General info

• Place {} round your name so we know you're in! [The ref may later instruct you to use a different delimiter if playing with groups or teams]
• There is no need to register early for a tournament - but if fewer than six people turn up it may be cancelled, or just played as an original 'all vs all' without any extra rounds as players wish.
• Late-comers can feel free to join as long as the first round is still open [this will generally be until either some players have played everyone, or about half an hour after start, whichever is sooner]
  • but please try to be on time - it may get cancelled if nobody is there at the proper start!
• If you are lagging behind in your games [because of long rounds or whatever] then please try to keep chatting to low level
• By default, there are no prizes etc - if anyone has anything that would be suitable, feel free to suggest it!

Guidelines for 'standard' Play

To start with, all players should play everyone else play a standard 'first to three' game on Expert with no handicaps using only the standard levels After that, the tournament will become a knock-out tree - a maximum of half the players in the first round can proceed to this stage In the first round scores will be calculated using Hyko's excellent PHP pages, and ranked by number of wins. In the event of equal numbers of wins, the overall round differences [wins minus losses] for a players will be used to decide If both of these are identical between two players, then who actually won between them will be used The actual number of players advancing depends on the total number of players: A knockout tree needs a power of two to work [ i.e. 2,4,8,16 etc] otherwise you get left with an odd number at some stage So the largest power of two less than or equal to half the competing players will go through In the first knockout round odd and even ranked players from the previous rounds will separate and play each other each player will start off playing the person half way across the draw from themselves so if there were 8 people, 1 would play 5, 3 vs 7, 2 vs 6, and 4 vs 8. This would then continue with winners pairing off from the odd side and even side respectively. Hence an odd and even will never meet until the final [should be 1 and 2 if the 'seeds' keep their places!]. The two losers in the semi-final can also play each other for third and fourth place if they wish [and if it was a knockout group of 8, the losers from previous rounds could play to establish positions 5-8 if they so wished too!]

What-if's - Being prepared for all Eventualities

Three or more players still tie after 'who beats who'? If there is a circular loop of 3 [or more] people with identical wins and round differences and say A beat B beat C beat A, then the affected players must each play each other again and repeat the scoring process until there are fewer or equal ties than there are spaces left for the knockout Demo players want to play? I have no problem with demos - you should still play expert though, and can re-challenge until all rounds are done A round that is interrupted by the time limit should be replayed unless both players mutually agree that one was just about to win. You cannot connect to someone? I really don't know the answer to this one. Effectively the only way to do it is to count it as a loss to both sides [so no win, and no round difference] if in the first round If in the knockout, I think the ref must flip a coin - sorry, but... what else can be done? Please take all steps possible to make sure you're setup is good before you start if you have not enabled port 33333 UDP to forward to your machine on your router, do so if you have client-side RIP enabled, disable it [especially for WiFi] if you are still having trouble [and can], then set the router to forward all unknown ports onto your machine [not just 33333] Pop-Pop also uses 49155 and 49159 More than 16 players are playing?!? Well, we'll cross that when we get to it, but if more than about 16-20 people turn up for one of these things, we may well divide people into 4 groups and have 'all-vs-all' in each of those. The top two from each of the four groups will then go into the knockout. [split with one from each in each half of the knock tree] Each group can use a separate symbol delimiter as opposed to the standard {} [as descibed above].

Good Pop-pop Etiquette (not just for tournaments!)

Do not insult people online. This should go without saying. Do not deliberately disconnect without warning during a game. Even if you have mouse problems Even if you are getting thoroughly trashed. Yes, even if you have just had four double downs interspersed with twelve v-locks and a paddle shrink or two. Everyone has those games. Yes, everyone thinks they get them more often than everyone else too ^_~ So joke about it if you want, but do not whine about it, and do not disconnect. Be courteous to others - always say why you paused a game if you must pause it - especially if you switch to another app. Let them know what you are doing, and if it is going to take longer than a minute - let them know that too! There is also a bug whereby pausing it while your opponant is charging will make them lose their charge. Try not to. Never try to get attention of someone you are waiting for by entering and leaving the chat continuously. They can hear you fine if you type. Don't keep sending messages either - let them finish! Try not to ask personal questions in the chat of someone you have only just met. This is especially true if the first thing you type is "Who are you?" or even worse "A/S/L". If you are getting to know someone well, you can always ask nicely - and generally proffer the information yourself first "Hi, I'm <x>, what's your name?" If you were meeting someone at work (or in any circumstance in RL), you would not just say "A/S/L?" would you? Be aware though (and be respectful of the fact) that some players are not going to give RL details away anyway. Pop-pop is not Yahoo chat. Just relax and have fun - it's only a game! At the end of which, if someone says 'gg' to you, it is generally considered polite to respond, even if they have just floored you 3-0.

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