How Tournaments Are Run
It is easier to effectively operate the PDPTab.com software if you know a little bit about how a debate tournament works. This manual assumes that you are familiar with the Public Debate Program rules for debating. If you need a refresher course, the rules are easily available on the pdp website.
Basically, schools bring students to a debate tournament to learn, compete, and practice their speaking and debating skills. Each school brings students in groups of three, referred to as “teams,” who compete in either 4 or 5 debates. Each individual debate is known as a “round,” so that students are said to compete in 4 or 5 “rounds” of debating. Each team of students will debate a different team from a different school in each of their “rounds” of debate.
At the end of the tournament, the tournament director will give awards for individual performance, team performance, and school performance. The tournament director uses tabulation software to match teams against each other, assign judges, enter results, and calculate awards.
For the purposes of this manual, we will assume that you are running a 5-round tournament. If you are running a 4-round tournament, everything that we are saying here still applies – you will only need to enter 4 rounds when creating your tournament and ignore the instructions for pairing round 5.
The first two rounds of debate at a PDP tournament are “randomly” assigned. In both round 1 and round 2, teams are randomly assigned to a debate against another team. They will never debate teams from their same school, and they will never debate the same team twice at a tournament. In the first two rounds of debate, teams will debate on the proposition side once, and on the opposition side once. This guarantee of side balance is true in every set of two rounds. So, for example, in rounds 3 and 4, a team will again be guaranteed to be on the proposition side once, and on the opposition side once. In round 5, teams will be randomly assigned to sides.
NOTE: teams may be proposition or opposition twice in a row at the tournament - this is normal in an odd round following an even round. If a team is proposition in round 2, there is a 50% chance they will be again proposition in round 3 since the sides are randomly assigned. That team would then be opposition in round 4 to even out side assignments.
Every debate starting in round 3 is “power-matched.” This means that teams, in general, will debate other teams with a similar record at the tournament. So, if a team wins their first two debates, the software will try to pair this team against another team that has won the first two debates. This ensures that teams debate against teams of equal skill level for rounds 3-5.
Your role as tab director will be to use the PDPTab.com software to complete the following steps:
Enter all the schools, students, teams, judges, and rooms for the tournament in the "Entry System." For online tournaments, make sure each judge has an email address saved so they can receive their eBallots. This is a very critical step as almost all problems at tournaments are due to errors in the registration data such as teams left off the pairings or judges being assigned ballots they can not judge. Double and Triple check your registration data.
Pair the first round of the tournament. This places two teams in a debate, assigns a judge, and assigns a room
Generate the Postings. These are what debaters use to find out who their opponent is, what room they should head to for the debate, and who their judge is. For a face-to-face tournament, you would print out the PDF and post it around the central gathering place. In an online tournament, you would share this with schools as PDF file.
Generate the Ballots. These are what judges use to designate the winner, record speaker points, and give comments to the debaters including their reason for decision. For a face-to-face tournament, you would print out the PDF file and distribute each ballot to the judges. In an online tournament, eBallots are sent to each judge via email for each debate. The judge will receive a link to their eBallot that they can then fill out at pdptab.com.
Tabulate the results. For a face-to-face tournament, judges will turn their ballots back into you. You will then "Tab" these ballots entering the decision and speaker points from the paper ballot into the website. For an online tournament, this step is done by the judges on the eBallots. It is recommended practice though to review the eBallots after they come in to ensure everything was entered correctly.
Repeat Steps 2 through 5 for each round of the tournament.
Once all preliminary rounds are complete, you will then generate the team awards, speaker awards, sweepstakes, and result sheets. You will use the team awards, speaker awards, and sweepstakes reports to announce the top teams, speakers, and schools and hand out awards. The Result Sheet can then be emailed to schools and the Public Debate Program coordinator for record keeping. All of these reports are generated automatically on the site and saved as PDF files.
Last updated