Pairings & Rounds

A tournament is built from one or more phases (Swiss, elimination bracket, round robin) chained together. The Phases tab shows the pipeline and is where you create, edit, start, and advance them.

Choose a Quick Template ("Swiss + Top 8": 5 Swiss rounds cut to a Top 8 single elimination; "2-Day Tournament": 9 Swiss rounds then 5 more plus a Top 8 cut) or build a custom phase.

Reading a phase card

Each card shows a sequence number, the phase name, and three badges:

The pairing-mode badge above states whether the phase pairs as pods, 1v1, or a booster draft. Separately, the phase's bracket-shape badge is one of:

Then a status:

Below the badges: rounds played / planned, Best of, the table range (or the first table number), Power Pairings if enabled for the last round, and a custom bye mode if one is set.

Phase actions

• A pending phase can be edited or deleted, and started once the previous phase is complete (Start Phase locks entries and generates round 1).
• An active phase can still be edited, jumps straight to Pairings, and can be completed (freezing final standings and unlocking the next phase) or deleted outright.
• A completed phase can be reopened to add more rounds or correct results, as long as no later phase has started.

Table layout

Set a First table or Last table number once, with "Apply to all phases" — it sets the table range for every phase that has not started yet. Edit a single phase afterward to give it a different range (for example, a featured final on table 1).

Mixed-format events

When a tournament mixes formats within the same 1v1 family instead (for example Booster Draft then Constructed), a "Rematch avoidance" setting appears with two choices:

• Same format only (Pro Tour) — a draft opponent can be faced again once the format switches to constructed; rematches are still avoided within the same format.
• Across the whole event — the same two players are never re-paired, even across a format change.

Scoring is unchanged either way — one combined cumulative Swiss standing across every phase. Only which past pairings count against a rematch changes.

Phase configuration options

When creating or editing a phase you can set: config mode (Constructed, Booster Draft, Multiplayer), phase type, number of rounds, Best-of, win/draw/loss/bye points, tiebreaker order and floor, a cut (Top Cut Size or minimum points, with an optional "Swiss Elimination" mode where a single loss drops the player instead of waiting for a cut), table numbering, Power Pairings for the last round, deterministic toss, bye selection mode, self-reporting, default pairings/standings visibility, the open-decklists toggle, and the late-enrollment penalty mode. See the Phases, Scoring, and Toss pages for the full rules behind each setting.

The main control center while a round is live: round tabs at the top, an action bar, search and filters, the pairings table, and end-of-round tools.

Action bar

• The two visibility toggles control whether players see pairings and standings in the player portal — click to flip them per round.
• An "X/Y reported" counter tracks result entry, and a Purple Fox button copies pairings to your clipboard in Purple Fox format for penalty tracking software.
• Quick Entry opens the streamlined result-entry page.
• Complete Round turns solid once every result is in; the server still refuses if anything is missing.
• Edit Pairings shows a badge with the number of unpaired players — see Manual Pairing Tools below.

More menu

Search and filters

Player and table/team search sit alongside filter buttons: Missing (no result yet), Disputed (conflicting reports needing staff resolution), Rematches (a forced repeat matchup), Dropped (drops, DQ, cut in this round), and a Pod filter for draft phases.

Pairings table

Columns: Table, a Bracket chip on elimination phases, Player 1, Score, Player 2, Status, Actions. Per row you can Confirm a reported result, Reset it back to pending, Unpair the match, swap the toss winner, or grant a time extension.

A double-elimination phase runs winners and losers brackets in parallel — every match is tagged so you always know which side it belongs to.

A double-elimination bracket always resolves on a single Grand Final — there is no decisive rematch. If a player drops mid-bracket, their live match is automatically awarded to the opponent so the round can still complete. Use Print Bracket (in the More menu above) for a full printable tree of both brackets plus the Grand Final.

Open Edit Pairings to reassign players by hand — useful to fix a forced rematch, seat a late arrival, or correct a mistake.

1. Click a player from the Unpaired Players list to select them, then click "Pair" on a second player to stage that pairing.
2. Or use Bye (a free win this round), Loss (a forfeit), Drop, or No-show on a single unpaired player.
3. "Swiss auto-pair" proposes a full Swiss-style pairing of every unpaired player as a batch queue you can review before submitting.
4. Queued pairings can be adjusted, then confirmed with "Add to queue" plus "Submit all", or a single pairing can skip the queue with "Confirm now".
5. The Current Pairings list on the right lets you search, sort, and Unpair any existing match to send both players back to the unpaired pool.

Once every result of the current round is in:

• Add Another Round keeps the current phase going beyond its original round count.
• Complete Phase closes the phase without ending the tournament; Complete Phase & End Tournament replaces it when this is the last phase.
• Advance to :name closes the phase, applies any cut, and generates round 1 of the next phase in one click.

The Generate button itself is labeled after what it will create — "Generate Round 1", "Generate Quarterfinals", "Generate Semifinals" — instead of a generic label.

A top-bar toggle next to the round timer automates the round-to-round loop for events you cannot babysit table by table.

When enabled, the moment the last table reports its result the current round completes and the next one generates automatically — no manual click needed.

A companion "Auto-advance buffer" setting (in the timer widget dropdown) inserts a short "Round starts in..." countdown before an auto-generated round's clock actually starts, giving players a few minutes to find their new table. Set the buffer to 0 to skip it, or turn it off entirely to start the round instantly.

Above roughly 500 enrolled players, generating a round is handed off to a background job instead of running inline, so the page never times out.

You will see a "Generating pairings..." spinner with the note "Pairing all enrolled players. This may take a few seconds for large tournaments. The page will update automatically." — no action is needed, the round tab appears the moment the job finishes.

Use the Dropped filter (in the search bar above the pairings table) at any point in the tournament to see every drop, disqualification, and cut in the current round, along with who dropped them.

If players dropped during round 1 of the very first phase, a red banner lists them with attribution:

A drop this early usually means the player never really showed up. Unenrolling takes them out of the player count and the metagame entirely, as if they never enrolled — nothing happens automatically, you choose per player or in bulk, and you can dismiss the banner instead.

EDH and other multiplayer (pod) tournaments use a dedicated Multiplayer Pairings admin page instead of the 1-versus-1 Pairings table — same tab in the sidebar, different layout.

Toggle edit mode, then click any player — in a pod, a bye, or the unassigned list — to pick them up, and click where they should go: "Move here" on another pod with a free seat, drop them on the Bye zone, or on Unassigned. Click a second pod player instead to swap the two.

An empty pod (created with "Create Empty Pod" in the More menu) can be filled the same way, or deleted outright while it still holds nobody.

More menu (multiplayer)

Reporting a pod result

Each player in a pod gets a Win button (the whole pod's winner), a Tie (records the pod as a draw for everyone), and an L button that records a loss for just that one player without touching the rest of the pod's results.

The round's status badge doubles as its control: click it to Reopen Round or Complete Round, the same way as the 1-versus-1 Pairings page. Full detail on pod pairing rules, short-pod modes, and the tiebreaker floor lives in the Scoring page.

A top-bar toggle (next to Auto-Advance) controls whether your browser is prompted to download a fresh tournament backup every time a new round is generated.

Nothing is stored server-side by this toggle — it only triggers a client-side download. With it off, you can still download a backup manually at any time from the dedicated Backup page in the sidebar, which also lets you restore from a backup, generate an offline rescue page, and export a spreadsheet copy of the whole event.