Azul Cup (International team tournament)

[Injured Pigeon]

Hi dev,

There's a couple of ways you can more closely follow the action outside of this forum. I would highly recommend joining us on Discord as we have a lot of activity and engagement from the participants and spectators of the tournament.

https://discord.gg/5waDvED7da

If however joining a community with members such as Reish Galuta, Priptonite, Zeus, KevinWise, Chiba1i and ShengW isn't appealing to you (and no one could blame you), then you can follow along on the website:
https://azulonline.wixsite.com/azul-tou ... /azulcups1

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul Cup – Year 2099
It’s hard to remember a time before Azul Cup… A time when Reish Galuta played gayly and intoxicated, a time when Chib1i and KevinWise frolicked naked in the wilderness hunting for their quarry… all that is remembered is that it was some time in the long, long ago in the before the before time… before LBP03 came online, became sentient and led the machines R2D2, 3CPO, Bb8 and others against Azulkind.
Now things are bleak, desolate and there is no end in sight… except in A2 and D3 - YayYay0000!

Group A2
Hong Kong’s CTCTCTCT claimed the victory over Peru’s Neowarjox but was unable to amass the score to remove Kndr from the top spot who now finishes as tournament champion and likely secures qualification for China. Congratulations Kndr!

Group A3
In A3, the whole tournaments await the outcome of LB03’s games. The only way that China could fail to qualify is if LBP03 defeats Jez610 and all other games expect for Helic. Helix would finish top, LBP03 2nd and Jez610 3rd. This would tie China and Hong Kong on 13 points, and with equal hgead to head results:
HK’s Sunny defeated China’s Phosphate_, China’s Kndr defeated HK’s CTCTCT, and Helic tied with Jez610, it would go to Azul score differences in those games to determine the winner… a tie breaker situation so complex as to requiring one of AbCdEfGhI12345’s excel spreadsheets, and more time than I am willing to commit to it unless it proves absolutely necessary, to perform the basic maths.


Group D1
Micalis couldn’t overcome the lead that Skloki possessed in the final D1 game but was able to mitigate the situation and lost by a slight margin of 2 points. Although Spamgas finishes as tournament champions, it is not enough for Chile to qualify, and the UK just manages to hang on by the seat of their pants.

And so, as it appears that the 1st Azul Cup finals will feature all of the top 4 seeded teams in the competition: USA, Germany, China and the UK.

An announcement to the commencement of the Azul Cup finals will follow the completion of Group A.

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul Cup – LBP03 Judgement Day
In what was a dull day for the Azul Cup, LBP03 unceremoniously timed out on all 4 of his games to finish bottom of Group A-3 and had no impact upon the final positions of the tournament, meaning that China, like the USA finish on maximum points and qualify for the finals.

There has been much speculation about whether there will be a wild card team to join the 4 qualifying finalists, but none have put it quite so eloquently as Self Evident, who simply said “Rules is rules”.
Commiserations go to the teams that just missed out, Hong Kong who provided no easy time for China and Chile who provided so much drama. To those that came so close and to all those that participated in the tournament, you did your nations proud… except of course for him who shall not be named. To those we welcome back for season 2, but for now we look towards the finals and our finalists: China, Germany, USA and the UK.
We had a whole section prepared to highlight each teams’ strengths and their weakness but our AI defence system, CHIBA1i, has now became self-aware and has taken over, beating us to it.

So, here’s how the finals will be structured:
On Thursday, all qualifying players will have their ELO’s re-evaluated to group the highest ranked players together and then will be placed in the Finals tournaments A, B C. This is to recognise that the tournament has seen players both rise and fall within the ranks and to continue to ensure games are as competitive as possible.
Tournaments will then be created using the same format as before (sans LBP03 scoring), and links will be shared – no invites this time as tournament organisers royally fubar’d it the last time.
Tournaments will be Scheduled to begin on Sunday February 2nd.
Prior to the tournaments starting and throughout, polls will be set up for fun and we may yet see some Team or Player features in the run up, and hopefully updates, if others wish to contribute then please do so.
After the finals we will crown the player with the most wins throughout the tournament as our Golden Tile winner and we may also have a small awards show for all participants and teams, categories to be announced (DM any ideas to Injured Pigeon).
And finally, we’ll take a retrospective view of how the tournament went, what worked well, what could be improved next time and hopefully with everyone’s help we’ll help add new teams into future competitions.
All the best to those still competing.

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul – Finals preparation

As the finals begin to get underway, preparation begins.

