Super-flex Tournaments
I am not sure what to call this suggestion yet. It is kind of a non-bracket bracket or post bracket format, and kind of a self-re-sorting every round affair. But let me try to explain from my experience over the last ten years hosting multiplayer team tournaments online. This is what I do:
I post a notice of a contest for clan teams.
Representatives post intended attendance, and proposed number of team from their clan.
With additions and subtractions we set a start date, and I blind-draw and post the opponents battle assignments, starting threads where they can then negotiate dates and times for their teams to meet online.
Now let me explain that multiplayer clans can be somewhat unstable. One analogy was that they were “built on sand”. With that understood, my contest format is very flexible. Right from the beginning we take all comers and set no limits on how many teams can participate. The lesson has been that as soon as you fix a number, another team will show up or drop out, and there you are.
This flexibility continues throughout the contest re-sorting the balance of participants at the timed-out conclusion of every round, giving a one-time bye to any odd sorted teams, and off we go again. And except for the one-time byes, every winning team gets an opponent in the next round until there is a single winner.
There can be bypass sorting rules like no just-played clans, and no same-clan opponents, and contingent hands-on re-matching up to mid-round for surprise withdrawals, also the ability to allow minor grace period extensions for problem situations. Of course the trade-off is daily supervision and the fact that no one knows who they will face next, beyond the current round, and sometimes even to the end of that round.
The name super-flex format now comes to mind, but whatever it might be called, I am wondering if you might be able to offer a round by round ordered restorable contest format, with administrative intervention available from beginning to end. I have tried to use your service three times now with single, double and Swiss format contests, only to have to stop and continue manually because they lack the flexibility I need. I love the look of Challonge, but the inflexibility just does not work for me.
Thanks for your attention.
Tomisama