Tournament

Spectators at the Let's Make Big Moves Ultimate tournament hosted by Even Matchup Gaming in January 2020.

A tournament, or tourney for short, is a competition involving a group of players designed to produce an overall skill ranking of the involved players, typically by arranging them into a structured bracket where players engage in individual matches to raise or lower their ranking.

The Super Smash Bros. series has seen a large devoted competitive community since Matt Deezie established the fundamentals of competitive Smash with the Tournament Go series in April 2002 with Super Smash Bros. Melee. The game had an active tournament scene in the years following its release, being featured at both grassroots tournaments and events run by Major League Gaming and other large e-sports groups. After entering a recession following the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Melee scene eventually rebounded, and began an explosive growth in popularity in 2013, fueled by the success of EVO 2013 and the documentary, The Smash Brothers. Although it was released on the retired GameCube platform, Melee remains extremely popular among competitive players, with a large and thriving tournament presence far exceeding that of the pre-Brawl days; these players prefer the older iteration due to its faster and more combo-oriented gameplay compared to newer Smash titles.

Brawl also had a large tournament scene for its first five years, though most former Melee players disliked its slower gameplay, and even following its release, a sizeable number of players continued to stick with the faster-paced and combo-oriented gameplay of Melee. Although Brawl developed its own vibrant tournament scene after its release, beginning in 2013, the Brawl scene began a steady decline, following the explosion in popularity of Melee attributed to EVO 2013, the imminent release of Smash 4, and the rise of Project M; since the release of Super Smash Bros. 4, Brawl currently maintains a small tournament presence. While few players play the game at a serious level, several large Smash tournaments, such as Super Smash Con, have featured the game and attracted a sizeable amount of entrants, who generally enter the event in addition to or Melee or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (and formerly Smash 4).

When it was the newest Smash game, Smash 4 was overall more successful than Brawl was in competitive play, due in part to the game removing or modifying many of Brawl's criticized and unpopular gameplay mechanics such as its notably powerful hitstun cancelling, and having faster and more competitively-suited gameplay. Smash 4's tournament scene took off immediately upon its release, due to availability of well-developed streaming technology, social networking, and other tournament infrastructure, in addition to an already-existing Brawl fanbase that eagerly moved onto the newer game. Like Melee, the title has been featured prominently in large fighting game tournaments such as EVO; it has also attracted casual players into the competitive Smash scene to a much greater extent than any of the previous Smash games. However, the competitive scene for the game has all but disappeared as players moved onto Ultimate.

In a similar vein to Smash 4, Ultimate's competitive scene exploded in popularity, with many people, including Melee players, praising the game's mechanics, both returning and new. The speed and pacing has also been substantially increased, and changes to mechanics such as air dodging and perfect shielding allow Ultimate to be better-suited for competitive play in the eyes of many smashers. The growth in the scene was also unprecedented, and by the end of the first month, there were many tournaments that had a higher attendance than the highest-attended Smash 4 tournament in the same time period. Currently, the scene is still young and growing; however, its popularity has not decreased in the slightest.

Competitive Smash 64 has maintained a small following since the release of Melee. Despite being the oldest Smash game with the least character diversity, it still has an active and dedicated playerbase, with many players having played the game for many years. In addition to the traditional in-person tournaments, more recent play has also taken place over the Internet through services like Kaillera.

Project M, a Brawl mod featuring design and gameplay like that of Melee's, has also seen a number of tournaments dedicated to it. Beginning in 2013, the game saw a rapid rise in popularity and was increasingly featured at Smash tournaments, including supermajors such as Apex 2014. Initially restricted to a side-event at many tournaments, Project M later developed its own unique tournament scene, with some tournaments being devoted almost solely to the game. However, since Project M is not endorsed by Nintendo, many major e-sports organizations and large grassroots tournaments have refused to include the game in their lineups, and many streaming groups also refuse to stream PM tournaments altogether, due to fears of legal issues over the mod. Although these blows have caused the game to lose some ground to Melee, Ultimate, and formerly Smash 4, it is still supported by a vibrant and active community of players and tournaments, and it is still commonly featured at smaller majors and at side events at larger majors.

Locations and sizes

"Major tournament" redirects here. For a list of major tournaments, see List of major tournaments.