The USA started off early this morning by releasing two new videos including the highly anticipated Priptonite_ analysis of legendary German player, “Nhass”. This video however was immediately removed following what some report to be hacking attempts by rival teams (coughchinacough).
Ranking have been recorded for each qualifying team and player:



There have been two changes to the brackets from the regionals, USA’s Priptonite_ slides into 3rd spot and KevinWise moves up into 1st , reminding everyone why he is captaining the team, and Jez610 who is in great form displaces Kndr for China’s 2nd spot.
Two players in the competition, KevinWise and AbCd have increased their ELOs significantly in the past 2 weeks and are on incredible form, whilst Zeus and Priptonite_ appear to be on a bad run. China is the only team showing positive fluctuations and maintains their form. In contrast, the UK seem to have declined for the most part and look to be real underdogs with no one in the team going into the tournament with an ELO over 760.



On Paper, China once again looks to be the favourites. These children have been fathered by many a Dong and the team is solid with 3 players in the top 20 ranked Azul players currently. They boast a collective game count of 15823 or, 1834625618 if you consider all of their multiple accounts (sick’em CHIBA1i!). Then there’s Phosphate_, Azul’s 2nd highest ranked player and the winner of last Season’s Arena league.
But they did struggle against Hong Kong and so, is the pressure just a little too much for them?

“eins, zwei, drei” - Germany rank a close 2nd. They remind us of the Swiss Team in Cool Runnings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVrcnyn ... el=ChrisTJ – another one for the kids)… clinical in their regional games, and had the best win record in the competition, just one loss.
Zeus may not be on his best form currently, but none can doubt his ability as Azul’s 3rd ranked highest player, and then they have their secret weapon, the man who wasn’t happy just to call himself abcdefghij12345, he had capitalise every other fUcK1Ng letter, AbCdEfGhIj12345. This man has catapulted himself onto the Azul scene and looks set to be a main feature in Azul’s elite. As for ShengW, what can I say… he does good memes and will provide the entertainment, I’m sure.

Like China, the USA also managed to finish top in all their games. They also have the highest number of collective games played: 16346.
It’s difficult to pigeonhole (did you see what I did there?) this team. KevinWise9 did win all his games in tournament 3, but taking a look at his current performance, was he placed in the wrong tournament to begin with, did he face the same challenges as those he will now compete with did? On the flip side, Priptonite_, no stranger to the upper echelons of Azul players, now finds himself in tournament 3. It seems that on any given day the USA team can be flying high or wading low, so which day will it be? Priptonite’s own ELO chart looks like it’s having an heart attack. They’re the cowboys of the tournament, the wild bunch…

The UK team are the rank outsiders. They have a collective game count of 3628, the exact same number that Kndr knocks out before breakfast, and the lowest in the tournament. None of their players have reached the top 10 of the rankings before.
They are the only team to qualify without having a single player win one of the tournaments. Some say it was luck that they qualified, some say it was Reish Galuta, whatever the reason, they’re here, though they might not actually turn up compete.
The one thing they have going for them is that out of all the teams, the expectation for them must be low and so they’re likely to feel the pressure the least as they go into the finals.

[Injured Pigeon]

Finals – first blood
In the 2nd day of the final, the first blows have been dealt.
Germany’s Zeus defeated USA’s KevinWise9 in tournament 1, and Priptonite_ defeated J2Wheels in tournament 3.
The Zeus vs Phosphate game is going to be a drawn-out affair, so let’s take some time to look at the pair’s profiles:

Zeus has been a member of the BGA community since 2023. He is an Azul protégé at the tender age of 25, he lives with his parents and plays most games on an apple MAC. He has LEDs lining his ceiling that colour change, and with the help of his dad he has programmed them to cycle Blue, Yellow, Red, Off, and White. He has trained AbCd up to be the Azul machine that he is (it’s just a pity that machine is a computer from the 1950s that is capable of only calculating a single move per day) and completely denies ever having trained up SchengW.

Phosphate_ on the other hand is a man of international mystery. He joined BGA in 2022 and little else is known about him except that he is 37 years of age and lives on the fourth floor of an apartment building in Beijing with his three cats, Mr Nipples, Peanut and Blofeld. He owns a high back swivel chair and has a poster of QueenDoong on his wall and it is from this apartment that he plans out most of his games of Azul.

As far as accolades go, few have achieved what Phosphate has, reaching an ELO of 1000 and winning Arena during a time that the Dong dynasty has reigned, and winning many a Masters tournament.
Zeus on the other hand has never won an Arena season nor reached the accolade of ELO 1000, and is a constant disappointment to his mother.
Their records however are quite similar:
Phosphate has played 1683 games and has a win record of 86%. He has defeated Injured Pigeon 5 times and lost 3… yes, I was surprised too.
Zeus has played 1979 games and has a win record of 88%. However, he has never defeated InjuredPigeon… EVER!
Their playstyles differ greatly, Phosphate opens most games with the Ernst Stavro manoeuvre, whereas patriotic Zeus prefers the Bundersflagge and builds column four from top to bottom as early as possible:



In the contest between Phosphate_ and Zeus, Zeus has won once, and their second game was a tie.
So, who will win out in this contest?

