Director’s Toolkit

Working answers for running a tournament in tsh: which pairing system suits your field, the commands to type, and what to reach for when something goes wrong mid-round.

Command names and argument order here are exact, taken from the tsh reference manual, and the advice follows the manual’s own rules — each recommendation says which rule it rests on. The explanations are ours, so read the manual for the authoritative account, and treat this as a shortcut rather than a substitute. Nothing here runs anything: you still type the commands into tsh yourself.

Your event

Players

Games each

Days / sessions

Division letter

The leaders should meet near the endDecides whether to hold rounds back for King of the Hill.Players have usable ratingsIf not, round one is paired at random instead of by seed.

Recommended

Round robin

Rounds	System	Command
1–18	Round Robin × 2 2 complete cycles, so every pairing happens 2 times.

Lines for your config.tsh

Why

·10 players and 18 rounds: a round robin fits, because the field is no larger than one more than the rounds scheduled.
·One full cycle is 9 rounds, so 2 cycles fills all 18 rounds exactly.
·With more than one cycle, interleave_rr finishes a whole cycle before the next starts, instead of players facing the same opponent twice in a row.
·Across 2 days that is about 9 rounds a day.

Watch out

!A round robin that divides exactly leaves the final round wherever the schedule puts it, so the leaders may not meet last. If a decisive final round matters more than a complete field, hold back the last round or two and pair them KOTH instead.