Knockout competition

[icrashin]

Hi,

I will put the disclaimer that this is my first time to post to a site. I usually resolve my problems by banging my head against a brick wall until I get through it, or work a way around. so I shall say sorry in advance if I break any conventions, it is not my aim to annoy.

So it is probably not the best start to pick up an old thread, in following this thread (Football fixtures Cunnie76) the initial question has not been fully answered as far as I can see. Clearly the league fixtures side of the question is answered. This is something I had already mastered, but by no means with the quality of code given via this site.

So the remaining question is how to create a knockout 'Cup' tournament. My specific issue is that I am unsure how to create both a form (for screen viewing and results input) and report (to print to hard copy) to cater for a knockout that may vary in size.

i.e. if there were four players it would look like ..

Player 1
...................Winner - Player 1
Player 2

............................................ Winner - Player 4

Player 3
....................Winner - Player 4
Player 4

obviously this would need to change for differing numbers of players.

Any pointers a how to represent this data without have to hard code and select different reports would be greatly appreciated. If this is not clear and you require clarification please let me know.

Ian

 

[statsman]

I have been doing this quite successfully for years using...
Hold your breath...
Get ready...

Manual entry in Excel

Just set up your spreadsheet like a tournament table and manually move the winners on to the next round.

Sorry for the big buildup - couldn't resist.

 

[icrashin]

mmmmmmmmm

Yes thanks for that ...

not overly adventerous.

In fact it would be possible of course to extract the results of the league to Excel to prevent full manual entry but still not the slick solution I aiming to achieve...

Have fun with your leagues....

Ian

 

[statsman]

If you require assistance in setting up competitions, go to

www.darters.com

and download their tournament brackets. Very helpful.

 

[stopher]

I see no reason why you cant design a report/form to look like the knockout table. But to make it dynamic according to the number of rounds you will definately have to use code imo.

Your code should consider:
- the maximum number of rounds that can be represented
- a node numbering philosophy ( anode being a field on your table)
- manipulating the visibility and position of each node
- how to get information to and from each node

Most data in a database is displayed in a tabular format. Clearly this isn't. Therefore I can't see any obvious way for binding your data to a datasource. Therefore you will have to write the code to get the data from your data source and manually put it on the form/report (same thing for storing data).

So the big question is, what's your table structure? How have you set up the design of your tables to represent a knockout tournament?

Chris

 

[stopher]

Some more brief thoughts...

Your form will also have to manage some integrity/constraints
e.g.
- A child node can have an entry from one of its parent nodes.
- A child node can only be entered once both parents exist.

I see no reason why you couldn't have each node set up as a combo with the Row Source being its parents. However, the Row Source of the combos for the first round would be the "entrants" table".

I wonder if the following table structure will suffice:

TournID__RoundID___Index____PlayerID

Index is the logic position in a given round. If you make TournID, RoundID and PlayerID part of the primary key then you will be ensuring that a PlayerID cannot be entered twice in a tournament.

Given this structure, you can loop through a recordset of records for a specific tournament and load each record (PlayerID) into the respective node on your form.

hth
Chris

 

[icrashin]

Statsman,

Thanks for the link, but I have already successfully written my code foir a single elimination tournament. Fortunately it is a competition run in a single day so no complication of dates etc.

thanks for the support anyway

Ian

 

[icrashin]

Stopher,

thanks, I am not sure I fully understand yet but I will have a think on this and read a little further. Hopefully I will make some progress from here.

Ian