Tournaments are held regularly in many regions all over the world, with the largest community centered in the United States, which has not only the largest and generally most talented playerbase, but also the largest tournaments, such as GENESIS and EVO, which attract competition from all over the world (a feat other regions have yet to achieve). Canada, northern and western Europe (in particular the Scandinavian countries), Australia and Japan have large Smash communities as well. Smaller communities exist in Latin America and elsewhere. Major areas of tournament activity in the United States are centered around Northern California, Southern California, the Maryland/Virginia area, the Tristate Area, and Florida, though most states enjoy an active tournament calendar year round.

Various terms exist for describing the size, frequency, and intent of a tournament. These include but are not limited to the following:

• Smashfest: A smaller event, often without an entry fee, and more friendly than competitive in nature. Smashfests often feature several different games and allow players to compete with each other in a more casual manner.
• STD: "Smash 'Til Dawn", An overnight tournament or smashfest where the goal is to keep playing until the sun rises (or later). Smash the Record is a very large example of this.
• Weekly/Biweekly/Triweekly/Monthly: Repeating tournaments, usually in the same venue. Usually feature a regular group of players each iteration. Depending on size as well as player strength, certain monthly events can also be classified as Regional Tournaments if not larger (such as Mayhem in California and the monthly Smash 4 events at Xanadu)
• Circuit event: Part of a regional circuit of tournaments, such as the 2GG Championship Series, Smash World Tour, or Panda Cup. Winners are usually given points based on their placings, and the top point earners on the leaderboards are invited to a finale tournament, or an overall points winner at the end of the season is given some sort of prize.
• Invitational: A short list of players are invited to the tournament to compete, instead of registration being open to anyone. Players can be invited in a variety of ways: being directly invited by the tournament organizers, qualifying for the tournament by achieving a top placement in a predetermined tournament or a Last Chance Qualifier tournament, or voted in through crowdfunding. Invitationals will often have a large prize pool in place of being generated by entry fees. Smash Summit tournaments are the most prominent example of this.
• Regional tournament: A large tournament that draws significant attendance from its hosting region, as well as attracts attendance from neighboring regions. On most global rankings, regional tournaments are tiered as C-tier. Especially stacked regionals that attract significant attendance from outside the hosting region, and have multiple top players in attendance, are referred to as "superregionals", and are often tiered as B-tiers on most global rankings.
• Major tournament or national tournament: A larger tournament that draws an extraordinary amount of attendance from the broader region as a whole. In North America, these tournaments attract players from across the United States and Canada, while European majors feature smashers from across the continent. Majors can draw attendance from different continents; for example, European and Japanese players often fly in to large American tournaments. Most global rankings tier majors as A-tiers.
• Supermajor: The most prestigious tournaments in the Smash scene, featuring a huge amount of the best players from around the world. Supermajors are considered to be the most important gatherings for players in the scene, and attract the most viewership and publicity, not only from within the Smash community, but also from the larger fighting game and esports communities. Examples of current Smash-centered supermajor series include GENESIS, Super Smash Con, The Big House, and Shine; many tournaments held by larger fighting game organizations, such as CEO, have also become supermajors in the Smash community. EVO, MLG, Apex, and Pound have previously been recognized as supermajor series. Tournaments can also be labeled as supermajors based on the extreme level of player talent; for example, in Melee, Get On My Level 2016, as well as Smash Summits and other invitationals, are often considered "supermajors" due to the fact that so many top 20 players attended, despite having fewer entrants than the other tournament series listed. Most global rankings tier supermajors as S-tiers, with some rankings tiering particularly large supermajors as P-tiers.

Prices and fees

Most tournaments require an entry fee from participants to play. These prices vary by region and tournament size, and differ for each type of event being entered; a typical entry fee amount for smaller tournaments is $5, while larger tournaments run $10, with it being uncommon even for the largest supermajors to have an entry fee over $10. Entry fees go into a "pot" for an event and are awarded to the winners of that event in pre-announced amounts, usually a percentage of the pot (for example a common payout split at small tournaments is 60% for first, 30% for second, and 10% for third, though the exact splits and how deep the payouts go vary greatly across tournaments). Tournament directors will usually charge an extra amount, commonly referred to as a venue fee, to help pay for the costs to use the venue, equipment, paying others for various tourney-related services, and for their own time. Venue fees usually cost between $5 to $10, though larger tournaments will frequently charge more, especially for nationals that last multiple days, where venue fees can run potentially up to the $100+ range. Often TOs will offer discounts on the venue fee for doing things that help run the tourney, such as supplying a setup and volunteering to help the TO, and larger tournaments will often charge a lower venue fee to players that pre-register early, while charging a higher venue fee to those who register late.

