Making changes to tournaments and leagues post publication

Once an event is published players can book, play and score their matches. Generally, at this point, changes to the event should be discouraged. But despite having clear signals to your members that signups must be received by a certain date, once a tournament is underway fresh interest often magically materialises!

For knock out tournaments, as an example, adding one or more new players can change the published draw considerably and if players have already started booking or even playing some matches any change could be both confusing and disruptive to existing players.

MMM has several ways to approach the problem depending on the circumstances as follows.

Recall, change and republish

This approach is simple but is a hard reset for the players. In Manage Draws->Draw review tab you can recall a draw, make changes to it (add or remove players) in Draw selection and refinement tab, and then republish. Or, even more drastically, recall the draw, remove it and then rebuild a new one in its place from the Event joiners and draw creation tab.

Either way, it's "hard reset" because all matches are unbooked and aborted. So players will have to start again. Clearly the more matches that have been booked and played the more disruptive this action is.

Player substitution

If you have a new player wanting in and an existing player wanting out, then you can simply make a substitution from the Substitute tab of Manage events. This substitution is at the "event level" meaning that it will affect the departing player's involvement in all draws prepared. Normally, a player is entered into only one draw but this does not have to be the case so it's important to understand that a substitution is not tied to a specific draw.

Such a change is very transparent for other players. No matches are cancelled and whatever matches the departing player may have played are transferred to the incoming player. So this is the least disruptive action.

Player injection

If a draw has at least 1 bye in its first round then adding a player can be achieved with very little disruption as the bye can simply be filled with the incoming player. If this is the case, they'll be an option when reviewing the draw in the Draw review tab to add a new joiner.

Merge draw

If none of the above options are either palatable or possible there is a final course of action. If you publish a draw that has the same name as a draw that is already published, it will replace that draw (unless it's a team event). In so doing, MMM will retain the results and bookings of any matches in the old draw that can be considered equivalent in the new draw. By equivalent, we mean that the matches must either be in the same round or, if the players are known, they must match.

For example, for a box league where some matches have already been played, you could publish a new version (with, say, an additional player) and existing match results and bookings will be retained. Thus the Merge draw method is good when changes have to be made even after players have started playing their matches.

How can you achieve this? You'll need to build a new draw in Event joiners and draw creation tab and ensure it has the same name as the published one you want to replace (you can edit a draw's name in the Draw selection and refinement tab). Then, when you confirm the draw it will replace the existing one. Since the new draw could be very different from the one you had before (it could even be a completely different type of draw!), equivalent matches may be common or rare. Either way, any existing matches that are not deemed equivalent will be cancelled (along with any booking) just as they would if you had recalled the existing draw.