Insights from a Tournament Director

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So you played tonight? [00:00:01] Speaker B: I did. I started playing on Tuesdays. Open play. It's fun. [00:00:05] Speaker A: Is this your effort to get ahead of the game? [00:00:10] Speaker B: You know it. [00:00:13] Speaker A: All right, well, last week, what do we talk about last week? Do you even remember we do? [00:00:17] Speaker B: I remember. I remember. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Do I have to fix that? I think I'll leave it in. Not sexy, but it works. [00:00:26] Speaker B: We talked about leagues. [00:00:27] Speaker A: We did. Mostly ladder leagues. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Yep. [00:00:30] Speaker A: That's mostly what leagues are interesting. I thought I would do. So I'm in the the throes of a tournament coming up. We have the Furry Fracas. This is not an advertisement. We're full, people. Thank you all for signing up early. It is going to be rocking. Somewhere between 410 and 440 I think will be the final number. It's always tough to tell because there's withdrawals and moves and shakes and other weird things that happen. But yeah, somewhere around 425 is probably the magic number for the number of players. Why? I think registrations is already at 418 or something crazy like that. It's pretty awesome. And so I want to talk tournament director tonight. This is a big thing and I want to say big thing. I'm the one running it. I don't mean like, it's like, hey. [00:01:22] Speaker B: That'S a big job. [00:01:22] Speaker A: I don't mean like that. Hey, like, I'm a big thing. What I mean is I think it's important for people to understand what happens behind the scenes. Does that make sense? Yes, because I get a lot of emails like, hey, you know, my partner and I want to move to this event or that event or somebody's playing in this event that has a duper that's too high or, you know, how come I'm on a waitlist and there's only three other teams? Which, like, that's a legit question though. [00:01:47] Speaker B: It is. [00:01:48] Speaker A: And so I kind of want to walk through the behind the scenes of running a tournament as a tournament director, relative to the logic behind courts and players and teams and events and brackets and all that stuff. Ooh, I'm sure you're thrilled. [00:02:07] Speaker B: No, I mean, I am because as I run a lot of events, not necessarily tournaments, but events throughout my career. And there's always those last minute registrations and we most of the time count on those last minute registrations. But when an event like a pickleball tournament gets down to the wire, there really isn't space. And it's important for people to understand that waiting until the last minute isn't great. When you're wanting a space in a really popular tournament. [00:02:39] Speaker A: So helpful. And I put out a call to people. I said, hey, please, if you can register early, like, please do. It's very helpful to us. This particular tournament has a lot of excitement around it because it's a Moneyball tournament for three events. There's a men's doubles event, a women's doubles event, and an open mixed event. They're all three open, but a mixed event. And in each of those events, the winning team will get $1,000. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Wow. [00:03:04] Speaker A: In each of those events, the second place team will get $500. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a big deal. [00:03:08] Speaker A: It is. And in each of those events, the third place team will essentially get a refund. [00:03:12] Speaker B: Oh, that's nice. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. So that's almost $5,000. [00:03:17] Speaker B: That's incredible. [00:03:18] Speaker A: In fact, I mean, it's three, one, two, three, four. It's 4,500 first, first and second place teams. And then six more people will get a refund of either six of either 75 or $80. And so six more people at $80 is 480 bucks. That's. That's $4,980. [00:03:36] Speaker B: Wow. [00:03:36] Speaker A: So it's really five, $5,000. And it's super cool. [00:03:42] Speaker B: It is. [00:03:43] Speaker A: We needed to pull this trigger for a reason. And I don't want to publicly say why that reason is. [00:03:49] Speaker B: What trigger? [00:03:50] Speaker A: Going to a cash event. We didn't start as the tournament as a cash event. We just started with five. Zero plus. [00:03:54] Speaker B: I remember that. [00:03:55] Speaker A: And we got some decent registrations. But, folks, we have 25 men's teams. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Whoa. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Competing on Saturday for the dollars. [00:04:05] Speaker B: That's incredible. [00:04:06] Speaker A: We have 25 mixed doubles teams. [00:04:09] Speaker B: Wow. [00:04:10] Speaker A: On Sunday. Competing for the dollars and a few less than that for the women's. [00:04:15] Speaker B: That's nice. That's really nice. So why did you pull the trigger on adding cash prizes? [00:04:21] Speaker A: Well, I just. I didn't want to say publicly, but I will provide a hint. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Okay, give me a hint. [00:04:26] Speaker A: I don't like to compete with other tournaments on my weekend. [00:04:29] Speaker B: You really don't? [00:04:30] Speaker A: I call it my weekend. Like, that's my weekend. If I block off a tournament, I don't want to compete. How dare they? [00:04:36] Speaker B: How dare they? [00:04:37] Speaker A: How dare they, you know, do what they need to do for themselves? And so that competing tournament has 31 players signed up for it. [00:04:45] Speaker B: Oh, you are just so happy. [00:04:47] Speaker A: And we have. [00:04:48] Speaker B: See his face. [00:04:49] Speaker A: 414. I'm looking at the screen right now. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:53] Speaker A: And I am happy. And they were also a money event. [00:04:57] Speaker B: But they had a higher registration cost. [00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that stuff's sort of immaterial, but not necessarily. I mean, it somewhat is when you have a money event. I understand. A higher cost. We did not do that. We had a generous donor who put up the cash, and that's the Stephen J. Cage foundation, by the way, so. And it's public because it'll be public when he's handing them the wads of cash on. On winning day. And we'll have a Stephen J. Cage foundation sign there. So it'll be obvious. But they are a money event also. Now, I think theirs was. I didn't dig into it, but I'm pretty sure, like, at least eight teams have to register. At least 10 teams have to register in order for there to be money. [00:05:37] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:05:37] Speaker A: And at 31 players, they're not in trouble because we're full. [00:05:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:41] Speaker A: So now people will probably shift over to that one if they. If they're really looking for a tournament to play in. If it's just they wanted to play in our tournament, I understand we're full, but if it's not, then maybe they'll slide over into that tournament. I don't know. We competed against another tournament in Indiana, same weekend. They have 33 players signed up, and I think that's it for Indiana. There's a couple Illinois and other, you know, that are the same weekend, but they're. I don't consider them really heavy duty competition. This. The other one is in, you know, nearby. You know, it's within half an hour, so kind of a competitor of ours. [00:06:16] Speaker B: And didn't you tell me there's 40 states represented at this tournament? [00:06:19] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, no, I wish. Can you imagine? [00:06:21] Speaker B: I thought you said. [00:06:22] Speaker A: I said 40 players from other states. [00:06:24] Speaker B: 40 players. Okay. [00:06:26] Speaker A: If we had 40 states represented, it would be national, like, it would be. It would be the US Open. [00:06:31] Speaker B: I was like, wow, there's a serious pool. [00:06:34] Speaker A: It is 10 states. [00:06:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. [00:06:36] Speaker A: Which is pretty sexy. [00:06:37] Speaker B: Yep. [00:06:38] Speaker A: And also one minor outlying island. I don't know which one. I'm gonna go with a key. Well, I would have said probably one of the Saints. [00:06:46] Speaker B: Oh, like St. Thomas or St. Martin or something like that. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Although a US one. [00:06:51] Speaker B: St. Croy. [00:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah. St. Croix. Although I think St. Thomas is USVI. But saint. What was the other one you said earlier? [00:07:00] Speaker B: Martin. [00:07:00] Speaker A: I think St. Martin is British Virgin Islands, but I'm. Maybe it's the other US One. I don't know. [00:07:05] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:07:05] Speaker A: Anyway, Saint Croix is a good example. [00:07:06] Speaker B: Saint John. [00:07:07] Speaker A: We Were in Saint Croix. We were in Saint John. We were in Saint Thomas. We've been to those three. [00:07:10] Speaker B: Yep. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Let's start talking about that. Forget pickleball. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to the Caribbean. And then also, there's a player here from Paris, France. [00:07:19] Speaker B: What? [00:07:20] Speaker A: We. We. How cool is that? [00:07:23] Speaker B: I wish you guys could see his face. [00:07:27] Speaker A: Oh. Anyway. So super cool. And so behind the scenes, this is where I really want to get to. Sky. The. The thing is, like, I'm getting great questions, and I'm gonna just grab a question that I just got tonight. