Changes In Running Table Tennis Tournaments

Discover the Big Changes in Table Tennis Tournaments this Year

Will the Changes in Tournaments effect You?

Local Table Tennis Tournaments: Big Changes

Local Table Tennis Tournaments will come into line with the recent changes at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and Table Tennis Australia policy.

For example, this year sees the introduction of the Under 19 & Under 17 age groups and removal of Under 18 junior age events.

Local open competitions and state championships will now feature U19 & U17 events.

TTQ Tournament Regulation Changes

Table Tennis Queensland (TTQ) has published updated State Championship regulations.

The new regulations state:

It is recommended if there are 9 or fewer teams entered into an event then a single round-robin shall be played.
It is recommended if there are 10 or more teams entered into an event then multiple round-robin groups will be played.

Smaller clubs have, in the past, run some events as a knock-out.

TTQ Association Open Tournament Requirements policy states that a straight Knockout format causes many players to play only one match.

This discourages players; particularly new players who tend to enter only one or two events, from attending tournaments. Round-robins provide at least a second match.

The policy states that Open Tournaments should, as a minimum, host the following events:

Men’s or Open Singles
Women’s Singles
Men’s Doubles
Women’s Doubles
Mixed Doubles

Graded events are optional. The grade cut-off is based on the player's Rating Central rating. The following ratings apply to the graded event:

Open - Any Rating

Grade 1 - Players with a rating less than 1700

Grade 2 - Players with a rating less than 1500

Grade 3 - Players with a rating less than 1300

Grade 4 - Players with a rating less than 1100

Grade 5 - Players with a rating of less than 900

Grade 6 - Players with a rating of less than 700

Grade 7 - Players with a rating of less than 500

For players with no current rating, the player’s member organisation should be contacted for an interim rating. These graded events can be single-gender or mixed depending upon the level of entries – this is entirely the decision of the organisation running the championships. What is mandatory is to also offer aged singles events at an Open.

These are:

Under 11
Under 13
Under 15
Under 17
Under 19
Under 21
Over 30
Over 40
Over 50
Over 60
Over 70

Male and Female events are to be offered in these age groups. Male & Female events may be combined if there are insufficient entries. If the events are combined, it is recommended that the gender which has the least number of entries are placed in the same group in the group stage, prior to the knock-out draw.

Software to help run Tournaments

Brisbane Table Tennis uses Zermelo software to help run Open tournaments.

The Draw

For State Championships players from the same club usually placed into separate halves or quarters of the draft draw in individual events.

This is called "Separation by Association."

This is also an unwritten rule that members of the same family who enter the same event are also split up!

In open tournaments were possible players don’t play someone from their own club in the first round. This includes the initial group round-robin.

Zermelo & Round Robin Paperwork

Those who have used Zermelo software to set up Tournament draws have noticed that the system does not have an obvious way to print out an entire set of Round Robin draws.

GOOD NEWS: The latest software version of Zermelo now has a "print all" button! Glory days!!

Zemelo Competition Software Hack

There is a workaround. Thank you to Claire Montgomery from Table Tennis Victoria for this information.

Here are the steps:

Turn off all events (Search Order = Never)
Turn off auto calling (Matches -> Modify Calling – Untick ‘Manage match calling’)
Turn on the event that you want to print as a round-robin (i.e. Men’s Singles) (Search Order = 1st)
a. Only turn on 1 event at a time for this, that way you can check that it has printed correctly for that event before moving to the next one. Nothing worse than after printing out all the events for a time slot, only to find that one of the groups had a pull out in it and then you get groups printed over 2 pages rather than the nice 1 page like you wanted and you have to go cut the pages up and sort it out!!
Hit Call
All the round robins will print out as one round-robin per page for that event
Turn the event back off (Search Order = Never)
Then repeat the process for each event you want to be printed, turning events one and off as you go 😊

This workaround will save a lot of time versus individually, manually calling matches one at a time.

Once you have printed out all the round robins for the time slot, you turn back on Manage match calling and then turn the events back on (in that order).

Don’t turn on the events and then the calling as it leaves room for the worst thing that can ever happen – if you accidentally hit C on the keyboard after turning the events back on but before reinstating the auto calling a wondrous thing happens – it prints out EVERY SINGLE match card that can possibly be printed and then you have the fun time of having to undo every ….. single …. match …. one … by … one!!!!!!!!!