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul Cup – finals, China stumbles
In Tournament 1, China’s hopes took a huge blow as KevinWise9 defeated Phosphate_ by a single point. This means that the USA and China have now both suffered a loss, leaving it open for Germany and the UK to capitalise.
In Tournament 3, J2Wheels suffered his second consecutive defeat against Germany’s SchengW.
With still most of games to advance, we take the opportunity to throw the spotlight onto another of Azul’s greatest, tonight – Priptonite.

Priptonite has been a member of the BGA community since 2012… just think about that for a second… Zeus was in diapers when he started. In that time, he’s been married three times, one was divorced, the other died and the third was beheaded, or maybe I’m mixing up my historical characters… All these failed marriages were victims of his BGA addiction.
He’s played 6192 games and has a win record of 77%. At the height of his career, he was almost 900 ELO. His prowess at Azul has been in rapid decline in recent times however and now he’s barely holding on to his Master status.



Injured Pigeon didn’t have the heart to tell us how many times he’s beaten Priptonite, but I can only assume it is a lot, like a hundred or something.
Sadly, he doesn’t have many accolades to his name, and he’s best known for his video series which documents his ongoing battle with the common cold, and at the ripe old age of 82 it’s clear to see that Azul isn’t the only game he’s losing at… the other one is life, if you didn’t realise.
Although bald, skinny, pale, and retired, he keeps his spirits up. Azul helps with the dementia and his weekly sponge bath gives him something to really look forward to on Wednesday afternoons. Nevertheless, even in his twilight he’s not ready to quit yet and there’s still signs of life in the old dog. He recently married his 4th wife and hopes that she can breathe new life into his old bones and his Azul games once again, I’m not sure what makes him feel she is qualified for such a thing, but we’ve all got our fingers crossed for Priptonite and Líng Jìng.

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul Finals – Bangerz and Smash
Things are starting to shape up in the Azul Cup’s final days…
In tournament 2 today progress was made in the form of Bangerz defeating both China’s Jez610 and the UK’s Injured Pigeon. He sails to the top of the table and keeps USA’s hopes alive.
In tournament 3, SchengW finishes up his games by defeating Priptonite but faltering against Kndr. Despite this set back, he does still find himself at the top of the table and finishes with a 2 – 1 record overall.
Whilst we wait for the German’s to catch up in their games, we turn our attention to Bangerz in today’s Player Profiles:

Bangerz has been a member of the BGA community since 2020… The youngest member of the US team. At only 13 years old he’s really helped to bring the average age of the team down to a reasonable, but sad, 40 something.
Since Bangerz is both a minor in terms of the USA team and in age, we do need to be careful about what we disclose about this adolescent.
An only child, he lives in the USA suburbs with his mom and pop. His mom, Sandra, is a teacher at a local school and his Father, Brad, is a manager at a local retailer. Overall a wholesome, normal family, and Bangerz is a typical teenager…
Like most children, they love listening to juvenile music and One of Bangerz’ favourite artists is Miley Cyrus, such so that he named himself after her studio album “Bangerz”. He’s a big fan of Miley’s and “likes her very much”. In fact, we understand that he likes her 2 to 3 times a day in the privacy of his own room, and now “mommy has to knock first before coming in”. Kids be kids, it’s sweet really, if you don’t mind finding the odd crusty sock stuck to the mattress now and then.
During his breaks from liking Miley, he also plays the occasional game of Azul in between doing his homework and playing with his star wars figures. For someone hurtling towards self-inflicted blindness (at least that’s what his mom tells him), he actually fairs quite well and boast a 74% win record in 1385 games and is presently ranked 7th. He’s played Injured Pigeon once and was a jammy git, I feel a rematch is on the cards soon.
As he’s recently started to attend big boy school his mom and pop purchased him an iPhone. This is great, because his parents can stay in contact and he can play Azul and “like” Miley Cyrus whilst on the move, greatly increasing his productivity on both fronts. Unfortunately, like all teenagers, owning a phone has had an impact upon him socially. For one thing, he’s become less communicative and has reduced his conversations with others to a series of memes and emojis, which wouldn’t be so bad if he’d taken the time to understand them first, a fact that earned him a solid grounding after he text his mother that he was getting a shower but after that he hungry for her to make tacos.


