Any tips for setting up an arcade tourney?

[dprush83]

I'm planning my first arcade tournament since building the cabinet, I was wondering if anybody has any tips on avoiding headache with this.  Here is what I have so far, thought I'd throw it up and see if anybody had any good input:

$25 buy-in

Each entry gets to choose one game; the game must have a clear high scoring system.

We rotate each game three times and each player gets to use their single highest score of the game.  The top player will receive 3 points, 2 points to second place, 1 point to third place and the rest get none.
      To keep it objective, no versus games will be allowed in tournament competition.

At the end of the tournament, points will be totaled.  Winner takes 100% of the money, who cares to have their initials in second place?
       Should there be a tie, there will be a sudden death rematch using a game chosen by the highest placed player not in contention for the prize.

[Havok]

Sounds good. Where are we playing?

 

[dprush83]

Sounds good. Where are we playing?

 

Come on out, San Diego! 

I'm just trying to come up with ways to set it up to avoid "Oh well I would win if it were set up this way" et cetera.  It's a mix of gamers and people who are just down for a good time, which will be awesome.  But I know there is bound to be some competition and if I set up the rules right I can at least minimize it (hopefully). 

[CrazyKongFan]

How many people you going to have? It sounds like you just have 1 cab, so you wouldn't want a ton of people, and potentially long playing games.

[shardian]

Best tip? Leave out the money.

Bragging rights are plenty for a tourney. Odds are there will be a BIG disparity between the best and worst players, especially if playing classics.

And if you have a ton of people, it will take a long time to get everyone a chance or two on the games. It will be even worse if you only have one cabinet.

[massive88]

Its its just one cab, you probably will have too many games.  Consider that someone who is good at a classic will take 10 minutes or more to get a single play in.  I would figure 10 minutes for each game played, multiply by number of people and number of games you want to play.

With socializing, and whatnot, that should give you a fairly accurate representation of how long it will take.  Divide that number by how many machines you will have up and running.

Also if you want to avoid ties, the way I did mine was top point getter is worth 5 points, everyone within 80% of that score gets (their Score)/(top score) x 5

When I ran mine, we played for about 6 hours.  I had three phases of competition, head to head (fighting games), side by side (classics, aim for top score), and individual (skills challenge).  I had 4 machines up and running, and about 12 people.

With that, ideally I would need to limit it to 3 fighting games, 4 classics, and 5 skill challenges.  With that setup, people still wouldnt get a chance to play everything.

So anyway, I would be careful about how many games you set out to play.  In my tournament, I ended up cutting out two classics and 4 skill challenges 2 hours into it, because I realized it was just too much stuff.