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Okay. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Hey, there's only three teams. Are you really only allowing three teams into this event at. Let's call it women's doubles 3, 0, 35 plus. I have no idea what it was. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Okay. [00:07:52] Speaker A: Yes. But a month ago, I wasn't. A month ago, I would have let 50 teams in. [00:07:58] Speaker B: Right. But now that we're down. [00:07:59] Speaker A: But we're full. [00:08:00] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:00] Speaker A: And at some point, you have to say when you're full, like, whatever players have registered for whatever events they've registered for, once you're. Once your courts are full, you can't do anything else. Do I want only three teams? No. Do I want eight teams? No. Like, I'll take as many as I can get. But the reality is 25 men's teams for. For the Open takes up a lot of court space. That's 10 quarts. And by the way, it's 10 quarts for almost five hours. [00:08:28] Speaker B: And you have to go with what the registrations give you. It's not like you can fish around for eight teams here and eight teams there. You really have to. [00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:37] Speaker B: You're reliant on the registrations that come in. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I've done a lot of math and a lot of work, and then Lisa Farley and I've done a lot of math and a lot of work together on this particular tournament. [00:08:48] Speaker B: She's great. [00:08:48] Speaker A: We've learned some really cool things. So we will. We will have some interesting stuff to share after this tournament with people, but we figured out some really cool things in terms of how this doggone system works on the back end. Pickleball, brackets.com so in the middle of this tournament, two nasty things happened to us. And again, as a tournament director, this is just what you deal with behind the scenes, but it causes your players who don't know this is happening to have questions. Okay, so I answered the first question, which is, are there's only three teams? What do you do? Okay, I get it. We're the. How about this one? We're the first on the waitlist. Can we. Well, I don't know, because I'm going to get in as many as I can. I promise you that. We've got a great nonprofit we're trying to support here, but I can only get in how many we can support. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:30] Speaker A: Okay. So then the issues. Two main issues came up in the last 60 days since we launched this tournament. Wasn't even 60 days ago. It was whatever, like 45 days ago. First issue, Duper redid their algorithm and changed everyone's dupers. [00:09:47] Speaker B: I remember. [00:09:48] Speaker A: So now are people sandbagging? If before they were a 3.47 and they signed up for 3. Oh, fine. And now they're 3.59 and still signed up for a 3. 0. Are they sandbagging? [00:10:01] Speaker B: And didn't you go one by one through every single registration and double check it? [00:10:06] Speaker A: I did. I did. [00:10:08] Speaker B: It's crazy. [00:10:09] Speaker A: And I went to the date that they registered. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:12] Speaker A: So I could see what they were then. But even so, it's been a nightmare. So there will appear to be some people who are quote, unquote, sandbagging. First and foremost, you need to understand sandbagging is a choice a human being makes. Think about it. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:26] Speaker A: You're not sandbagging if you didn't know. [00:10:29] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:30] Speaker A: And so if they're duper changed, but they signed up for the appropriate event, they're not sandbagging. [00:10:35] Speaker B: No. [00:10:36] Speaker A: And I left them in that event based on what their duper was at the time. [00:10:39] Speaker B: That was nice. [00:10:40] Speaker A: I think it's appropriate. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Well, 45 days, your duper can go up or down. [00:10:44] Speaker A: I can't. Yes, of course. But it's not right for me to go, hey, I mean, sorry, you signed up for 3.0. I'm not gonna let you stay in 3.0 because all of a sudden your duper's 3.3.5. I mean, 3.56. I mean, who cares? Like, I can't control that. [00:10:57] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:58] Speaker A: Second thing that happened is during the same 45 days, pickleball brackets.com, which is the software that we use, who's owned by Pickleball Tournaments, who's merged with pickleballtournaments.com, both are owned by pickleball.com which are both owned by the PPA. And those. Those clowns I talk about all the time. I say clowns are not. Some of them are. Some of them aren't. All reserve my judgment for better days on that. [00:11:23] Speaker B: But you're so spicy. [00:11:24] Speaker A: I am here's the thing. They changed the software. [00:11:30] Speaker B: No. [00:11:31] Speaker A: From pickleball brackets.com you have to pick a ball tournament to pickleballtournaments.com which you access through pickleball.com. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yes. And it threw some of our people through me. Well, through you. [00:11:42] Speaker A: I went on to my normal pickleball brackets.com management site, and it was like, hey, you need to go through pickleball tournaments dot com. And I'm like, what? [00:11:50] Speaker B: I have had two. [00:11:51] Speaker A: And all our links. [00:11:52] Speaker B: I know. [00:11:52] Speaker A: I mean, they worked, don't get me wrong, but what a nightmare I've had. [00:11:55] Speaker B: People reach out to me about this. They freaked out. [00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah. The software is a little different. It looks different. It's got a different screen. So for the players, the good news is, for the most part, behind the scenes, as the tournament director, we still use pickleball brackets dot com. [00:12:09] Speaker B: Do you know why they made the switch? [00:12:13] Speaker A: Ego. Oh, I'm pretty sure it's ego. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Really? [00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Pickleballtournaments.com was the big one. They bought pickleball brackets.com like, two years ago. It's been a while. [00:12:24] Speaker B: I know. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Maybe at least a year and a half ago. And they've been doing everything they can, I think, to. To make their name the name again. So they're now pickleball tournaments.com and. And I don't know if it was Dun Dun or Pardo or whoever, but someone in the PPA and then that you. That whole upa. The big thing. We talked about these acronyms before they bought the domain pickleball.com. i don't know who owned it and got a lot of money, but they bought that domain and have moved everything to pickleball.com, which is brilliant. Like, it's a. It's a brilliant marketing move. I have no complaints about that. I get what they're doing. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Sure. [00:12:54] Speaker A: But do you know what? They did not give us any warning as tournament directors that this was gonna happen. They sent us an email after we all got onto Facebook, and we're like, what are you guys doing? [00:13:03] Speaker B: Oh, no, that's not nice. [00:13:05] Speaker A: No. Hey, by the way. No, not by the way. We all know at this point, and. [00:13:08] Speaker B: They could have easily reached out to you guys, dude, through the app. [00:13:12] Speaker A: It's so simple. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:13] Speaker A: And this is my continual complaint about all things upa. I don't care if it's mlp, ppa, pickleball, whatever dot com. These clowns don't get the communication thing. That's where they're failing. [00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:26] Speaker A: And, man, I'd love to be in charge of their communication. I would just clean house in a heartbeat and everyone would know what's going on. [00:13:32] Speaker B: And that would be so pleasant. [00:13:35] Speaker A: I'm sure you'd enjoy it. You'd be like, oh, here goes my husband again. Chewing people out. [00:13:40] Speaker B: I mean, I think that smooth like you talk about this with your own company. Knowledge is part of what keeps a company healthy and sustainable. It keeps you from making mistakes and failing. Whether it's internal, you know, knowledge between staff members or if it's the knowledge that you share with your customers or your. If you know your clients, if they're businesses. And so we flourish when we know what's going on and how we can use the tools that they have. So well designed. If you don't know how to use a tool, then nobody's going to use it. [00:14:21] Speaker A: I mean, that's pretty too. Pretty too. Let's see. I want to fix my. But I won't fix my error since I'm going to fix your. That's pretty true. [00:14:30] Speaker B: You were lost in thought. [00:14:32] Speaker A: I was lost in your eyes, baby. [00:14:34] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. So what else? Anything else happen? [00:14:39] Speaker A: I was thinking that tonight it'd be really fun if I like did a bunch of country music quotes throughout with it to see if you caught any. Like, you're what my world spins around. [00:14:47] Speaker B: You know what? I am terrible with music trivia. [00:14:49] Speaker A: I don't know why you not trivia. I just would say things like, you know, whatever, just. Just to like a line from a song or the title of a song. [00:14:56] Speaker B: My point is I don't know if I would recognize. [00:14:58] Speaker A: I know, but maybe our listeners would be like, you know what? That was pretty country sound and not. [00:15:04] Speaker B: Country fan, aren't you? [00:15:06] Speaker A: I am becoming a fan of some songs. