---
title: Usage guide
---

import {Callout} from 'nextra/components'

# Usage guide

Setting up a tournament in a tournament management system like Bracket typically involves several
key steps. Below is a general guide on how to set up a tournament step-by-step.

<Callout type="info">
This guide assumes you are logged in to Bracket. This guide also assumes you use the demo of Bracket
(`https://www.bracketapp.nl`). If you are selfhosting Bracket, just use your own domain instead.
</Callout>

## 1. Create a New Tournament

From the homepage (e.g. `https://www.bracketapp.nl`), press the `Create Tournament` button.
Enter the tournament’s metadata:

- **Tournament Name:** Choose a clear, descriptive name.
- **Club** Select the club you want this tournament to be part of. A club is nothing more than a
  collection of tournaments that a user has access to. A default club was created when you created
  your account. If you want to link this tournament to a new club, go to the `/clubs` page.
- **Dashboard Link:** The suffix of the URL (slug) where your tournament will be presented to the
  public. For example, if you enter `my_tournament`, the outside world will be able to view the
  rankings and matches at `https://www.bracketapp.nl/tournaments/my_tournament/dashboard`.
- **Start Time:** The start time of the tournament decides when the first match will be played.
- **Match Duration:** Default duration of matches. Can be customized per match.
- **Time Between Matches:** Default time between matches, useful when teams have to move between
  courts between matches which takes some time. Can be customized per match.
- **Allow anyone to see the dashboard of rounds and matches:** Whether the dashboard is publicly
  accessible
- **Allow players to be in multiple teams**: Usually players are only part of one team and Bracket
  will not allow you to add players to be in multiple teams because that's usually not what you
  want. This option overrides that behavior and does allow one player to be in multiple teams.
- **Automatically assign courts to matches**: Whether you want to manually assign courts to matches
  or not.

Press `Save` when you're finished. These settings can all be changed later.

Now you should have been able to create a tournament and you're on the page of the tournament. In
the sidebar (menu on the left on desktop or at the top on mobile), you can navigate to different
pages responsible for different aspects of the tournament (courts, teams etc.).

## 2. Register Teams and Players

You need to add the teams (and optionally players) who will participate in the tournament.

<Callout type="info">
Adding players is optional and for display purposes only.

Players are part of teams and therefore it can be useful to add players in the system to know which
player plays in which team. In case you are organising a tournament where every person plays for
themselves, create teams with the names of these persons and don't add any players to those teams.
</Callout>

### Adding Players

To add players, go to the `Players` page by clicking on the icon in the sidebar. Press the
`Add Player` button. You can either create a single player or multiple players at once. To create
multiple players at once, put every player on a separate line, like this:

```text
Alex
Bob
Charlie
```

### Adding Teams

Adding teams works basically the same, go to the `Teams` page by clicking on the icon in the
sidebar. Press the `Add Team` button.

You can either create a single team or multiple teams at once. To create a single team, enter the
name. You can specify whether this team is active or not (this only matters for Swiss stage items
and determines whether the team will be able to be scheduled in the next Swiss round or not).

## 3. Create Your Tournament Structure

Now, decide on the format of your tournament. Bracket currently supports:

- **Single Elimination:** Teams compete in matches, and the loser is eliminated after each round.
- **Round Robin:** Every team plays against every other team exactly once.
- **Swiss:** Teams play a set number of rounds, and the number of rounds is based on the number of
  teams. This is a more advanced type of tournament, because the matches (who plays vs who) are not
  known at the start of the tournament, but created dynamically during the tournament based on the
  outcome of the previous rounds.

To create the tournament structure, go to the `Stages` page. Every stage consists of stage items.

A common tournament consists of a group stage which contains multiple round-robing stage items (
called pools), followed by a knock-out stage that consists of one or more single elimination stage
items. This requires the following steps:

- Create the `Add Stage` button twice to create two stages
- In the first stage, create two stage items and select the `Round Robin` type with half of the
  teams in your tournament each.
- In the second stage, create one stage item and select the `Single Elimination` type with 2 teams
  advancing from the previous stage.
- Assign all teams randomly to the round robin stage items in the first stage by clicking on the
  empty slots.
- Assign `1st of Round Robin` and `2nd of Round Robin` to the slots of the single elimination
  stage item.

## 5. Add Courts and Schedule Matches

To schedule the matches (assign the start time and courts), go to the `Planning` page.

### Create courts

Add all the courts of your tournament before scheduling matches. You just need to provide a name.

### Schedule matches

Press the `Schedule All Unscheduled Matches` button. This will automatically assign courts and start
times to all matches from the stage items you defined in the previous section.

Make sure that:

- There are no conflicting matches (matches where the same team plays on multiple courts at the same
  time)
- The planning is efficient by distributing the matches over all courts evenly.
- The matches are scheduled in order of stage. E.g. group stage matches should be before the
  knock-off
  matches since the knock-offs depend on the results of the group stage.

## 6. Define Rules and Scoring

In the `Ranking` page, you can customize the ranking or create more rankings that can be assigned
to individual matches. The ranking determines the final standing of each stage item. You can define
the points for a win, draw or loss. `Award points for match score` adds the score of each team to
their standing (e.g. if the result of a match was 21-5, team 1 receives 21 points and team 2
receives 5 points).

## 7. Launch the Tournament

Once all the teams are added and the bracket is set, you can launch the tournament. There is nothing
you need to do in Bracket, everything should be set up by now.

Ensure that:

- **Dashboard:** Enable the public dashboard so participants and spectators can view the matches and
  results live.

## 8. Start and Track Matches

As the tournament progresses:

- **Track Scores:** After each match, you’ll need to input scores or results. You can do this in
  the `Results` page
- **Next Stage:** At the end of each stage (once all matches in the stage items have been played),
  press the `Next Stage` button. This will show which teams will be assigned to the stage items of
  the next stage.
- **Communicate with Players:** Keep participants informed about upcoming matches, any delays, and
  results.

## 9. Finalize the Tournament

At the end of the tournament:

- **Announce Winners:** View the standings page on the dashboard to see who the winners are