Legal issues involving the exchange of money

Some public venues like schools and places of worship consider gaming tournaments a form of gambling and ban it as such. All tournament directors are encouraged to check with potential venues to make sure they are tolerant of players paying to enter. Several well-known tournaments have had to cancel events when a public official discovered that money was changing hands between players at the event.

Smash Bros. tournaments are often thought to be illegal in Iowa under §725.7 of the Iowa Code, which states that it is unlawful for any one to "participate in a game for any sum of money or other property of any value" other than those outlined in subsection 2. However, nobody is known to have been arrested due to participating in an esports tournament. There have been several attempts to pass legislation to explicitly legalize fantasy sports in the state, which may have implications for esports as well. House Bill 165, introduced to the Iowa House of Representatives in January 2015 attempts to create a definition for "Bona Fide Contests", that among other additions, would legalize paying tournaments for games “by player-directed movement with a video or electronic gaming device”. The current law allows for video machine golf tournament games, but not necessarily any other type of video game.

Tournament formats

Smash tournaments have employed many tournament formats over the years. The exact details may vary between tournaments, and some may use a different format entirely, but these tournaments are few and far between.

Major formats

Double elimination bracket

The winners' bracket portion of a double elimination event.

The losers' bracket, where a player is placed after losing in winners' bracket.

The double elimination format involves two different brackets occurring simultaneously. When a tournament starts, everyone starts off in the same bracket. After the first round, the winners go into what's called the "winner's bracket" and the losers got into what's called the "loser's bracket." As the rounds continue, players that lose in the winners bracket fall into the loser's bracket. Those that lose in the loser's bracket are then eliminated from the tournament entirely. The winner of the winner's bracket and loser's bracket then come together in one last game, dubbed "Grand finals," and the winner of this game wins the tournament.

The size of a double elimination bracket for x number of players is equal to 2(x−1). Half the remaining players are eliminated every two rounds of the loser's bracket. A double elimination bracket takes exactly twice as long to complete as a single elimination bracket (assuming the bracket is not reset). This also means that only first to fourth place players will have that placement to themselves. Fifth and seventh place is shared among 2 players each, with sixth place technically being impossible to obtain. Ninth and thirteenth place are shared among 4 players each, seventeenth and twenty-fifth among 8 players, and so on.

There are three sets in a double-elimination bracket that are of special importance to participants:

• Winners' Bracket Finals: occurs between two players who advance to the last set in winner's bracket without losing. The winner of this set is guaranteed at least a second place finish, while the loser will at worst finish third.
• Losers' Bracket Finals: occurs between two players who lost at some point but have advanced to the last set in the loser's bracket. The winner of this set is guaranteed at least a second place finish, while the loser will at worst finish fourth.
• Championship Set (aka Grand Finals): the end-all set of the event involving the winner's finalist and the loser's finalist. The winner of this set gets first place, the loser second. A common stipulation of this event is that the loser's finalist must win two consecutive sets to win the championship as opposed to the winner's finalist only requiring one – this is due to the "players are eliminated upon losing two sets" philosophy and has the side effect of discouraging players from intentionally dropping a tough set to fall into the presumed-easier losers' bracket.

These three sets usually require a greater number of individual games to be played before determining a winner. Standard tournament rules have most sets being a set of "best two of three", while the three sets above are often sets of "best three of five".

Double elimination is the most popular format for Smash tournaments. Every player is guaranteed at least two sets in a double elimination bracket, affording all players the chance to make a comeback after losing once, as well as provide a greater difference in placing, to aid with ranking players' tournament performance. Spectators are also able to easily figure out the most exciting matches based solely on the shape of the bracket, which drives engagement during those times. The one downside to this format is that there is a possibility that one player will sweep the entire tournament and will not lose a single time. This can be novel to watch at first, but can grow stale and boring if it happens multiple times, especially by the same player.

