Pairings and the Draw
How the draw is built
iRank pairs a round by cost, not by filtering. Every possible pairing is scored against a set of penalties, and the draw with the lowest total cost wins.
| Constraint | Weight |
|---|---|
| Two teams meeting twice at this tournament | Highest |
| Two teams from the same school | High |
| A meeting at a recent previous tournament | Moderate |
| A meeting at an older previous tournament | Low |
| Side imbalance | Low |
| Distance apart in the standings | Lowest |
Because these are weights and not filters, no team is ever left out of a round. If every remaining opponent breaks some constraint, iRank takes the least-bad option and tells you which constraint it had to give up.
What the draw guarantees
- Every active team is placed in every round
- No two teams meet twice in the preliminary rounds
- Sides stay balanced — no team debates the same side more than one round out of step
- An odd field produces exactly one bye, and no team receives two
- No judge is assigned to a debate involving their own school
- No judge is placed in two rooms in the same round
These hold at every field size the league runs, from a six-team club competition to a Dreams camp of 166 teams over five preliminary rounds.
Cross-tournament history
Teams that met at an earlier tournament are kept apart where the field allows it. If they have all met each other before, the draw still completes — a repeat is preferred to leaving someone out.
Manual changes
You can drag a team or a judge to a different room. Every manual change is re-checked against the same constraints as the automatic draw, and conflicts appear on the row:
- Red — a repeat opponent or a same-school pairing. Fix before saving.
- Amber — a previous-tournament meeting or a side imbalance. Acceptable if you have a reason.
Elimination rounds
Elimination pairing is a bracket, not Swiss. The break is the largest power of two that fits, seeded 1 v 16, 2 v 15 and so on.
Teams are ordered by wins, then team points, then strength of schedule (opponents’ wins). A tie exactly on the break line is flagged for you to decide rather than resolved arbitrarily.
Rematches are allowed in elims. Two teams who met in the preliminaries can meet again in a bracket; the seeding decides the room.
Pairing offline
You can pair a round with no connection. The draw is computed on your device and saved locally.
When you reconnect, the server re-runs the same algorithm over its own data and compares. If the draws match, it is accepted. If they do not — because a team withdrew while you were offline, or another device paired the same round — it is rejected and you are told, rather than two devices disagreeing about who is debating whom.