Single-Elimination Tournament: Movie Bracket

Welcome! This doc is a single-elimination tournament system. The cool part is – it generates image of the tournament bracket which updates as you progress. This doc was built for the specific purpose of voting on movies. It could be adapted for more general purposes and used as a tournament management tool with up to 1024 contestants.

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Origin Story

During Covid-19 quarantine, my friends began a new tradition. Every week we nominated movies to watch collectively from our homes. On Fridays we got together via videochat to vote on one film to watch. Initially, we used separate online tournament bracket and voting apps. I noticed it was cumbersome for the hosts who had to collect the nominations, rank them by hand in a speadsheet, and then manage two apps during voting that did not communicate with each other. I made this doc to smooth out the workflow and make everything available in one place.

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How To

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`Setup 1 - Film Entries`⁠
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This page is where you add all the nominations from the tournament participants. Include all nominations, even repeats, because films with multiple nominations will receive higher seeding in the bracket. Double check that all repeat nominations are spelled exactly the same so that they are registered as the same film. The film title will turn orange to indicate that it is indeed a repeat.

Once you’ve entered all the film nominations, you can press Automated Full Setup which set up everything from seeding the bracket to generating the bracket image. This button designates you as the sole Game Master (see Setup 3 below for more info). And takes you to the tournament Page. For more step-by-step, granular control over the setup, see the rest of the instructions below.

Once the entries are done, press the Add Entries to Contestants button.

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`Setup 2 - Contestants`⁠
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Press the Seed Contestant button. This will give all contestants a random ranking with exception to films with multiple nominations which will receive the highest positions. Press this button as many times as you like to re-seed the tournament. You can also manually adjust the rows to tweak the rankings to your liking.

Press Reset Bracket to send the contestants to the tournament. This button will delete any existing bracket and build a new one with the current

contestants⁠

. This button requires a few moments, at least 5 seconds, to complete the action.

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`Setup 3 - Game Master`⁠
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The Game Master is the person who runs the tournament with the controls on the voting page. There can be multiple Game Masters. Click Add Me or Add Someone Else to add users to designate as Game Master. You can use the other buttons to change who is a designated Game Master or move cards around below the buttons.

Now we’re ready for the big event!

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`Tournament`⁠
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`Voting`⁠
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During the tournament, all participants can stay open on this page in a web browser or in the coda app. The IMDB info and voting buttons will appear for the current contest of the tournament. The voting buttons are specific to each user and will indicate with a “👍” for which film their vote has been cast.

The voting meter shows the number of votes for each contestant. Once votes are cast and a contestant has a majority of votes, the Game Master can close the poll and advance the winner of that round. The page will now update to the next contest in the tournament.

Participants can click on the thumbnail of the tournament bracket to zoom in and see it in detail.

Game Master Controls

Press Close Poll to end voting and move to the next round. This button will be disabled if no votes are cast, the voting ends in a tie, or the tournament has ended.

Press Clear Votes for Current Round to clear a winner and restart voting for a matchup.

Navigate bracket includes 3 buttons: ←, →, and ↵. The left and right arrows will move to the previous and next rounds respectively. The return arrow will move to the next unplayed round in the tournament.

In the event that a tie cannot be resolved or if it is decided a certain contestant should win regardless of the votes, the Game Master has 2 buttons available under the Decide Winner banner. Whichever contestant they press will be declared the winner of that round and the tournament will advance to the next round.

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`Bracket`⁠
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This is a large, isolated view of the bracket. This view will update in real time as the tournament is played. Participants may enjoy having this page up on their computer and the voting page open on their phone.