TD Guide

by Paul Lujan and Juliana Froggatt

This page is designed to be a reference for anyone who's serving as a tournament director (TD, for short). It has some Berkeley-centric advice, but hopefully its lessons are applicable to all who are interested.

This guide assumes that the questions are being dealt with by another party, either a separate packet editor or an external supplier (e.g., NAQT). If you happen to be both a packet editor and a TD, then you should pay special attention to Tip #1.

Tip #1: Do not be afraid to delegate! There are a lot of duties that a TD has, but many of them can be easily farmed out. For instance, the procurement of food and prizes are ideal tasks to give to other people.

The overall task of a TD may seem daunting, and there is a lot to do, but none of the individual responsibilities is particularly difficult. It's just making sure that all of the individual things get done that is the difficult part. So assigning some of the tasks to others will increase the chances of a successful tournament.

Before the tournament

A TD should make sure that each of the following will be coming to the tournament:

To bring to the tournament

You'll need to bring a bunch of things to the tournament. Of course, most of these should be prepared in advance, the more in advance the better.

Things to do at the tournament

After the tournament

Links and resources

Most of these were already mentioned in the text, but here they are in a convenient location again.

Feedback

If you have any suggestions for things to be added to this document, send them to me: plujan <at> socrates.berkeley.edu.