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:10] Speaker A: They got to be the newer poppier. They got to be gritty. [00:15:13] Speaker B: He's evolving people. [00:15:13] Speaker A: I think we talked about this. They got to be gritty. [00:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Like Ain't no Love in Oklahoma. I love that song. Just the whistle. The long black train. [00:15:22] Speaker B: Baby, you're getting off topic again. So what. What else do people need to know about tournament directors and tournaments behind the scenes? [00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is the crazy part. Like when you have a. Just use a group of eight and we'll think about eight teams in a tournament. Okay. So in one event. I should say not in a tournament. In one event, you have eight teams. Okay, well, here's what happens when those eight teams start to play. You're gonna probably do a seven game round Robin. You don't want to do two groups of four, and then they're only playing three games in a round robin. And then. Or they go to a double round robin. But that's two pools. That's the. You might as well just do seven game round robin. Okay, so seven game round robin's gonna take 20 minutes per game. It's 140 minutes. But let's look at courts. Let's just focus on courts. That's four courts booked for 120 minutes. Yep, 140 minutes. Then there's this brief pause of figuring out who plays whom in the brackets. Because you move from round robin to brackets in our tournaments and you have what we call the round one. Well, round one is all eight teams. So we're guaranteeing at this tournament that every single team goes forward into the brackets. Every team has to shot the gold medal. [00:16:29] Speaker B: And that's another reason why we had to lim. Limit the number of registrations. [00:16:33] Speaker A: Well, we had to limit the number of registrations because of hours in courts. That's the only. That's the only restriction. If I had 50 courts, we wouldn't have had to limit the registrations. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:41] Speaker A: But to your point, that drove extra excitement for the tournament. Okay, well, after round one, those eight teams, you dropped down to four teams. So now you're only on two courts. So there's two more courts that have come available. Okay, I need you to picture this. It kind of looks like, you know, Oklahoma. Get that song away. But it's got the panhandle. [00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:05] Speaker A: So underneath that panhandle is open now all of a sudden. Great. But the problem is all the shapes look like that. They all have panhandles on them because. [00:17:14] Speaker B: They have a long. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Because after the round robin. Yeah. It gets to the brackets, and as soon the brackets go. But gets single elimination. So people start to disappear. So the problem is you end up with wasted court space because you can't move every group into these itty bitty little spaces of one or two courts that are open. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Is that why some tournaments just do first court available? [00:17:32] Speaker A: They do. Like sometime it's app ppa. You get a text on your phone that says, go to this court. You grab all your crap and you rush across the. Whatever. It's so stressful. And I'll tell you what, I don't think it's as efficient either. I think that they think it is. [00:17:46] Speaker B: I don't think it is because there's sometimes waiting. Like it's. Instead of having a half an hour empty course, you might have 10 minutes every single round. [00:17:55] Speaker A: You might have one minute between your rounds rounds or 100 minutes between your rounds. Like literally. [00:17:59] Speaker B: Yep. [00:18:00] Speaker A: It's pretty crazy. So anyway, long story short, there's kind of that. And so we use this pod captain approach, which we've talked about before on here, and it allows us to put these, these groups all in the same court. So now the fans can watch them all together. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:18] Speaker A: The players can all play together. And the podcast, it all works out really well. But the. But the challenge is as soon as you go from like. So somebody asked me today, well, you have five teams in there. Can you. We're the sixth team. We're on the waitlist. We're first on the waitlist. We'll be the 16th. Can you just go from five to six? Going from five to six means going from two courts to three courts. [00:18:38] Speaker B: So no, right? [00:18:40] Speaker A: I mean, it's not necessarily a no, but it's like you don't understand. It's not, it's not easy. It's not like, oh, yeah, we can add one more team. It doesn't work that way. [00:18:48] Speaker B: It's a legitimate puzzle. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Seven players to eight players, one more court. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Yep. [00:18:52] Speaker A: But here's what's crazy. From eight players to 10 players, no more courts. In fact, and this is a secret that I'm going to give away today, really, but I won't give away much of it because this is what Lisa and I are working on. [00:19:03] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:04] Speaker A: Ten courts is. Or ten teams is significantly less play time than eight teams. Because in ten teams you do two pools of five. That's two four team round or four game round. Robinson with a buy on the same number of courts. Four courts. Eight is a seven game round robin. So by the time you're in medals for the 10 team event, you're just starting round one in the eight team event. [00:19:32] Speaker B: Let's explain Event. For those who don't know an event is. For example, a division might be a rating of 2.5 or 3.0. And so it could be like 3.0 doubles men's or 3.0 mix doubles. And so that event for that division is what he's talking about. [00:19:52] Speaker A: That's correct. And we end up with like 45 events at the tournament. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:55] Speaker A: So the tournament's all the events to your point. Then we've got the events themselves. Great job defining them. We have men's events, women's events, and mixed doubles events. There's actually events also called co ed and I'm, I'm teasing with the idea of doing a coed event in the future. Okay, Coed is we don't care who your four players are. [00:20:14] Speaker B: So two women could play two men. [00:20:15] Speaker A: That's correct. [00:20:16] Speaker B: A mixed team could play a women's Dead Bulls team. That kind of thing. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah. In the same. In the same event, you might have women playing women, women playing mixed, women playing men's. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Like an open play? [00:20:28] Speaker A: Very much like an open play, but it's called co Ed. And I don't know that we've seen a co Ed tournament around here. [00:20:33] Speaker B: There was a coed division. Where were we? [00:20:38] Speaker A: I don't recall one. [00:20:40] Speaker B: Was the PPA ever. No, there wasn't one for sure. Maybe it was just a pros warming up. [00:20:46] Speaker A: I mean, it was. I really don't think there's been a coed. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I just have never seen one personally that I can recall. No, definitely not. Beer City. [00:20:54] Speaker B: Interesting. That be. Sounds like fun. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Beer City dates are out, by the way. July 7th or something like that. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like it's earlier. [00:21:02] Speaker A: I. It's pretty close. It's right around that week. Within a week after July 4th, I think, every year. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Get your cooling towels. [00:21:09] Speaker A: Get my tent, my cot, my blankets. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Misters. [00:21:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's kind of stuff, folks, that goes on behind the scenes. It's. It's not. It's not rocket science. But at the same time, there is a lot of consideration to be done. So I just mentioned that going from eight teams to 10 teams, it's better to go to 10. But going from 10 to 12 is a nightmare. I remember there's four courts used with 10 teams. There are six courts used with only two more teams. So two more teams, you go. Oh, that's only one more court. No, because when you go to 12, you have to have two pools of six, which now means you're on three courts for each pool. So you just went from four quarts to six courts. And so I just think maybe I'm not looking for any hugs here, but I am saying give your tournament directors a break. Those of you that are tournament directors, you. You feel me? And those of you that play in tournaments, I just want you to understand, like, behind the scenes, it's a lot. [00:22:10] Speaker B: That's the other reason why registration ends so early. Before the event. [00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:15] Speaker B: So some tournaments, the registration will end two weeks prior to the event. Yeah, prior to the event. [00:22:20] Speaker A: We usually do one week, but we're doing. [00:22:21] Speaker B: We normally do one week, but. [00:22:23] Speaker A: But we're doing two Weeks this time. [00:22:24] Speaker B: We're doing two weeks this time because we literally ran out of space. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. We said before, I think it was February 17th or February 19th, but now we're doing February 14th because we are done. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Done. [00:22:33] Speaker A: So my savage move for the day. I feel like I need those, like black, you know, glasses. Nana. Nana. Like the memes. That's okay. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:22:44] Speaker A: But it's not savage, but you get the idea. So I emailed all the players whose partners hadn't registered yet. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:51] Speaker A: Or who needed a partner. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:53] Speaker A: And I was like, if you can't find a partner by Valentine's Day, I'm moving you to the wait list. It's my little savage move. [00:23:01] Speaker B: Do you ever like, share each other? Like, hey, so and so doesn't have a partner? [00:23:05] Speaker A: Actually, I've been emailing people this evening. [00:23:07] Speaker B: Oh, that's so nice of you. That is also extra work that tournament directors don't have to do. [00:23:13] Speaker A: Yeah. This is evening stuff for me. I try not to do it during my normal day, daytime. [00:23:17] Speaker B: But he cares about this tournament. I do much that he wants to make sure everybody has a great experience and they have a partner. [00:23:24] Speaker A: I do. I. I just emailed two guys that are in the, the men's open and neither has a partner. And I said, hey, you know, just so you guys know, like, only one of you is going to have a team in this event, but one and one of you is not. But if you want to partner up, you're both in. And then one of them got back to me, is like, I'm good. I got a partner that'll be joining me by Valentine's Day. Don't worry. And I was like, hey, cool, that's. I mean, I'm just trying to connect to you guys. You know what I mean? [00:23:46] Speaker B: Well, and then there's the last minute dropouts because of injury or illness or family emergency. We had a couple of those at the last tournament. And so it's nice to have people that are on the wait list that are ready to go. Like they will show up with a 12 hour notice because sometimes that happens. It's, it's really sad if that happens. But yeah, it does. [00:24:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty awesome, um, getting everyone together. But it is sad when you have p layers drop at the end and that here's the other thing that's kind of a pain and just is what it is. Like, as much as I want to come into this thing on, on Thursday night or Friday night before the Saturday tournament and go, everything is perfect all the stars have aligned. I have all 10 pool, you know, 10 team pools, and everything's perfect. On my, on my schedule, someone's going to drop. It's going to go down to nine teams, which is like the worst fricking number. [00:24:39] Speaker B: Yep. [00:24:40] Speaker A: Eight game round robin Monster squares on my, on my checkerboard of space available. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Yep. [00:24:49] Speaker A: But what are you gonna do? I mean, if somebody gets a flat tire, they get sick, like it just happens. [00:24:53] Speaker B: Yep. [00:24:54] Speaker A: And you have to adjust. So I think what I learned at the last term at Hungry Games was you leave them in and you have forfeits. [00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:25:04] Speaker A: Or I forget what they call. It's either it's not DNF. I think it's four foots. It might be DNFs, which means I think it did not finish. But I think there's a way to do it that doesn't screw their duper over, but it gives. It gives each of the teams that would have played them a win, so to speak. So ends up evening out. Yeah. [00:25:21] Speaker B: And that's the other reason why you don't get a refund too close to the tournament. So if you back out. And I'm not that guy. [00:25:30] Speaker A: I'm actually doing tournaments, refunds all the way up until the day of the. [00:25:32] Speaker B: Tournament, which is rare. [00:25:33] Speaker A: It is rare. [00:25:34] Speaker B: A lot of times you just forfeit because of the amount of work it takes. [00:25:37] Speaker A: That's correct. But do you know why, why I want to do it? Why you should actually know this? Because I am hyper focused on the experience for the player. [00:25:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:25:50] Speaker A: And I want to run the next tournament and the next tournament and the next tournament. Like, I want people to reach out to me and have me run tournaments. And they're gonna do that with more frequency if I've delivered in previous