Single elimination bracket

An eight-player single elimination bracket. First-round matches are on the left.

The single elimination bracket is similar to the double elimination bracket, except all players can only lose once before they are out of the tournament entirely. There is no losers' bracket, and the tournament ends on what would be the winners finals in a double elimination tournament.

In a single elimination bracket, players are arranged into a hierarchical structure where matches are played between two entrants; the winner advances to play another player the next round, and the loser is eliminated from the tournament. The player who wins the very last match of the bracket, after all other entrants have been eliminated, is the winner of the event, and the person who loses the final match finishes in second place. Most sports tournaments (like the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship) use a single elimination format.

Single elimination brackets are often described in terms of the number of entrants playing in the bracket. Because half the remaining players are eliminated during each round of the bracket, the total number of rounds is based on the base-2 logarithm of the entrant count (rounded upwards). A two-round bracket is used for 4 players, athree-round bracket is used for 8 players, four rounds for 9 to 16 players, and so on. A bracket's size is usually defined as the smallest power of two that is greater than or equal to the number of entrants. Thus, a bracket with 47 entrants is referred to as a 64-man bracket, because 64 is the smallest power of two which is greater than 47. The size of the bracket also reflects the total number of matches throughout the entire bracket: for an n-size bracket, n-1 matches must be played in total. Byes are used to fill positions in the bracket when the number of entrants is not a power of two. Any player facing a bye automatically advances to the next round without having to play. Byes are usually given to the top seeds in the bracket, though this is up to the tournament organizer.

Single elimination tournaments are the least common of the four major formats for Super Smash Bros. and video games in general for several reasons. Players tend to dislike single elimination is that half the players are eliminated having only played a single match (and every player overall gets to play significantly fewer matches). Another reason is that just having one bad match or encountering one bad matchup can result in a premature elimination for a player that would have placed better otherwise, thus giving less room for error, and overall less accuracy in the results. Single elimination also offers much less difference in placing, making them less useful for ranking players' performance. Despite this, tournaments sometimes use them for side events like crew battles to save time. Despite single elimination's flaws, Japanese Smash 64 tournaments often use the single elimination format, even in large, national tournaments. Some early Melee tournaments used single elimination.

Round Robin

Round Robin is a tournament format where every player in the tournament plays every single other player. There are no brackets and no eliminations; everyone keeps playing until every matchup has been played. The player that won the most games is declared champion.

The Round Robin tournament is by far the easiest to manage, as there is no seeding and all players are simply expected to play every other player in the tournament. The Round Robin is also perfectly fair with the most optimally accurate results, as every player plays the same people and the law of large numbers will guarantee that the best player will win.

However, the Round Robin tournament is often infeasible for most tournaments. The amount of games necessary for x players is equal to x(x−1)/2. While this can be useful for tournaments with small turnouts to not be over quickly, the amount of time necessary to complete a tournament quickly adds up with each additional player. For example, 256-person Round Robin would take approximately 6 days of consecutive around-the-clock playing without a single second of down time. This would exhaust players, bore spectators if nothing of note happens for a long time, and lead to expensive venue fees.

A 5-way tie in a 5-person round robin tournament.

Another potential issue is the event of a tie, which is an issue exclusive to the Round Robin. There is no guarantee of a clear-cut winner, with a possibility that every player has the exact same win/loss ratio, technically meaning they all receive first place and some other method needs to be done to break the tie. On the other end of the spectrum, a player might dominate the tournament so much that they are guaranteed to win before they completed all of their games. Every game after this point is now meaningless and wastes time and energy. In this case, a "mercy rule" can be enacted to end the tournament early. The Round Robin is also susceptible to Bracket manipulation by players intentionally challenging all the players they know they can beat first, giving them a buffer to lose later on or even guarantee themselves victory. To ensure this does not happen, tournament organizers sometimes randomly assign opponents between every round.

Round Robin is a fairly uncommon method of Smash tournaments due to the aforementioned issues of running one. However, some amateur brackets opt for this format to keep players that were eliminated early on busy while the main tournament is still running, while tournaments that use the Smashdown game mode essentially require the format due to how the mode operates.

