Ludoya runs the tournament so you can run the room. Pick a format, and it works out who plays whom each round, tracks the standings as results come in, breaks ties the way your community expects, and draws the bracket on screen.
Tournaments are a Club plan feature and need a group to host them. From your group page, choose Organize Tournament.
Choosing a Format
Swiss
Everyone plays every round, and nobody is knocked out. Players are paired against others on a similar score as the tournament goes on, and the winner is whoever tops the table at the end. The default choice for a league night or a store championship where people came to play games, not to watch.
Mixer
Swiss's sociable cousin. The whole schedule is built up front to maximise how many different people you play, rather than to sort the field by skill. Ideal for a club night or a convention where mixing the room matters more than crowning a champion.
Single elimination
A one-versus-one knockout bracket. Lose a match and you're out. Short, dramatic, and over quickly.
Double elimination
The same, but you have to lose twice to go home. It costs more rounds and gives everyone a second chance, which is usually the fairer feel for a title decider.
Phases: Heats, Then a Final
A tournament is a chain of phases, each with its own format, table size, rounds and scoring. Most events need one. A championship usually needs two: Swiss heats to sort the field, then a knockout bracket for the title. Add phases when you set the tournament up; each one starts when the previous one finishes.
Who plays the next phase is the cut rule of that phase:
- Everyone continues — a change of format, not a cut. Swiss rounds followed by a mixer, say.
- The best players overall — the top N of the previous phase's standings. The classic Top 8.
- The best of each table — the top K finishers of every table in the previous phase's final round. In a multi-round Swiss a player sits at a different table each round, so only the last one is a fair basis.
Players who dropped out never advance, whatever their standing.
Carry points over keeps each player's total from the previous phase instead of starting the new one at zero. Leave it off when the second phase is a bracket — a bracket has no points.
Split into two brackets — for an elimination phase, send the top seeds to a championship bracket for the title and everyone below the split to a consolation bracket for the places beneath it. Everyone who played for the title finishes above everyone in the consolation bracket, so the consolation winner is 5th, not 3rd.
Confirming the cut. When a phase finishes, the next one waits for you. Ludoya proposes the qualifiers best first; that order is the seeding, and you can drag to reorder it before you press Confirm and start. Players who did not make it are listed as knocked out. Until you confirm, everyone sees Waiting for the organizer to set up the next phase.
Only the last phase may leave its round count open, so nothing downstream is left waiting.
Setting It Up
The game — every tournament is for one game, picked when you create it. Each pairing becomes a play of that game.
Table size — how many players share a table each round. Swiss and mixer can seat three, four or more per game, which is what makes them work for board games rather than just chess. Elimination brackets are always one-versus-one, so this is fixed at two.
Rounds — Ludoya suggests a sensible number for your field size, and you can override it.
Points per placement — decide what finishing first, second, third and so on is worth. This is what the standings add up.
Bye points — when the numbers don't divide evenly, someone sits a round out. Set what a bye is worth so nobody is punished for the maths.
Tied-rank points policy — when players tie at a table, award them all the Higher placement points, or the Average placement points of the positions they share.
Reveal standings only at the end — players see the classification once the tournament ends; you still see it live. Useful when you'd rather nobody played for a safe second place in the last round.
Players and Guests
Players sign up to the event like any other: the attendee list is the roster. You can also fill it yourself from Reserve places:
- Guests without an account. Type a name and add it as a guest. A guest is a full player: seated, paired, ranked, shown on the bracket. Send them an invite link later and, when they sign up, their results move to their new profile.
- Paste a list. Have the entries in a spreadsheet or a sign-up form? Paste the rows, or pick a .csv or .xlsx file. Ludoya finds people by Ludoya username, then email, then exact name among the people you already know, asks you to confirm the doubtful ones, and adds everyone else as a guest. Emails are only used to find accounts and aren't saved.
Guests aren't notified; they only hear from Ludoya if you send them their invite link.
Tiebreakers
Equal points at the top is the moment a tournament either feels fair or doesn't. Pick the tiebreakers your community accepts, in the order they should apply:
- Head-to-head — who won when the tied players actually met
- Buchholz — the combined score of everyone you faced, so a hard draw counts for something
- Raw score sum — your total in-game points across the tournament
- First places — how many games you won outright
Announce your choice before you start. Nobody minds losing a tiebreak they knew about in advance.
Running the Day
- Build the roster. Players are seeded, and you can drop anyone who leaves partway through — the pairings adapt rather than breaking. Someone arriving late has a place too (see below).
- Generate the round. Ludoya proposes the tables and any byes, and shows you a pair coverage preview: how much of the room is meeting fresh opponents, and how many pairs are repeating. Adjust before you commit.
- Confirm it. Each pairing becomes a real scheduled game with a table number. Players at a table enter its result in the app, or from the table reporting link without an account.
- Watch the standings. They update as results land, with each player's per-round record and tiebreaker values visible. Put them on a screen — it's the best atmosphere-builder you have. On the Business plan, the event display shows the round and the standings full-screen on its own link.
- Next round. For Swiss and mixer, generate the next one once the current round is in. Elimination brackets advance themselves, byes included: a bye is a walkover that resolves the moment the bracket is confirmed, and a match fed by two byes becomes a real match straight away.
- Next phase. When the last round of a phase is in, review the cut and confirm it. Bracket matches are named for you — Round 2 · Match 1, Losers round 3 · Match 2, Grand final, Reset, Consolation round 1 · Match 2 — so the schedule reads like a programme.
- The overall classification. Besides each phase's own standings, the Overall tab ranks the whole field. The further a player got, the higher they place: a Top 8 bracket decides places 1–8 and the Swiss decides 9th onwards. Inside a bracket there are no points to add up, so places follow the tree — how far you got, and whether you won your last match. A champion who received a bye is never ranked below the player they beat in the final.
Letting Tables Report Their Results
Collecting result slips is the slow part of any tournament. Open Let tables report their results on the tournament and you get one link and a QR code for the whole event. Print the QR for each table, put it on the screen, or share the link in the attendees chat.
Whoever opens it picks their table, says who they are, and enters every player's score and finishing position. No account needed.
- The whole table sees the same sheet. If two phones open the same table, each sees the other's changes as they happen.
- Results count straight away, and the standings move with them. The link has a Standings tab too, so players can follow the room from their seat.
- A result can be corrected until the next round starts. After that, only the organizer can change it.
- Signed-in players land on their own table, and Enter result on a schedule or bracket card opens the same sheet inside the app.
- Make a new link if the QR reached someone it shouldn't. The old link and every printed copy stop working at once.
When Plans Change on the Day
Someone arrived late? Add them from the tournament, and Ludoya tells you where they fit before anything changes:
- Swiss: the round being played isn't touched. They're seated from the next round you generate.
- Mixer: every round is seated in advance, so the rounds nobody has started are re-seated with them included. You review the new seating first; rounds already underway stay as they are.
- A drawn bracket, or a phase only for the players who qualified, can't take new players, and it says so.
Reset tournament, in the tournament's menu, takes you back to setup. It deletes the tables and every result, and removes those games from the players' profiles; the participants and settings stay. It lists exactly what will be deleted and asks you to type the tournament's name, because it can't be undone.
The Final Standings
When the last result is in, the standings become the tournament's record: every player's place, points and tiebreakers, per phase and overall. Download PDF gives you the classification on A4 pages, ready to print for the prize table, pin on the club's board or send to your federation.
Everyone's games from the day land on their profiles and in their statistics, like any other play.