tournaments. [00:26:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:05] Speaker A: So that's why I do it, you know? And. Yeah. Does Hamilton county humane society get 65 or 70 less dollars? Yeah, they do. But I'm going to run this tournament again next year. I will say, you know what I mean? And like, when it comes down next year, people are going to want to sign up and they're going to want to be a part of the tournament. And if I made them, if I made them right this time, they'll want to be on next time. [00:26:26] Speaker B: I will say people that did withdraw last minute from Hungry Games went ahead and said without even being. [00:26:33] Speaker A: Some of them did. [00:26:34] Speaker B: Please just keep it. [00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah, some of them did. Some of them said they want a refund. And we refunded those people. [00:26:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Okay. We're good, I think. Yeah, that's a good enough. [00:26:43] Speaker B: All you wanted to share about being a director. [00:26:44] Speaker A: I. I don't think people understand the volume. It's a lot of work, the volume. So. So just for. I'm just going to let you see this so that I can get some verification here. All inboxes from tonight. Let's just do the last hour. [00:27:01] Speaker B: All inboxes. You mean every single. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Meaning. Meaning all, like all pickleball bracket stuff. Okay, here we go. So that's. That says 9:17 on it. I'm scrolling down to 8:17 to give us the whole hour. Just in one hour. Oh, you can't see it. I'll move it over that screen. Hold on. Ready for this? [00:27:22] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:23] Speaker A: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. [00:27:33] Speaker B: It's pages and pages and pages of emails. [00:27:35] Speaker A: 42 emails in the last one hour about the tournament. [00:27:38] Speaker B: Wow. In one hour. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Two now. Is it like that always? And that 43. And this is a request. Can you please email me back about this? Yes, I will, of course. Here's the thing about all of these, and I'm not. It's not normally like this. We sent an email earlier this evening saying, get your partners in. [00:27:59] Speaker B: Right. [00:27:59] Speaker A: And then we send another email out saying, hey, you can pay now. So I'm getting extra traffic, but if I just search for. Let's just search for brackets, which gives us just that word. 5,453 emails in the last. Now in. In fairness, this probably covers four tournaments, so about 1400 per tournament. [00:28:21] Speaker B: Wow. [00:28:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's insane. It's insane. So this is why I hire people to do the work with me. Because I. I got stuff I gotta do without this. So. [00:28:31] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:32] Speaker A: Just because I. Actually, if you look at some of them, you'll see that here. I'll look at this email, for instance. So pickleball brackets is on there. So is the customer. And then so someone that I hired to look at and do the work. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Oh, that's nice. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. I've got time for all that. My business partner would fire me. [00:28:45] Speaker B: Yes, he would. So he'd be like, what are you doing? [00:28:48] Speaker A: He's probably like, why are you making podcasts about this stuff? Go sell some more. [00:28:52] Speaker B: The nice thing is we give you a behind the curtain look. [00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:58] Speaker B: With that. It also helps you understand the difficulties that go into tournament. Running a tournament. So you. If you decide to run your own tournament, you have your eyes wide open. [00:29:09] Speaker A: If you don't, Movie by Tom Cruise. [00:29:13] Speaker B: I don't know. And if you don't want to run the tournament. Now, you understand the value of hiring a tournament director. [00:29:21] Speaker A: That's very true. I think there's a lot to be said about that. Yeah, that's very true. [00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:27] Speaker A: Well, sky, as always, you're an absolute darling. I love the ever living heck out of you. You just make me happy. Oh, thank you. We. We appreciate all of our wonderful listeners. I have no idea what number we're up to, so I'm just going to say thank you to all of our. [00:29:40] Speaker B: Listeners and happy Valentine's Day. Early it is. [00:29:43] Speaker A: Coming just a couple days from now. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Making a heart sign. [00:29:47] Speaker A: She's making a heart sign. I'm making a we're out of here sound. Tell all your friends that we're ahead of the game and so are.