Pools

Pools contain a subset of an entrant field, also informally known as "groups". Using this mechanism, players are split into appropriately-sized pools and do a "mini-tournament" with other participants in their pool, with the winners of the pools moving on to compete in the proper tournament. A pool can use any tournament format, even one different from the regular tournament, and thus contain all the advantages and disadvantages of the format used. The most common format in the early days of the tournament scene was round-robin to yield perfectly accurate results and to give less skilled players more tournament matches, while modern pools now tend to use brackets in the wake of ever-increasing tournament sizes. While a tournament with bracket pools may not seem to differ functionally from a normal bracket tournament, employing bracket pools makes large tournaments far easier to organize and run than just running a large normal tournament would be.

Pools are usually used to narrow a large entrant field into a smaller subset for double elimination bracket play or for another round of pools, usually weeding out weaker players to make the actual tournament more exciting, though they are occasionally just used to seed players in bracket without elimination. An example being in a tournament with 160 participants, the Tournament Organizer might arrange it so that there are 32 pools of 5 players, and then the top 2 players of each pool would make the 64-man bracket. Sometimes there are enough players to warrant multiple rounds, meaning the winners of a pool get place in another pool to start the process again. An example of this method in Apex 2012 Brawl singles, which had 400 participants. The first round was 80 pools of 5, and top 2 players of each pool advanced to a second round of pools, which were 32 pools of 5, and the top 2 players of each pool advanced to the 64-man bracket.

Pools are usually only employed at large tournaments. There is no need for them at smaller tournaments due to a small bracket being more manageable. N number of entrants are split into P number of pools, and the top Y finishers in each pool are either placed into a second round of pools or seeded into a double elimination bracket, which proceeds normally. The number of entrants for the subsequent round or bracket is P × Y. Placing well in a pool gives a player a better position in a bracket or the next round of pools, giving extra incentive to strive for the top pool positions.

A disadvantage to pools is the complicated logistics involving them. Due to having so many people moving in all different directions, effective communication is necessary to avoided participants being given incorrect information and being punished unfairly. There is also the possibility that a single player will sweep the pool they are in, which is not necessarily fair to the other participants, though this is usually justified by this process providing a more realistic outcome compared to all the best players being placed in the same pool and eliminating each other, rending the actual tournament meaningless since the pool winner is almost guaranteed to win the whole tournament. Pools also tends to be the least exciting part of a tournament due to the relatively low stakes of each game and a general lack of exciting moments, which is not good for spectators who declare the tournament to actually start when the pools end.

Other formats

Arcadian format

An Arcadian is a tournament format where all the ranked players from a specific region are banned from participating, therefore only allowing the unranked players to participate, giving the unranked players a chance at winning money and the glory of winning a tournament that they would typically have no realistic chance at. Arcadians still feature the same rulesets as other tournaments, however. Most Arcadians also disallow players from outside the tourney's region from participating, but TOs may screen out-of-region players to determine if they're eligible instead of banning OoR players wholesale. Arcadians may additionally have a clause to allow TOs to bar entry to any technically unranked player that would be deemed too good to enter, such as a player who was only unranked for failing to reach a PR's attendance requirement rather than from a lack of ability. Arcadians are most common at local and regional tournaments, and most regions periodically run Arcadians, typically once per a ranking season. Notably, 2GG: Breakthrough 2019 holds the record for the largest Arcadian tournament within the Smash series.

Swiss system

The Swiss System, as used heavily in the professional chess world, is a variant of the round robin format that guarantees each player the same number of matches and attempts to match players against others of similar skill throughout the tournament. Swiss system tournaments are rare in the Smash community due to their complexity and the large number of matches they create.

Players are assigned matches in the first round either randomly or based on some method of seeding (an attempt to rank players in order of skill before the tournament starts). Winning this set gives a player 1 "point", and losing does not give any points. Each successive round involves pairing two players with the same number of points (attempting to avoid repeat matchups), playing out those matches, assigning points, and repeating for the next round. Swiss systems generally run until only a single person has no losses; this will occur after R rounds, where R is the base-2 logarithm of the total number of entrants, rounded upwards. Swiss brackets are sometimes run for a pre-determined number of rounds, with the winner being the person with the most points overall.

