The present disclosure describes methods and systems directed towards automating tournaments within a gaming environment. Data regarding a first set of players that registered for a tournament may be received by a tournament server. The players are placed in a tournament queue. If the number of players in the tournament queue exceeds a certain threshold, then one or more tournaments are created based on a model tournament, the maximum size of the tournament, and the number of players in the tournament queue. The players in the tournament queue are placed into each of the tournaments that includes one or more matches