The modern tournament checklist: how clubs and organisers run stress-free events
Most of the work in running a local tournament is not table tennis. It is chasing entries, matching bank slips to names, and rebuilding a draw at 10pm. Here is a checklist that removes most of it.
Ask any club organiser what went wrong at their last event and the answer is rarely about the table tennis. It is a player who paid and was not on the list. Or a group that ended up with four players from the same club. Or a scorecard that went home in somebody's bag and left a result unrecorded.
None of those are hard problems. They are just unowned ones. This checklist is the order to do things in, so each step is finished before the next one depends on it.
Before you announce anything
The decisions made here are the ones that are expensive to change later, because entries, fees and draws all flow from them.
Choose your categories and be specific. A category is a combination of who can enter it and what it costs. Decide the age bands up front, and decide the price per category rather than one flat fee for everything — a junior category priced the same as an adult one is usually a mistake, and a mixed-gender category alongside gendered ones needs its own price to make sense.
Count your tables honestly. Separate the tables you will run competition on from the tables players can warm up on. This number is what your timetable is built from, and overstating it is the fastest way to run two hours late.
Decide the match formats per stage. A group match and a final do not need the same format. Best of three for groups and best of five for the knockout is a common shape, and a final can go to best of seven. Each stage can carry its own format, so you are not forced into one setting for the whole event.
Write down the entry deadline and stick to it. The draw cannot be built until entries close, and players will ask you for the exact moment it closes.
Publish the rules before entries open. Players should be able to read how the draw is made, how the group stage decides who advances, and how the knockout is populated — before they commit money. A rules document that appears after people have paid is the single most common source of disputes.
Getting entries in
There are two reasonable ways to take entries, and both are supported.
- In-app registrationPlayers enter through the app. Their identity and contact details arrive with the entry, so there is nothing to retype.
- Your own Google FormSend whatever form you already use and import the responses when entries close. Useful when your community is used to a form and you do not want to move them yet.
What matters is that entries end up in one queue before the draw. Two half-lists that have to be reconciled by hand is exactly the failure this is meant to prevent.
For juniors, collect the guardian's name and contact number as well as the player's details. On the day, the person you need to reach is not the child.
The money
Money is where amateur events go wrong most often, and the fix is procedural rather than technical.
Have fees paid into the account you actually control, and state the payment reference you expect players to use — usually the player's name. An unpaid entry with an unclear reference is a conversation you will have three times.
Decide the proof-of-payment rule before entries open. Requiring a screenshot of the transfer makes reconciliation fast; not requiring one shifts the work to the day of the event. If you require it, say so on the entry form, not afterwards.
Confirm fees once, in one place. Payments move directly from the player to the organiser. The platform does not hold the money and does not confirm it — the organiser is the only party who can say a fee has arrived, which is exactly who should be saying it.
Building the draw
This is the step where a small amount of care saves a lot of arguing.
Seed from the rating, not from memory. Ordering entries by a published rating means the placement is defensible. Nobody has to be told they were seeded low because of who they know.
Use a snake pattern rather than filling groups one at a time. Filling group A completely and then starting group B stacks the strongest players together. A snake layout spreads each band of standard across all groups.
Separate clubmates and schoolmates. This matters more than it sounds. In a small community, the same four players from one club in one group turns a tournament into a club practice session for everyone else. Where a player can be placed in a group with nobody from their club or school, they should be — and when a constraint has to be relaxed, that should be visible rather than silent.
Check the group sizes before you confirm. Three or four players per group is the usual workable size; a group of two is not a group.
Keep a straight knockout available. Not every event wants a group stage. For a one-day club event or a small category, a direct knockout bracket is faster, simpler, and the right answer.
Match day
Build the timetable from the tables and the formats. A best-of-three match takes about fifteen minutes and a best-of-five about twenty, and the number of tables you allocated is what determines how many matches can run at once. Add a buffer between rounds — the honest description of any timetable is an estimate, and a buffer is what absorbs the match that goes to deuce three times.
Print the umpire cards before the first round. One card per match, with the players' names and the stage already filled in and empty boxes for each set: one row for each player, a box per set, the total, the winner and the loser, and a signature line for the players and the umpire. Four to an A4 sheet keeps the printing cheap and the table tidy.
Agree that the paper card is the source of truth. Scorecards get typed in afterwards, from the paper, which stops a disputed result from becoming an argument about who remembered what.
Put the order of play where players can see it. The commonest question at any tournament is "which table am I on and when", and it has an answer that everyone can look up.
After the last match
Publish the results the same day. Delayed results are the reason players stop checking. Once the organiser records and confirms a result, it should reach the players without waiting for anyone else's approval.
Show the podium and the prize reach you chose. Decide in advance how far prizes go — the top eight, the semi-finalists, the finalists — and how many bronze medals there are, because those decisions shape how the draw is presented and how many matches matter to whom.
Let the ratings update. This is the part players notice afterwards. Every verified result moves their rating, and the movement is what makes the next event worth entering.
What software should be doing
The rule of thumb is simple: if a step requires a human to copy something from one place to another, it will eventually be done wrong. Entries belong in one queue, fees belong to one confirmation step, the draw should come from the ratings rather than from a list you typed twice, and the result typed from a paper card should update the standing and the rating without further handling.
Everything above is what TTRA was built to do, and none of it changes the part you actually enjoy: the table tennis.
Set up your next event
Create the event, submit it for review, and open entries once it is approved.