The Swiss format can also be run in pools instead of the traditional bracket and round-robin formats, such as was done at Smash 'N' Splash 5 and Ludwig Smash Invitational. Though like with running Swiss format tournaments, this format is rarely used in pools due to its complexity and large amount of matches created.

Ladder format

The Ladder format involves all participants numerically arranged on a list, like rungs on a ladder. Any player can challenge a player above them on the ladder, and if the challenger wins, both players swap places on the ladder. This format can theoretically last indefinitely, though typically there is a rule determining a maximum amount of times a player can issue a challenge. The player at the top of the ladder by the end wins the tournament. This method is rarely used in large tournaments due to the logistical issues of players having to declare who they want to challenge, leading some participants playing many more games than others, as well as no clear end point the issue of multiple players wanting to challenge the same person at the same time. That being said, the aspect of getting accurate results without necessarily playing as many games as a Round Robin make it viable for smaller tournaments and amateur brackets.

In-game Tournament Mode

Although each game since Melee has included a Tournament Mode for local play and Smash Ultimate features an online tournament mode, the in-game mode is rarely, if ever, used in actual competitive play, even to simply track or manage the tournament, due to a variety of limitations of the mode relative to the rather complex structures that serious tournaments require:

• Tournament matches are played in a best of 3 or 5 format, while Tournament Mode only allows single-game sets.
• Tournament matches allow players to use any character for any game in any match, while Tournament Mode forces players to remain a single character for the entire tournament.
• Tournaments almost never use a single-elimination bracket, which is the only bracket type available in Tournament Mode.
• Tournaments require their brackets to be properly seeded for reasonably accurate results, while Tournament Mode gives no control over seeding and forces a randomized bracket (outside of Ultimate.)
• Tournaments rarely enforce a limit to the maximum number of players and can contain hundreds of participants, while Tournament Mode cannot handle more than a limited 64 (in Melee) or 32 (in Brawl and Ultimate)
• Tournaments require multiple setups to be run efficiently, while Tournament Mode can only exist on a single setup.

For this reason, external tournament management systems are the norm in competitive play. The in-game tournament modes are more frequently used for casual play, as these limitations are less impactful on lower-stakes games played quickly between casual players of varying skill levels, and because the in-game tournament modes offer a variety of quality-of-life features, such as in-game bracket management, in-game button-mapping, and dynamic controller assignment, that would otherwise be tedious or difficult to manage for the casual player.

Cheating

Due to the competitive nature of tournaments and the stakes involved with winning and losing, parties attempting to cheat is an inevitability. Cheating is defined as one or more individuals conspiring to break the agreed upon rules or finding loopholes in said rules to gain an unfair advantage or some other illicit benefit.

Cheating can take many forms, each varying in severity, subtlety, and goal. An obvious form of cheating is outright breaking the rules. This can include attempting to play in an environment outside of the typical structure without the consent of all other involved parties, intentionally performing actions that are explicitly banned, or hacking the game to play differently.

More subtle forms of cheating that reach a realm of ambiguity include intentionally playing worse than expected or convincing an opponent to play worse, often referred to as "sandbagging," as well as intentionally losing games to avoid certain players and having an overall easier time in a tournament, sometimes referred to as "match fixing" or "bracketology." While these do not necessarily break the rules, they are generally frowned upon and will lead to disciplinary action if proven to have occurred.

Cheating is usually punished if discovered, though not every situation is black and white. Not all cases of cheating are created equal, and punishments are often more or less severe because of it. Less consequential instances like pausing during a match may result in forfeiting a stock at most, while something more severe like fixing matches may result in disqualification from the tournament and a ban from all future events. There are also cases of genuine mistakes or "act of God" situations where no one party is at fault, which is usually dealt with on a case by case basis by the tournament organizer.

See also

• Side events
• Tournament legal
• Tournament organizer
• List of national tournaments
• List of largest Smash tournaments
• Super Smash Bros. in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. 4 in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in competitive play

External links

• On Wikipedia:
  • Single elimination tournament
  • Double elimination tournament
  • Round robin tournament
  • Swiss system tournament
• On Smashboards:
  • The ABC's of Tournament Hosting