What this section does
Pathway draws the event as a ladder. Each competition is a card; an arrow between two of them means one hands players to the other. A stage sits to the right of everything that feeds it.
It appears once the event has two or more competitions. A single-competition event has no ladder to draw.
Reading the ladder
Each card carries four things:
- The competition's name.
- Its format and field size — "Burridge Swiss · 39 players", "Knockout · 24 players".
- Open door, when the competition accepts arrivals (see Format). It is a label, not a mechanism: it says this competition takes all comers, and is offered only where no handover already feeds the competition — where one does, the arrow has answered the question.
- The one thing to do next here, or its current state.
The coloured edge repeats that last line at a glance:
| Edge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Amber | Something is outstanding — no format chosen, no players, no draw built |
| Green | Set up and ready |
| Blue | Games have been scored |
Selecting a card opens the section that owns its next step: Format for a missing format or blocks, Players for an empty field, Knockout setup for an unbuilt draw.
The arrows
Two kinds of handover are drawn:
- Finishing order — a block whose seats are declared from another competition's results. This is what placed blocks create.
- Winners and losers — a bracket seat that belongs to the winner or loser of a match in another competition's draw.
A plate fed from its own competition's main draw is not an arrow: both brackets belong to one competition, and the handover is inside it.
Handovers
Under the ladder, every arrow is written out as a sentence — the same sentence the event page publishes. + Add a handover writes a new one, and Edit changes an existing one.
A handover answers two questions, and reports two more:
| Question | Answers |
|---|---|
| Who leaves? | Losers of a round or two · Everyone who doesn't qualify · Everyone who qualifies · Anyone knocked out · The top few on record |
| Where do they go? | A competition, and which of its draws. Naming two draws lets you split between them (dealt alternately) or have them play both (a Draw & Process) |
| When? | When you say so. Nobody is moved until you place them; the rule works out who is eligible and holds the answer ready. Where they go decides where you do it: into a draw, on the qualifying table under Swiss; into a competition's pool, under Arrivals on that competition |
| How are they placed? | Stated, not chosen — it follows from the rule. A merit cut places in its own order, top of the table to seat 1. Anything else joins the destination's pool, or the seat you give them |
The top few on record is a merit cut, and it asks three things the others don't. Minimum games to take a place starts at none — Reg F4 puts no floor under games played, so a floor is a house rule you turn on rather than one the tool assumes. Then whose games count towards the record — the source competition's own, and any other competition you name — and who is barred from taking a place, given as a round of the source draw, so a player who reached it is not eligible however good their record. How a qualifying tie is resolved names the regulation, Reg F5(4) or Reg F3(d), and The backstop names what settles anything that step leaves level: Net hoops across every counted game, or Quality of opponents (the final win percentage of every opponent faced, added up, one term per game). Neither regulation names a backstop, so it is the event's own condition, published with the qualifying table. How a seeding tie is split orders the draw and plays no part in who qualifies. Counting another competition's games is what Regulation F4 calls a Progressive Swiss; there is a one-pass build for that whole shape on Progressive Swiss.
A draw a merit cut fills is drawn before the cut settles, on reserved seats reading "Seed 1 … Seed 8", so it can be published on day one. Its qualifying table shows who is in, who is out, who is still playing and who is not eligible, live — and its button fills the seats with their names when you are ready. Declare the handover before building that draw: the wizard reads the cut to know how many seats to hold.
Where a handover takes losers of a round, the line beneath it shows what it would place right now — how many seats, how they divide between the draws, and how many are already filled. Nothing is written into a draw by the Pathway; this is the count so you can check the rule before it matters.
A plate added from a Burridge Swiss with Add the plate writes two handovers — Everyone who doesn't qualify playing both halves, and Losers of a round or two split between them. Its held seats are placed from the plate card in Knockout setup.
Only handovers you have written yourself can be edited. An arrow that came from how a draw was built is reported rather than offered: changing it means changing the draw, in Knockout setup.
When nothing is joined
Competitions with no arrow between them run side by side. A Championship and a First Flight are separate fields playing at the same time and never interact, so an unjoined ladder is a description, not a warning.
Related
- Format — competitions, formats and what follows block play.
- Add a plate — a second draw for the beaten.
- Knockout setup — building a draw.