How to Tab

Generating the draw of a debating tournament can be a thankless task.  Here are some tips about how to do it well, but at the end of the day there is no substitute for experience.

The Basic Idea

Debating tournaments are generally power-paired (all AIDA tournaments are power-paired by rule), which is to say that teams should debate against other teams of (roughly) their own strength.  In practice, that means that teams should meet other teams whose results at that tournament approximate their own.  Most draw generation systems, including that required by the AIDA constitution, group all of the teams on the same number of wins (or, in four-team debates, the same number of points) and then allocate debates within them.  The AIDA constitution requires that that allocation within groups occur by cutting the group in half and matching the groups side by side, so the top of the top half meets the top of the bottom half, subject to the ‘one up, one down’ rule.

British Parliamentary Tabs

There are a number of very good resources on draw generation for BP tournaments, such as Tabbie ( http://tabbie.wikidot.com/), which is a widely accepted tab program for large BP tournaments.  There is no consensus for 3-on-3 tabs, but if anyone has a tab they would like to share with the community please contact us!