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Groups &
Brackets
Demo Page

This page contains links to both functional demos and past examples of Groups and Brackets.

Groups and Brackets

"Groups and Brackets" simplifies reporting and displaying soccer tournament results. Game results can be updated very easily, and group standings and/or brackets are updated automatically based on the game results and the ranking criteria. During the 2012 Southern Soccer Challenge, one game was reported using a smart phone a few seconds before it was over. (The ball was well away from both goals at the time.) If the site is bookmarked, it takes less than one mouse click and 3-5 key strokes to report a match result, and the brackets and group standings are updated immediately. Ranking criteria can be configured for each tournament.

GAB also provides flexibility in displaying schedules, showing all tournament games, all games for a gender, a single division's game, a single group's games, and a single team's schedule.

Click here for short tutorial that steps through some of the features. The "Groups and Brackets" Forum is here.

Usage

GAB evolved partly as a response to a slow or nonexistent web presence for many high school soccer tournaments. If you weren't at the game or didn't know someone at the game, you might not get the results for a day or two. Many high school soccer programs are associated with the school web site, which is unlikely to support easy reports of tournament results. EurosportScoreboard can be used to report game scores, but it is not really setup to support tournament results. Groups and Brackets can be used at no cost if it is hosted at http://soccer-tournament.us/tourn/. If you feel generous, I'll accept donations which will be used to support Grissom Soccer and grissomsoccer.com. Contact Tom Konantz via email if you have any questions or would like to try it out.

Demonstrations

The best way to see see how GAB works is to enter some scores to see how simple it is, and to watch the group standings and brackets as they update. These demonstration tournaments have report permissions enabled so that all users can enter game results to see how groups and brackets are updated. The results are reset each day.

There is a small chance that two people may be doing updates at about the same time. This is not a problem if different results are being entered or if the same result is entered by more than one person, but it does make it harder to see how everything works. If the "Last Update" time is showing very recent changes that you haven't made, try it later, switch to a different division, or switch to another demonstration tournament.

  • The Rumble11 demonstration uses 2011 Tiger Rumble team names and schedule, with fictional scores. "Groups and Brackets" was was extended to support group standings to support the 2012 Tiger Rumble, which unfortunately did not take place. Support for ranking group members was developed for this tournament, a multi-division tournament with 4 girls divisions and 3 boys divisions. Two divisions, U10B and U12G, include single elimination brackets, which are updated as soon as group winners are determined. The other winners are determined on points.

    This demonstration tournament uses different tie breakers/ranking criteria than the real tournament, moving head-to-head up in priority and only giving a "shutout point" to winning teams. If each team gets a point for a shutout in a 0-0 tie, 3 points for the draw and 1 point for the shutout, those teams get the same points as teams in a 1-1 tie. In this demonstration, a 0-0 tie is worth 3 points each.

  • The Demo demonstration uses the same teams and schedule as Rumble11, but includes the option to redefine ranking criteria. Click on "Define Ranking Criteria" to switch between a 10 point and 3 point system, change the shutout point policy, and define the tie breakers and limits. Normally setting the criteria would be done once, but it's interesting to see how different criteria change the rankings.

    This Demo has game results for all but two group games, so it's a lot easier to see how the single elimination bracket is updates when the last two games are entered. In addition, one team has enough points to win group A even though there's one more Group A game to play. This team is already shows up in the bracket.

  • The Euro JH demonstration tournament uses national team names playing a 4 day tournament at John Hunt. Not a very realistic scenario, but it works for a demonstration. There are three groups of 4 teams each, with the top two teams in each group and two wild card teams moving to the quarter finals. It uses the 3 point system, as do most international tournaments.
  • The JV01 demonstration tournament includes semifinal games and a third place game.
  • The JV02 demonstration tournament is identical to the JV01 demonstration, but has many scores already entered. Adding results to the last group game in JV Women or the last two group games in JV Men will populate the single elimination bracket.

    Examples

    These examples are based on tournaments but most are not associated with those tournaments. Public teams, schedules, and results were entered as a test case. Neither reporting or editing is authorized to most users.
  • The Tiger Rumble Futsal Tournament 2013 used GAB to show schedule and results for 5 divisions, hosted at grissomsoccer.com. The Tiger Rumble website also had a preregistation function. Each preregistration generated a entry form suitable for printing, which was mail with a check to complete registration, while also entering the information in a database and emailing the information to the event director.
  • The 2012 Birmingham Metro tournament is a large, multi-venue tournament, comprised of one women's division, WPL, and two men's divisions, EPL and Bundesliga. Like most of these examples/demonstrations, venue-specific schedules can be displayed.
  • The 2012 Island Cup tournament is a Men's/Women's tournament held in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores. These scores were entered as the game results were posted. At one point there was a discrepancy between the generated rankings here and the published schedule, but their schedule was subsequently updated when their error was detected. Groups and Brackets calculated the tie breakers correctly and the tournament did not, at least initially.

    One major feature was added after this tournament. Previously group play had to be complete before the single elimination bracket was filled in. There were a couple of groups in which one team had already earned maximum points and was guaranteed the group win even though not all group games were finished. A lookahead feature was added to Groups and Brackets that compared current results with potential future results so that the bracket could be completed earlier.

  • The 2012 Southern Shootout includes 3 Women's Divisions and 4 Men's divisions, comprised of 96 games played on 15 different fields. Several of the games were cancelled due to weather, so several groups were "incomplete". The organizers use the results of the first three games to decide Champions, so a change was made to GAB so that cancelled games could be excluded from group calculations.
  • The 2009, 2011, and 2013 JV Super Cup use the Huntsville High School JV Super Cup schedule and results. It consists of both Boys and Girls Divisions on two fields. This tournament uses the 10 point system. The page header includes a menu to switch between 2009, 2011, and 2013 schedule/results. The finals are not
  • The 2012 United Soccer Club (Hsv) Futsal Tournament used GAB, though it wasn't publicized at the time. This tournament uses a 10 point system with # of shut outs as one tiebreaker. It is configured to use a different font than the default.

    Future Plans

    Groups & Brackets software is improved frequently based on both user suggestions and things that I think will be useful. Recently a Group A winner was unable to play in the semifinals, so the Group A runner-up was given that slot. The opponent was the "Wildcard" winner, which is the team with the best record not playing in the single elimination games. Scheduling A-2 rather than A-1 was simple, but the team that couldn't play was automatically allocated the wildcard spot. A revision was made so that teams could be explicitedly excluded from the wildcard caculations.

    There is currently a prototype that shows groups and single elimination games differently based on a user suggestion.

    Tournament Building capanbilities are in active development and can be used to schedule tournament divisions easily, though the user interface is beging refined. Integration with online calendars is planned, as well as improved readbility on phones and tablets.

    User suggestions and requests will be considered.