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Tournaments FAQ | |||||||||||
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This page has questions and answers about how Pocket-Monkey's tournaments work. Basics Q. How do I sign up for a tournament? Go to the Tournaments page (Games | Tournaments), and it's pretty self-explanatory from there. Basically, you tick the boxes next to the kinds of games you're interested in, choose the style (speed) of tourney you like, and choose the tourneys you want to see (probably New ones waiting for players), then click Show Me the Tourneys! to see a list of the matching tourneys. For any tourney you want to join, just tick the Sign Up box. That's it! When the tourney starts, we'll send you an on-site note, and the games will appear on your Current Games page. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Are there any special tournament rules? Not really, but we do find that we end up enforcing the usual expectation of good sporting behavior more often in tournaments than in regular games. And of course, in case of disputes, the decisions of the tournament director are final. (Who's the tournament director of a given tournament? At the moment, all tournaments are run by Pocket-Monkey staff, so it's just the administrators of the site.) [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. When do new tournaments open for signup? The first Sunday of each month. So for instance, the tourneys for "February 2011" opened for signup on Sunday, February 6th, 2011. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Will you always post a banner message when new tourneys are open for signup? No, not always. If you're keen for tournaments, you'll want to check the tournament signup page whether we do a banner message or not. New tourneys always open for signup the first Sunday of the month, whether or not a banner message has been posted. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Tourneys for a given month start the fourth Sunday of the month. So for instance, the tourneys for "February 2011" started on the 27th. (Tourneys start at 8:00 a.m. GMT.) Note that the fourth Sunday of a month is not necessarily the last Sunday of the month; sometimes a month can have five Sundays. (See also the next question.) [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What if the tourney doesn't have enough players to start? If a tourney doesn't have enough players to start on the fourth Sunday, it will start sometime after that, when it gets enough players. There's no fixed schedule, the tourney will start when it can. Tourneys always start at 8:00 a.m. GMT. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What if a tourney takes a really long time to get enough players? If a tourney doesn't have enough players to start within a month of when it's supposed to, we cancel the tourney and replace it with a new one, automatically moving the players signed up for the cancelled tourney to the new one (we send them a note). This may seem a bit pointless, but it prevents unpopular tourneys from having wildly inaccurate names (a "February" tourney that didn't actually start until June, etc.), and the note to the players saying that the tourney's been cancelled and replaced provides a useful reminder that they're signed up for the tourney, which it's otherwise fairly easy to forget about. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] General Information Q. What is "sporting behavior"? In games on Pocket-Monkey in general, and certainly in tournaments, players are expected to demonstrate good sporting behavior and civility to their opponents. We're all here to have fun. These are the same expectations that would be found in tournaments at your local club. It really shouldn't need to be said, but for example, it's not okay to swear at your opponents or denigrate them. It's not okay to deliberately draw out a game in hopes your opponent will time out. It's not okay to refuse to accept a draw when a game clearly is a draw; similarly, it's not okay to keep offering a draw repeatedly rather than making your move if your opponent has already turned it down. In general, anything a reasonable person wouldn't do in a face-to-face tournament, you should refrain from doing in a Pocket-Monkey tournament. In general, examples of poor sporting behavior will get you a note from the Pocket-Monkey staff calling you on it. You must take these warnings seriously and respond to them when requested. Particularly bad (or repeatedly bad) behavior may cause you to lose the game in which the behavior occurs. Especially bad or consistently bad behavior can get you removed from a tournament, removed from all of your active tournaments, or even barred from playing tournaments on Pocket-Monkey at all. It's important not to ignore notes from the staff. Players who don't demonstrate poor behavior needn't worry about any of that, and fortunately, it's very uncommon for situations to come up. But when they do, they do get dealt with. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Will you notify me when the tourney starts? If you have notifications enabled on your account, yes. If you don't, no, the games will just appear on your Current Games page. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Can anyone join any tourney? Yes, right now there are no limits on who can join what tournaments. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Is there a limit on how many tourneys I can play in? Not as far as we're concerned, no; you might want to be sure you only play in as many tourneys as you can keep up with, of course! [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Can I use game aids or software to help with my tourney games? The short version is: Please don't. The long version is: The use of aids is of course a tricky subject. Where's the line? Is it appropriate to use software which analyzes your specific situation in a specific game and suggests a course of action? No; that's pretty clearly inappropriate. But what about refreshing your understanding of the general strategic situation you're in by referring to your favorite book on the game? That's a bit more hazy, isn't it? But we here at Pocket-Monkey Central would say that if you're looking up that situation specifically because of the tourney game, then it's probably inappropriate and we'd suggest you don't do that. But does that mean you can't re-read your favorite text on the game generally? Of course not. Does it mean you can't practice against a computer opponent to hone your game play? Again, of course not. The line we suggest you draw is this one: Imagine yourself sitting across the game board from your opponent with the tournament director watching, and don't do anything you think would be inappropriate in that situation. Of course, this is not something we could readily police even if we wanted to, so we rely on everyone's sense of honesty and fair play. And we remind everyone: It's just for fun! [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What formats of tournaments do you offer? Right now, we offer Sections style tournaments (see below). Over time, we'll be adding further formats, such as Single Elimination and Double Elimination, and possibly Round Robin although only for very small tournaments as otherwise they go on for a very long time or you have lots and lots of games going simultaneously. (They're good for club play, though.) Separately from tournaments, we're also planning to do Game Ladders (kind of a never-ending tourney where you're constantly challenging the people above you on the ladder) at some point. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Can I suggest other formats? Please do! If there's a particularly good format not listed above, drop us a note via the Contact Us page. If the format has a well-known name, please be sure to use that. There's no need to provide too much detail in your first note, just in case we're already familiar with it (don't want to waste your time). If we have questions, we'll ask... [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Not yet, but we plan to add them; see above [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Do I have to re-tick all the boxes on the tournament page to search for tourneys each month? Nope! If you have a certain set of criteria you're going to use over and over again, fill them in and click Show Me The Tourneys! and then you can bookmark the resulting page (add it to your favorites). The criteria will get used whenever you use the bookmark. So if you like to sign up for Standard (but not UltraFast) Backgammon, Halma, and RadarWar tourneys, go to the Tournaments page, tick the appropriate boxes and click Show Me The Tourneys! then bookmark that page. Whenever you use that bookmark, we'll show you the matching tourneys. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Can I run my own tournament? Right now, tournaments are run by Pocket-Monkey staff. We're considering making it possible for premier members we know well to become "Tournament Administrators" and to run their own tournaments, but right now it's just us. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Can I suggest a specific tournament? Not at the moment. We run dozens of tourneys every month, so we're not doing requests for individual ones at present. We may start doing that at some stage, though. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What happens if the same players keep advancing? We declare a tournament a draw if three rounds are completed without any players being eliminated. Details below. It's possible that all of the players in a round might advance to the next round. This can happen, for instance, when playing games that can be drawn (Chess, Checkers, Mill, etc.) if all of the games are draws, or in "play each side" style tourneys if (for instance) there are two players left and they split, each winning one game. When that happens, the next round starts as usual, and if it happens a second time, the next round starts as usual again. But if it happens three times, if there are three rounds where no players at all are eliminated from the tourney, the tourney is a draw and the site will automatically declare all of the remaining players joint winners. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Will I get games with players on my Ignore List in a tournament? It's possible, yes. We don't prevent the site creating tournament games between players where one player is ignoring the other using the Ignore List. Unfortunately, if we did that, unscrupulous people would be able to put the best players in the tournament on their Ignore List to avoid being matched up against them. So if you play in tournaments, you may end up with games with a person you're ignoring. In-game chat is disabled if you're ignoring the other player (or vice-versa), though, so you won't see any comments from players you're ignoring, even though you have a game together. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] A "side game" is a game that is still in progress but can't change the outcome of the tournament section it's in (and so can't change the outcome of the tournament) -- e.g., from the tournament's point of view, the game is now off to the side. The site lets the tournament move on to the next round (or finish) even when there are side games still being played, to prevent the side games from holding up the tournament. Example 1: Let's say Ahmed has already finished all his games and has 10 points, the current high score in his section. Now, suppose Andy and Maria are still playing their game in that same section and it's the only game left; Andy has 4 points and Maria has 6. Their game is now a "side game" because it can't change the result in that section: If Andy wins, he ends up with 6 points -- not enough to win or tie Ahmed. If Maria wins, she ends up with 8 points -- still not enough. Either way, Ahmed has won the section. Example 2: Side games can involve the person winning the section, too: Let's say Janet has 10 points and one game still in progress against Nitin, who has 6 points. Let's say everyone else is done, but no one has as many points as Janet does. Janet and Nitin's game is a side game, because Janet wins the section regardless of whether she wins or loses the game with Nitin. If she wins the side game, she'll win the section with 12 points, but even if she loses she'll still win the section with 10 points. Either way, the outcome of the section (and the tournament) is the same. Side games still count toward the player stats, so if the site notifies you that a game has become a side game, don't resign or start ignoring it. All it means is that from the tournament point of view, the game no longer has an effect. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What's the plural of 'tourney'? Whatever you like! We're just here to play and have fun. :-) Some people say 'tourneys', others say 'tournies'. FWIW, to the surprise of those of us running Pocket-Monkey, 'tourneys' is actually in the dictionary, so that's (now) what we use. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Time Limits Q. How do you avoid the problem of tournaments lasting forever? All play-by-mail style game sites have the same problem: If you let people take (say) three days to make a move, then tournaments can take literally years to finish. For instance, on average a straight game of Backgammon (single-game, no doubling cube) is approximately 46 moves long (23 per player). If both players use their full time, the game will take 46 X 3 days = 138 days to complete -- four and a half months! And that's just one round of the tourney. Suppose a tourney has seven rounds: The tourney will take almost 32 months to finish, which is two and two-thirds years. But wait, it gets worse: That's just for single-game Backgammon, which doesn't have that many turns/game. There are games which take a lot more than 46 turns to complete. Checkers takes 70 turns, on average; RadarWar, 66; Strategy, 94. Then you get into match-style games: Even just a 5-point Backgammon match runs more than 330 turns in length on average. With 330 turns, a 3-day tournament with seven rounds would take over 18 years (we kid you not) if everyone took the full three days to move. And although most people move much more quickly than that, it only takes two slow-movers paired up in a round to hold up the tourney -- sometimes for so long that if you completed your game quickly, you might even forget you're in a tourney! Sadly, there are some players whose strategy for tourneys is to just make their moves at the extreme edge of the time limit in hopes that their opponents will get caught out going on vacation or something like that. So how do you give people time to make their moves without making tournaments take forever? Our approach is to keep the main time limit on tournaments fairly short (say, one day), give players a limited amount of "grace time" that they can use if they take more time than the main limit allows, and to put a "hard" time limit in place. See Do tournaments have time limits? and the the questions following it for details on how this works, but basically it lets us say: "If you join Tourney X, you are expected to make a move every day, but on rare occasions you can take a little longer -- but never more than seven days." Different tourneys will have different limits, some will be fairly leisurely (and will take a long time to finish), others will be fairly quick. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Do tournaments have time limits? Yes. Each tournament has a main time limit, grace time, and a hard time limit. The main time limit is how long you have after it becomes your turn to make your move in the normal course of events; if you move a little late, you may still be okay provided you have enough grace time left to cover the delay. The hard time limit is how long you have after it becomes your turn to make your move no matter what (grace time doesn't come into it). The hard limit is always after the main limit. You shouldn't rely on grace time, so you should treat the main time limit as, well, the limit of how long you'll take to make your moves. If you run out of grace time and you move late, you'll time out and lose the game. Even if you have lots of grace time, if you move so late that you run into the hard limit, you'll time out and lose the game. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Basically, if you go past the main time limit on your tourney game, you may be okay if you have enough grace time left on that game (and if you don't go past the hard time limit). See above for a longer explanation of time limits and grace time, or below for more on how grace time works. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Every hour past the main time limit that you move in a game costs you an hour of your grace time for that game. Every hour you move ahead of the main limit earns you half an hour of grace time for that game. I.e., moving early gives you more grace time, but only half as much as it costs you to move late. Let's say you're playing in a tourney where the main time limit is 1 day, you get an initial 100 hours of grace time, you can build up to 150 hours of grace time, and the hard limit is 3 days. The first time it's your turn, you take 10 hours to make your move. Since you moved 14 hours before the main time limit, you earn seven hours (half of 14) of grace time, giving you a new total of 107 hours. The next time it's your turn to move, you take 40 hours because you were away overnight: That costs you 16 hours of grace time because you moved 16 hours late (past the 1 day -- 24-hour -- main limit). So now you have 91 hours of grace time left. The next time it's your turn to move, you're out of town and so you don't move for four days (96 hours). How much grace time does that cost you? Answer: None, it's a trick question. Because the tournament has a 3-day hard limit, you lose the game on the third day (even though if the tourney had had a longer hard limit, you would have had enough grace time to cover it). [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What happens if I run out of grace time? As long as you make your moves within the main time limit, you're fine (and if you move ahead of the main limit, you'll start building up grace time again). But if you move late and run out of grace time to cover it, your game will time out and you'll lose it. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Is my grace time for the tournament, or for each game? Grace time is tracked per-game. That is, it's the tournament which defines what the boundaries are (how much grace time you start with, and how much you can build up), but those limits apply within each game. So if you're in a Sections tourney and you end up with five games from that tourney, you'll start with the same amount of grace time in each game, and from then on the grace time for each game is tracked separately. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Yes, by moving before the main time limit. Most tourneys will have a limit to how much grace time you can save up (usually about 50% more than you start with -- e.g., starting with 100 hours, capped at 150 hours). Also, remember that no matter how much grace time you have saved up, you must move before the hard time limit for the tourney. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Some tournaments allow vacations, so if you set up the vacation on your Vacations page (being sure to allow yourself time when you get back to play your games!), you should be fine. Other tournaments DO NOT allow vacations. In a tournament that does not allow vacations, the fact that you are on vacation is completely ignored and if you go beyond the time limits, you will time out in those tournament games. You can tell whether a tournament allows vacations by looking at the tournament's page: It will say "Allows Vacations:" followed by "Yes" or "No". At the moment, we alternate months: The tournaments one month will allow vacations, the tournaments the next month won't, and then the ones the month after that will, etc. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. What if I can't play for some other reason? If for some reason you're not going to be able to play your games, unfortunately even if it's not a vacation, it's the same answer as for vacations: We cannot extend the time limit for tournament games, even with your opponents' agreement. Doing so would require that we make "judgment calls" about the veracity and severity of the reasons in individual cases, which we simply are not in a position to do. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. My tourney game timed out because of (fill in the blank), will you restore it? Unfortunately, no, we can't restore tournament games that time out, no matter how good a reason for the timeout there is. We simply can't go down that path, it would lead to us making "judgment calls" about the veracity and severity of the reasons in individual cases, which we are simply not in a position to do. Remember that the tourneys are just for fun! If you time out because of a personal crisis or computer failure or your ISP's connection to our servers was flaky or our server locked you out of the site because you changed your password and didn't confirm the change, etc., etc., remember it's just a game, it's just for fun -- laugh if off, join a new tourney, and have fun with your games. That's what it's all about. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Sections Format Q. How does the "Sections" tournament format work? In each round, the tournament is divided into sections with roughly equal numbers of players. When the round starts, the players in the tournament are assigned randomly to sections. Each player in the section plays each other player in the section; the section is a bit like a mini round-robin tournament of its own. You get two points for a win, one point for a draw (in games where draws are possible), and zero points for a loss. The winner of the section is the player with the highest score at the end. That person progresses to the next round in the tournament. If there's a tie, all of the tying players progress. The tournament is over when there is only one player left -- the winner! [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Wouldn't it be better to group people by rating, instead of randomly? There are lots of ways we could group players. We could try to keep the best players spread out so that they only meet each other at the later stages of the tourney, or we could try to put the best players together so they play each other early on. We may introduce some variation at some point, but for the moment, we're sticking with random grouping. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top] Q. Can a player with fewer points advance when one with more points doesn't? If the players are in different sections, yes. In the sections format, in each round, players are only competing with other players in their section. Whether a player advances to the next round depends entirely on how they do in their section, and isn't affected at all by the results of other sections. This means that it's possible, though unusual, that a player in one section might advance even though their score within their section is lower than that of a player in a different section that doesn't advance. For instance, suppose Mary is playing in Section 1 and ends up with 16 points, which is the most in her section. She'll advance to the next round. Now, suppose in Section 2, Jane has 18 points but Paul has 20. Jane won't advance to the next round, because Paul won in Section 2. The fact that Jane has more points than Mary is irrelevant, because they're in different sections. [Back to Question List] [Back to Top]
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