There's no way to force the sorting algorithm to treat one [or more] tables as more important to fill.  The bias is towards following the collapse order, if specified, and then towards moving as few players as possible.  If neither of those provides any bias at the time a balance is needed, it's then really just random.  In other words, if one player has to be moved, and that player could be moved to any one of three tables resulting in balanced tables, it's going to be a random choice.

Seating players randomly (all at once), should result in compressed tables.  So I assume you're seating players as they buy in, which truly does seat in completely random locations.  In that case, you'll have to press the Compress Seating button yourself - there's no way to do it automatically.  If there were, when would it happen?

famous58

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Re: Automatically seating players
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2015, 02:36:09 PM »
Seating players randomly (all at once), should result in compressed tables.  So I assume you're seating players as they buy in, which truly does seat in completely random locations.  In that case, you'll have to press the Compress Seating button yourself - there's no way to do it automatically.  If there were, when would it happen?

I still wish there was an option for auto seating during buy-in to seat each player at the next open seat at each table, e.g. buy-in 1 gets table 1, seat 1. Buy-in 2 gets table 2, seat 1. Buy-in three gets table 3, seat 1. Buy in 4 gets table 1, seat 2, etc. This keeps tables balanced so that in say a 30 person tournament you can start on time with balanced tables and as those 4-5 late folks that show up will continue to get seated in balanced tables. Right now I have to do that manually since TD wants to put everyone at table 1 as they buy in.

Seitz333

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Re: Automatically seating players
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2015, 11:26:37 PM »
Sounds like the same thing I was asking for in this post.

http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/forums/index.php?topic=5010.0

Seitz333

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Re: Automatically seating players
« Reply #4 on: August 29, 2015, 10:33:36 AM »
I still wish there was an option for auto seating during buy-in to seat each player at the next open seat at each table, e.g. buy-in 1 gets table 1, seat 1. Buy-in 2 gets table 2, seat 1. Buy-in three gets table 3, seat 1. Buy in 4 gets table 1, seat 2, etc. This keeps tables balanced so that in say a 30 person tournament you can start on time with balanced tables and as those 4-5 late folks that show up will continue to get seated in balanced tables. Right now I have to do that manually since TD wants to put everyone at table 1 as they buy in.

I have been thinking about this some more and another workaround would be, lets says you have 30 players and 3 tables, and you figure 5 late arrivals. Before you start buying in players make seats 9 and 10 unavailable at all tables (that gives you 6 seats for late arrivals). At this point you can start buying in players and let TD auto random seat as they buyin. Once you get 24 player bought in you can open seat 9 at all tables and continue buying in players at as they arrive, once those seats are filled then open seat 10 at all tables and continue buying in players. This would keep the tables balanced and still random seat all the ontime players.

But I do wish the there was an option to keep the tables balanced as players buyin, several of us know ahead of time how many total tables we will have.

Hope this helps.

Chuck
 

Corey Cooper

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Re: Automatically seating players
« Reply #5 on: September 01, 2015, 01:02:35 PM »
The "round-robin" scenario can become pretty complicated pretty quickly.  I've considered it before, and may again, but you have to consider that tables can be manipulated at any time, and that players can be unseated, their buy-ins can be undone, they can be removed from the tournament, players can be moved, etc, etc, etc.  Any of those things happening during the buy-in period of a tournament throws a monkey wrench into the process.  Randomly seating, which is what most people want anyway to deter cheating or the impression of cheating or biases, doesn't get any more complicated when you make changes to tables/seats/seating/players, which makes it even more ideal.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is something like Seitz333 suggested.  If you know how many people will be coming, plan for that number.  Remove seats or make seats unavailable to achieve early balance, leaving room for latecomers.

I am looking into different seating scenarios and how they could be implemented.