Pairings and Schedule

Schedule: Assume that each round will take 50 minutes to an hour, that registration will take 20 minutes, that the judges briefing will take 30 minutes and that it will take you thirty minutes to calculate the results and present the awards. Thus a 2 round tournament will take roughly 3 hours and a 3 round tournament will take 4 hours. If your tournament is a very small one (e.g. 10 teams), it will take less time. A typical 2 round tournament schedule would be

5:10 to 5:30: Registration

5:30 to 6: Judges briefing

6 to 7: Round 1

7 to 8: Round 2

8:30 Awards presented

Pairings: The pairings are a list of which teams are debating against each other in each round. There are a number of ways of arranging them but there are four rules that should be followed in setting up the pairings.

1) no team should debate another team more than once

2) no team should be seen by the same judge twice

3) teams from the same school should not debate against each other

4) teams should debate both sides of any prepared resolution.

One way of achieving this is to have the judges stay in the same room, the government/affirmative teams move down one room in the schedule (e.g. if they were in room 2 they move to room 3) and switch sides, and the opposition teams move down two rooms in the schedule (e.g. if they were in room 2 they move to room 4) and switch sides. If you have a third round, the teams that moved one room for the second round move one room again (e.g. the team that was in room 2 for the first round and 3 for the second round now moves to room 4 for the third round) and the teams that moved two rooms for the second round move two rooms again (e.g. the team that was in room 2 for the first round and room 4 for the second round now moves to room 6 for the third round). You can avoid having teams from the same school debate against each other by having all of the teams from any one school on the same side (i.e. all government or all opposition) for the first round.

If you want to use them, here are some excel spreadsheets with pairings already done. They are listed in the attachment area at the bottom of this page – just click the ones that you want to download. The one titled MSDA 2 rd is for open teams in two round tournaments. The one titled MSDA 3 rd are for open teams in three round tournaments. The one titled MSDA N2 is for two round Novice tournaments and the one titled MSDA N3 is for three round Novice tournaments. The tabs at the bottom of the sheets correspond to the number of teams. The novice schedules use the codes c and d while the open ones use the codes a and b. All of the teams from any one school must be on the same side of the draw, e.g. all of the SJR open teams would be a and all of the novice teams as d, so that they never debate against each other. You can set this up based just on the registration but often there will be some last minute changes depending on who signs up. This way if there is a last minute change, you can easily accommodate it just by switching the codes for 1 or 2 teams. I would suggest that you print off the sheets that correspond to the number of teams that you expect and sheets for 2 to 4 fewer teams and 2 to 4 more teams, just in case. You can than either post or print copies of the correct ones when the teams arrive and you find out how many you teams actually have. You need to fill in the room numbers.

A program (Mac computers) that can generate pairings automatically is available from Chris George on the QSDA site. This one involves entering the teams from each school and then, at the click of a button, the draw (pairings) are generated. The one drawback is that, if one team doesn't appear, or one appears late, you need to redo the draw, so it is better to use it as the teams register. It also assumes that it is a bracketed tournament, i.e. ones where after each round, the teams with the same win-loss record debate against each other. The program works very well but is more complicated. We do not normally use bracketing in Manitoba because it normally involves more time and rounds than we have available. Click here to get to the page.