In prep for the NYC regionals on June 12th at the Compleat Strategist, 11 AM (plug, plug) I have some questions about the tournament rules:

1) Swiss format: Does anyone have a concise description of Swiss format I can use as a guide?

2) Rounds; It says 50 minute rounds, best 2 out of 3. Does that mean we want to play best-of-three hands in 50 minutes (potentially 3 hands)? That sounds ambitious based on the pace of play I usually see. What happens if 50 minutes expires and players have only completed 1 or 2 hands, or are in the midst of a third rubber hand?

3) Number of rounds: about how many rounds would you think we should expect to play to get winners from a field of 8 - 10?

4) Places: I'm assuming we award pins and thus winner kudos to 1st thru 4th places. True?

5) Any other pointers?

Thanks.

Swiss Pairings: This is a method to get tournaments done as quickly as possible. First round is random pairings. Second round, winners play winners and losers play losers. Third round, match up people with 2 wins against each other, people with 1 win against each other, and people with zero wins against each other. Fourth round, match up 3 win people, etc.

So if you have eight people, it takes three rounds to make sure there is exactly one player with 3 wins - obviously the winner of the tournament.

If you have between 9 and 16 people it takes 4 rounds, etc.

Details can be found online, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament

As for the 50 minutes, best of three... well that's going to be confusing. Best of three is easy - first player to win 2 games wins the match. So it could take 2 or 3 games. The problem is the 50 minutes.

In most tournaments there are clearly defined guidelines of how to handle a match that doesn't complete within the time limit. Different games use different criteria.

The bigger problem is what to do if time is called and a game is in progress. Is that game just ignored? Is there some mechanism for determining a winner of a partial game? (Most stories as first critera, followed by most characters or token or something?)

This type of information is usually included in the Tournament Rules provided by the game company.

Number of rounds - many people just take the logarithm base 2 of the number of players and use that. Some add an additional round. So if you have 8 players, use either 3 or 4 rounds. If you have between 9 and 16 players use either 4 or 5 rounds. If you have between 17 and 32 players use either 5 or 6 rounds.

Places: No suggestions here. First you need a system to rank people. Suppose you have 8 players - you will end up with one player with a 3-0 record and 3 players with 2-1 records. How do you determine who is second place? What is the tie breaker beyond the win/loss record?

This kind of information is usually provided by the game company.

Pointers: You need to have people submit deck lists in advance of the game to make sure everything is legal. Having a form or recommended format would be nice. You need to have a judge who is expert in the rules and not participating in the game to address any disputes about rules. This judge should definitely bring copies of the Rulebook, the FAQ 1.1 and the Tournament Rules for supporting information.

Use a computer program to track your pairings so things don't get mixed up. Even if it is a little Excel program you write just to keep track.

Have fun! The players are there to have fun (and to win, of course!), make sure you are having fun too!

I'm hoping to split the rules expert role with another participant and get to play too. We did this for the AGOT tourney, one or the other of us was able to address without any conflict of interest.

I thought I saw someone had a Swiss system spread sheet or something on line, I'll see if I can track that down.

I'm encouraging folks to submit deck lists in advance, but FFG provides hard copy which, worse to worse, we'll fill out there.

I can't imagine seeing 3 hands of CoC in 50 minutes, unless it is on a chess clock or something. I'll ask FFG for guidance, but worst to worst we will agree a reasonable approach at the site and go that way. In the AGOT tourney, we said that at a certain point we called time, and the round in progress was the last one. Maybe we say at 50 minutes whatever game is in progress is the last one and if there is a tie we call tie and score it that way. Let's see what FFG says.