Understanding tournament formats

[MatthewT123]

Hi

I’ve recently been invited to join the World Cup and Triangle tournaments. Before I join I have a couple of questions it would be really helpful if someone could answer please.

Do I play one game at once, with a new one starting as the first one ends? Or do all those for a round begin at the same time?

Some of the timers are fairly short - what happens when they run out? A, I correct to assume first to zero time loses? Will I receive a karma penalty for this?

Thanks

[Meeplelowda]

I’ve recently been invited to join the World Cup and Triangle tournaments. Before I join I have a couple of questions it would be really helpful if someone could answer please.

First, I'm happy you're considering dipping your toe into tournaments. These are all excellent questions and it is fantastic you are asking them BEFORE registering and getting surprised by how things work. Ideally there would be a tournaments FAQ that answers all these questions. But even the so called FAQ in the Tournaments sub-forum doesn't answer many of them. Luckily there is a very active community of tournament enthusiasts in that sub-forum happy to answer questions like this.

Do I play one game at once, with a new one starting as the first one ends? Or do all those for a round begin at the same time?

It depends on the tournament structure. If your entire tournament or stage of the tournament is round robin, then ALL games start at the same time. There are ways to stagger them, but they are wonky and most tournament hosts don't implement them. For a Swiss tournament you play one game at a time because the pairings for the next round depend on the results of the previous round. For a bracket-style (single-elimination) tournament, obviously you can't play all of them at once.

Some of the timers are fairly short - what happens when they run out? A, I correct to assume first to zero time loses? Will I receive a karma penalty for this?

This is another thing that catches people by surprise. In tournaments there is no increment like in regular real time and turn-based games, i.e., no time gets added back after each more. The time on your clock is all you have for the entire round. But just as in regular games, you do NOT automatically lose if you run out of time. Your opponent has to elect to expel you. Also, there is not an option the tournament host can set that disables expelling someone, so the game only ends when the tournament round ends. If that happens, whoever had the least time on their clock loses.

Also, if you are fairly experienced at a game you will have a sense of how long it should take. if your first instinct is that the timers seem short, follow your instincts!

This is how things work for two-player games. That's what the system was originally designed for. Things are weird and sometimes buggy when you have games with 3+ players.

[MatthewT123]

Thank you very helpful. Looking at my recent games my total thinking time is 8-11 days, so I’ve chosen a competition where that should fit. One had a 7 day timer so I’m probably too slow for that. I find my timer running down is mostly an issue of time zones and going to sleep earlier than other players but I can’t do much about those.