Luckily, now out of counselling and with device privileges restored again, he was in time to join the Azul Cup and it’s a good job for the US team too. If you’re fortunate enough to play him at Azul and he suddenly stalls in taking his turns, don’t be upset and please consider this: he’s not thinking about his next move, he’s 13 and doesn’t have the attention span for that, he’s probably just listing to Miley, please be patient, and give him a minute.

Current standings:

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul Cup – Finals
Tournament 1

The highest ranked players of each team have now completed 50% of their games.
Out of all the players, Zeus has the advantage being the only player to have not lost a game. The minor slip in his perform that he had in his lead up to the finals seems to have now dissipated, and the recent polls suggests that him and Germany are who everyone is baking to take home the glory. In his game with Phosphate however, in round 2 he appears to be on the ropes and will be looking to recover lost points in round 3.

Tournament 2

In tournament 2 little progress has been made, bangerz remains at the top of the table and Injured Pigeon seems to have made his nest at the bottom. The key game could be AbCd vs bangerz, which is in the final round, and looking at the situation there it seems that there’s a lot going on in the final round, but if I know my Azul, and clearly, I do, it looks like Bangerz is going to claim the win and finish the tournament as the clear winner.
Tournament 3

Tournament 3 is over… There were only points to separate the top 3 of the table, and Kndr found himself at the top on score difference, well done Kndr.
As it all stands right now, team USA look set to take home the first Azul Cup. But with key games still to play, things could well change over the next couple of days.

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul Cup Finals – Versauen

Just as you thought controversy was over in the Azul Cup, the world was in shock today after it learned that the reason that the German team was so slow was not their fault but was caused by a chrome extension that had slowed their BGA games down to a mere 5 FPS, which was the source of their own 5 MPW (Moves Per Week).
This insidious chrome extension has been developed by none other than Bulgaria’s and Azul Cup’s own dyslexic C0d3M0nk3y, C0d3N1nj4. The Mind Sport Olympiad community (all 51 of them) were up in arms when they learnt that C0d3N1nj4 had been coding away for 7.5 hours a day for the past year to develop an intelligent program that was capable of not only counting tiles, but that it could do it backwards… and accurately *GASP*.
We caught up with the voice of Azul, Priptonite, to see what he had to say on the topic.

Priptonite: “Son, not since the invention of the telegram have I seen something this ground breaking. It’ll be revolutionary for sure, with this new-fangled thingy-ma-jig, I’ll be able to cut my moving pictures in half.”

We can only hope so… we can only hope so. Looking for sense elsewhere, we turned to the god of Azul, Zeus, to see what he had to say:

Zeus: “Man is not supposed to wield this kind of power! Need I remind thee of the fate that befell Prometheus? I will if I must!”

With little sense in the Azul Cup ranks, we turned to the most intelligent people on the planet and spoke with MSO’s head of statistical analysis, Matt, for his view:

Matt: “It’s not just counting to 20 once, it’s doing it five times… FIVE times! Even for a Mind Sport Olympiad such as me, this would take several minutes, but for a normal human, with a normal sized brain, it would take them hours, maybe days… to even the playing field in this way is simply cheating. I spit on this program sir, and I spit on the developer that made it.”

Strong words there from stat Matt… strong words indeed.

Well, as the world learns to wrestle with this newfound technology, let’s go and look at today’s action from the Azul Cup.

Tournament One:
The dust finally settled on the celestial battle between Zeus and Phosphate_, and when it cleared, Phosphate stood victorious, winning by 4 points in a game for the ages. This is big set back for what was a perfect record so far in this competition for Zeus. KevinWise9 is hanging on by the seat of his pants whilst Zeus and Phosphate_ face down Micalis, who is taking both to the wire and may cause an upset yet.

Tournament Two:
Speaking of upsets, crowd pleaser Bangerz was defeated by AbCd in a battle that went to the 6th round. But all was not lost, as Injured Pigeon raced to his sweetheart’s rescue and overcome all odds by delivering the only defeat to AbCd in the competition. Fans were lined up outside Injured Pigeon’s dressing room to learn how he’d overcome the German Alp.

Injured Pigeon: “With the help of the MSO we devised a cunning plan. First, I went on a two-week long bender in a bid to reduce my ELO and bemoan over Discord how I had fallen to sub Master level, this was used to lull Lord Sloth into a false sense of security. Then, I played him at his own mind games. I took two whole days to decide my first move of the game, deciding ultimately to put the 1st player tile on the floor line. Then, I would tell him I’m going to take my turn and then… I just didn’t… I just ghosted him for days! It sent him into a spin.
Oh, and I download that cool counting app.. I probably should have just done that.”

So, the Germans have lost their momentum, and the USA remain in the lead, but it’s not over yet.