Tournament Logistics

[charliec247]

I want to know if I understand this correctly. I joined some turn-based tournaments, all 2-player, and if the tournament style is:

Single elimination: I only play one game at a time (obviously...)
Swiss: I only play one game at a time (because pairings are dependent on record

But...
Round robin: all my games begin simultaneously?

And...
Group stage, all my games begin simultaneously?

Sorry for the noob question but I just joined some round robin and group stages for the first time and logged in to a ton of game start notifications, and was feeling a bit overwhelmed

[dschingis27]

Your assumptions about single elimination, Swiss, and round-robin are correct!

For groups stage tournaments, obviously it depends on how the groups are set up. Your groups can be round-robin, then all games start at the same time, but they can be Swiss style, too, then games start one by one. Heck, you could even have a tournament with KO style in the first stage, and round-robin or Swiss style in the second stage, I have not seen it yet, but it is possible.

Sorry for the noob question but I just joined some round robin and group stages for the first time and logged in to a ton of game start notifications, and was feeling a bit overwhelmed

You are not alone! This happens to most people who register to round-robin tournaments for the first time. Unfortunately the tournament logistics are not well documented and communicated.

PRO Tip: If you are overwhelmed, you can "withdraw" from a tournament (there is a button on top of each tournament page). It's not a nice thing to do and I think you still get some Karma penalties, you shouldn't use it lightly. But it is much better than just not playing the games. Essentially you are communicating to opponents and participants that you withdraw, and lose all your games automatically and/or get removed from the tournament when the current tournament round ends. (If you withdraw before a tournament starts, it's no problem at all, just do it if you notice you can't make it.)

[mrdoctor]

Group stage just means there's 2 stages to the tournament, and each group stage could be swiss/elimination/round-robin. Only the top-X players from the first stage go through to the second.

[charliec247]

Thanks for the help.

Follow-up question:

"Time allotted to each player" means the amount of time you have each turn, but what's "Game maximum duration"? Is the game forced to end after the game has lasted for what the maximum duration is? Or are we always guaranteed to play the game to its natural conclusion?

[Andrew Davidson]

what's "Game maximum duration"? Is the game forced to end after the game has lasted for what the maximum duration is? Or are we always guaranteed to play the game to its natural conclusion?

The game ends abruptly when it reaches the max duration and, usually, the winner is the player with the most time left on their clock.

If you want a game to always go to the end then you can't guarantee that in a tournament, I think. But friendly games have no time limit and I've played a war game, Unconditional Surrender, which lasted about a year. But if no-one makes a move for 40 days, the site will abruptly stop the game. That's a reasonable way of cleaning up zombie games.

[Shivaware]

Thanks for the help.

Follow-up question:

"Time allotted to each player" means the amount of time you have each turn, but what's "Game maximum duration"? Is the game forced to end after the game has lasted for what the maximum duration is? Or are we always guaranteed to play the game to its natural conclusion?

Just in case you don't know, in tournaments, you never get more time added to your clock each turn. Your clock starts with your share and steadily counts down while it is your turn. This fact often surprises many people in their first tournament!