Quick disclaimer

Hi! This is a guide compiling some insights from the East Coast, French, and Swedish communities, in order to help TOs organize their weekly tournaments. I hope it will be useful!

This guide was made with the French scene in mind. I have translated it in English and adapted it for an European audience; I believe that almost all of this is applicable worldwide.

Please notify me (/u/thatslexi on Reddit, @lexanesirac on Twitter) if you’d like to suggest any improvement!

When

Day

It’s better to organise weeklies on weekdays, in order not to deter anyone from going to larger weekend tournaments.

Hour

Try starting around 7pm, so that everyone has time to get out of work and come where the weekly happens. The easiest way to decide on the time and date for the weekly is a quick poll in the group conversation platform you use.

Start your tournament on time. Tell everyone that registrations will close at a given time, and don’t feel pressured to accept late people to join the tournament: they can play friendlies, and will be on time next week.

Schedule one hour from when the setups are ready to registration ending (so arrive around 6pm), and about 15minutes between closing registration and starting the pools (seeding and announcing the matches).

Where

The ideal solution is to find a gaming bar, and this guide is based on the assumption that you are organising your weekly tournament in a place like that.

The goals of a weekly are to:

• stimulate the local Smash scene by letting local players play together with real goals and regular sessions
• recruit new players, which explains why I’m encouraging the choice of a public place with people who could be interested.

Another argument in favour of going to a local gaming bar is that you’ll probably have fewer problems with power strips and a better Internet connection for your stream - an important element even if you don’t have a stream yet, so that you won’t get stuck if you do want to stream someday.

Note that you don’t need a lot of space for weeklies, since not many cities, especially in Europe, have more than 24 active players; 35sqm is a small, but sufficient space, for 20 players (5 setups).

How

Equipment

We’d advise having at least 1 setup for every 4 players.

Players should bring their own setups, and don’t forget power strips if the bar doesn’t lend them to you!

In general, players will have enough good faith to bring their setups to the weekly tournament. They can understand that the more setups we have, the more we can freeplay, and the sooner the tournament will be over, with shorter waiting times.

Registrations

This is a suggestion to help out the bar where the event happens, the TO and the players.

Registering is done by buying a drink at the bar, by the bartender; after the registrations are completed, the TO will do the seeding for 10 to 15 minutes maximum, which is enough to launch the tournament.

Using this method, we’re sure that the bar will get to make profit through the weekly, which is incentive for the bar to let you use their space. The TO can prepare the seeding and finish setting everything up during registrations, as well as play friendlies, and will only have to step in once the registrations are over.

In a situation like this one, there are no cashprizes nor entry fee (apart from the mandatory drink).

Tournament format

The number of players and free setups needs to be taken into account when choosing between swiss rounds, pools and a double elimination bracket. Don’t forget low-level players, who don’t necessarily do other tournaments than this weekly, and might not want to come for the evening only to play twice, especially if you don’t have enough setups to allow for friendlies.

Each system has its specificities:

• Double Elimination: ideal if you’re short on time, takes fewer setups so people can play friendlies once eliminated
• Round Robin (8 people max. in bracket): everyone gets to play a satisfying number of games, lets you have a real bracket afterwards
• Swiss Rounds (6+ rounds, then Grand Finals): ideal if you don’t know everyone’s seeding since the seeding is done through the game results, everyone gets to play a satisfying number of games, and beginners don’t get stomped X times in a row

Communication

Before the event

• Post the day before on the local Facebook group or forum or whatever platform your region uses, in order to ask who’s coming and who will bring a setup. Remind everyone of the time at which the weekly will start.
• There might be a national website that has a tournament calendar: that’s the case for France with UFS, the CubeForum and ShieldBreakFast, or with the UK and Ireland here.
• Reddit : weeklies calendar on /r/ssbm

A quick template for a Facebook post (thanks to Spartanplume, Lyon TO in France):

[NAME OF BAR - WEEKLY TOURNAMENT]

Hey guys!

The tournament will be at NAME OF BAR and start at TIME.

Who’s bringing a setup?

As always, please register at the bar as early as possible, or send me a message if you might be late for the registrations but on time for the tournament.

See you tomorrow!

Challonge link

It’s better to standardise the Challonge links. For instance, in Lyon, we know that the link is http://challonge.com/smarcaXX with XX being the edition number, so we don’t have to look for the Challonge link everytime! Try calling your Challonge http://challonge.com/WeeklyPLACEXX, with PLACE as the name of the bar or place you’re holding the tournament and the XX being the edition of the tournament.

If you don’t have a stream

• Post the Challonge bracket on your local/national Facebook group
• On Twitter, make at least one tweet to announce the start and share the bracket link, and one tweet to announce who came in 1st, 2nd and 3rd: mention the Smashers who are there!

If you have a stream

• Post the Challonge bracket and the link to your stream on your local/national Facebook group, as well as EU Melee if regional tops are there (say “ft. this player, this player, etc.”, as people might want to watch these people, and you’ll get extra viewers). Don’t forget to also link the Challonge bracket!
• On Twitter, make at least one tweet to announce the start and share the bracket link, and one tweet to announce who came in 1st, 2nd and 3rd: mention the Smashers who are there!

After the tournament (Europe only)

If you had more than 12 people attending the tournaments, send the following information to smashranking@gmail.com (if you’re in Europe):

• Name of the tournament
• Name of the TO
• Date of the tournament
• Number of participants
• All Challonge links (pools, swiss rounds, bracket, doubles, amateur bracket)

Tips

• Take a piece of cardboard, or anything that you can put on the TVs. During “serious” games (money matches and tournament sets), put it on the TV: people will know that they should not bother you. If nothing’s on the TV, then you’re just playing friendlies.
• Make the bracket link public so that everyone can check it from their phone instead of having a hard time finding the only person who knows who they’re going to play against. You can also leave a computer or a tablet somewhere so that people can register their scores when the TO is busy.