Sanctioning a tournament
The first step to run an official tournament is sanctioning, which will put the tournament on Pokémon’s Event Locator. To sanction, log into Play! Tools and click Create Tournament in the left sidebar.
A full guide on how to use Play! Tools is available at https://play-tools.pokemon.com/guide – please read this as it goes over every step on creating a tournament.
For Premier Events, make sure that you have your League’s Activity Group selected for TCG and GO events and your personal activity group for VG events. Do note that all of these have eligibility criteria – see our Tournament Eligibility page to see the requirements for each event type.
If you are unable to see the Premier Event Series for your League, make sure you have the proper permissions. You can check this by going to your League Details page on Pokemon.com and clicking Edit Leaders. If you do not have permissions to sanction the event type, reach out to your League Owner.
Running a tournament
Tournaments are run through Tournament Operations Manager, or TOM for short. You can download TOM by going to your Play! Pokémon Dashboard, expanding Organizer Information in the left sidebar, and clicking Tournament Software. TOM is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11+.
A full guide on how to use TOM is available at https://assets.pokemon.com/tournament_software/tom_guide.pdf – please read this as it goes through every step of utilizing TOM.
For more information on running tournaments, see the Play! Pokémon Rules & Resources page.
Reporting tournament results
After final standings have been generated, click the Save Upload File As… button at the bottom right. You may keep the tournament’s current file name and replace the old file, or you may change the name so that it is easily identifiable as the final file when you go to upload the tournament in Play! Tools.
Then, open up Play! Tools and select your tournament from the My Tournaments page. Click on the Upload TDF button at the top right and click in the grey box to select the finalized tournament file. If no errors are found, click the Upload button to complete the process. If an error is found, read the message and correct the tournament file if possible – a list of common errors and how to fix them is available in the Play! Tools guide. If you are having trouble, submit a support ticket.
Once uploaded, click the Player Roster tab to ensure all players are correct. If you notice a player is missing and that an incorrect player is listed instead, double check that the Player ID is correct. If the Player ID was mistyped, go to your Play! Pokémon Dashboard and click on the tournament under the My Current Activities section. Click the Player Roster tab on this page, then scroll down to Replace Player ID. Enter the correct Player ID and then the incorrect ID, click Replace, verify that the correct player is found on the next screen, and click Replace again.
If you had assistance from other Professors in running the event (such as judges or scorekeepers), click on the Staff tab within the tournament page on Play! Tools and add the Player ID of each Professor. This must be done within 7 days of the event.
Frequently asked questions
When viewing standings in TOM, if I click the back button to see the previous round, the forward button doesn’t work. Is this a known issue?
How do I fix the “Invalid birth year” error when entering/fixing a player’s birth year?
This is a known bug in TOM 1.72.0, and has been fixed in TOM 1.72.1 – please update to the latest version.
I’m getting an error when opening TOM that says “Failed to launch JVM”. What do I do?
A number of things can cause this error, but it usually relates to your TOM_DATA folder. The easiest way to fix this is by renaming your TOM_DATA folder to something else (like “old TOM_DATA”). TOM should now open, but it’ll act like it’s a new installation; you can copy over the “data” folder from the old TOM_DATA folder into the new one to restore your information.
If this doesn’t work, try changing the ownership of the TOM_DATA folder. Right-click the TOM_DATA folder, click Properties, then Security up top, then the Advanced button near the bottom. On this screen, check to see if your user account is listed as the Owner at the top. If not, click Change, enter your user account, and then click Check Names. If your name becomes underlined, click OK. Then, check the box at the bottom for “Replace all child object permission entries” and click OK. Now, TOM should open!
If neither of these fixes your issue, please send in a support ticket.
I’ve got two versions of TOM, one with “Pokémon” before the name and one without. Which do I use?
The version of TOM without “Pokémon” is the current version – you can safely uninstall the old “Pokémon” version.
All the buttons and text in TOM are super tiny/messed up! How do I fix it?
You’re using a high-DPI display, and the default settings in Windows don’t scale TOM properly by default. Right-click the icon for TOM, click Properties, go to the Compatibility tab, check “Override high DPI scaling behavior”, and choose “System (Enhanced)” (or just System if the Enhanced option doesn’t appear).
After clicking Pair Next Round in TOM, an error pops up: “Unable to pair any more rounds. The tournament will now end.” TOM shows more rounds remaining. What gives?
This is a known bug in TOM, but luckily it’s an easy one to fix. Dismiss the error dialog, save the tournament, and close TOM. Then, reopen TOM and open the tournament file. You should now be able to pair the next round (likely the first round of top cut Single Elimination).
I can’t see the Verify or Print Roster buttons in Step 3, what do I do?
For some small screen resolutions, the default size of the Step 3 box is a bit too tall. Depending on the screen size, you may be able to resize the Step 3 box by clicking on the very top of the window and dragging it down. If this doesn’t work, you may need to set the Windows taskbar to auto-hide.
How do I contact Pokémon Organized Play regarding an issue with TOM?
Submit a support ticket at https://support.pokemon.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000020293, choosing Tool Issue as the category and TOM as the subcategory.
I’m having issues installing TOM… help please?
The installation process for TOM can sometimes be confusing, so please look below for your operating system for more on how to get things working!
Windows
To install TOM on Windows, you’ll need a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or newer. If you’re not sure which version of Windows you’re running, here’s Microsoft’s guide on figuring that out. If you are running Windows on S Mode, you’ll need to switch out of S Mode to install and run TOM.
In some very rare circumstances, TOM may not start directly. You may need to navigate to C:\Users\YourUserNameHere\AppData\Local\Tournament Operations Manager\app and use the following command:
java -cp tom-1.70.0-SNAPSHOT.jar;barbecue-1.5-beta1.jar;jgoodies-common-1.8.1.jar;jgoodies-looks-2.7.0.jar;jhall-2.0.jar;xercesImpl-2.12.2.jar;xml-apis-1.4.01.jar com.tcg.pokemon.op.tom.Main
macOS
To install TOM on macOS, you’ll need macOS 11 or newer. If you’re not sure which version of macOS you’re running, here’s Apple’s guide on figuring that out.
Some Mac installs seem to have issues with the profile XML files if upgrading from a previous version – if you are having issues, remove all XML files within TOM_DATA\data\profiles and create a blank profiles.xml file. You’ll have to recreate any TO profiles, but it should work.
Other (Chrome OS, Android, iOS, etc.)
TOM is not supported on any operating systems other than Windows and macOS. While some Tournament Organizers have gotten TOM to work on Linux (notably Ubuntu and Arch Linux), there is no guarantee that TOM will work correctly on any operating systems other than Windows and macOS.