entolla.com - Tournaments.

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Contents

1. Overview
2. Participation
3. Freestyle Game Play
4. Ranking and Advancement
   • Round 1
   • Tie breakers
   • Round 2
   • Round 3
   • Semi-finals and Finals
5. Player withdrawals
6. Random chance methods

Rules for Freestyle Tournament:

- Overview of tournament

The maximum number of participants is 28, but this is not set in stone.
In the past, as many as 32 have played.

The tournament is played in Rounds. In each round, play is by Group,
with each player playing against everyone else in the group.

• Round 1: 28 players in 4 groups of 7 players; the top 4 advance from each.
• Round 2: 16 players in 4 groups of 4 players; the top 2 advance from each.
• Round 3: 8 players in 2 groups of 4 players; the top 2 advance to the Semi-Finals from each.
• Semi-finals: Each of the winners of the Round 3 groups plays the opposite Number 2 in a single game.
• Winners of the Semi-finals play for the Championship, the losers play for 3rd/4th place.

Participation

After voluntarily joining the tournament, players are required to adhere to the following:

• Play all games against scheduled opponents.
  Refusal to play any opponent will result in a 218-0 defeat recorded, and possible expulsion from the tournament. Games can only be skipped by agreement of both players, and if they will not affect the standings and advancement to later rounds by any of the players.
• Meeting deadlines:
  Each round will have a reasonable deadline for completion of all games. Tournament organizers will have discretion to extend those dates, or to award wins to non-responsible players.

Freestyle Game Play

- One player chooses b/r first pieces, the other chooses colors

In a Freestyle (or FS, for short) game, the following rule applies at the start of the game:

One player, designated A, names the first blue piece and first red piece to be played.

The other player then has the option of which colors to play: blue/red
(starting with those pieces) or yellow/green without any other restriction.

Play then proceeds according to normal game rules.

The designated pieces for blue and red can be placed in any orientation
of the blue/red player's choosing.

Matches are one game - no rematch. (In the last two rounds, tie games are replayed.)

Choosing Who is A and Who is B

A chooses the initial blue/red pieces. B then chooses which colors to play.

In Round 1:
Players in each group group are seeded by their Ranking Points, 1 - N,
with 1 being the highest seed.

If the sum of the two seeds is even the higher seeded player is A,
and if the sum is odd, the lower seeded player is A.

For a seven player group it works out this way:

Seed	A vs	B vs
1	3,5,7	2,4,6
2	1,4,6	3,5,7
3	2,5,7	1,4,6
4	1,3,6	2,5,7
5	2,4,7	1,3,6
6	1,3,5	2,4,7
7	2,4,6	1,3,5

After the first round:
players are seeded in groups as described in the next section;
the higher seeded player has the choice of being A or B (choosing pieces or colors respectively).

Ranking and Advancement

- how the groups are set up and seeded

Round 1 - 4 Groups of 7 Players: (6 games)

Players are seeded by their Pentolla Rating Points at a specified time.

They are listed in descending order of points, then assigned to groups as shown in the table below.

Blue	1, 8, 9, 16, 17, 24, 25
Yellow	2, 7, 10, 15, 18, 23, 26
Red	3, 6, 11, 14, 19, 22, 27
Green	4, 5, 12, 13, 20, 21, 28

After Round 1, Pentolla ranking points are not used to rank or seed players.

The top 4 of each Round 1 group of 7 will advance to Round 2.

Later Rounds

After all games in a Group are played, the players are ranked 1 - N (where N is the number of players in the group).

The rankings are determined as follows, with the steps applied until each player has a unique ranking:

For the current round:


1. Number of wins. (Tie games count as half-wins/half-losses.)
2. Head-to-head matchups. (Win-loss records among just the tied players.)
3. Game points difference within the whole group.
4. Game points difference for games among tied players only.

Then each of the following steps is applied to the previous round,
then to the round before that, and so on.


5. Head-to-head matchups from prior rounds.
6. Win-loss records from prior rounds.⁽¹⁾
7. Point differences from prior rounds.⁽¹⁾


8. Finally, if need be, there is a tie-breaker game.

In case of three or more tied players, the process is iterative:

• Apply the above rules, one at a time, to all the tied players simultaneously.
• If all are different, stop. The process is complete.
• If one is clearly ahead, he gets the top to-be-decided ranking.
  If more players remain tied for available places, start over with rules for just them.
• The same applies if one player is clearly below the others, who remain tied.
  He takes the bottom available place, and the process starts over for the remaining tied players.
• Four or more tied players may fall into smaller tied groups (2-2, 2-3, etc) and then the process is applied
  to those smaller groups separately.

Round 2 - 4 Groups of 4 Players: (3 games)

The ranks from Round 1 are used to determine the makeup and seeding of the Round 2 groups.
Each Round 2 group has a #1, #2, #3, #4 from different Round 1 Groups, seeded in that order.

Six different combinations of four groups are specified and a random process determines which of those will be used.

The possible groupings are:

The top two players from each Round 2 group of 4 will advance to Round 3.

Round 3 - 2 Groups of 4 Players: (3 games)

Round 3 groups are made up of two #1's and two #2's, all from different Round 2 Groups.

Three possible combinations of two groups are specified, and a random process determines which of those will be used.

Using T, E, B, S to designate the Round 2 groups, the Round 3 groups are determined

by the placement of two of the number ones, with the rest falling into place:

No matches are repeated from Round 2 to Round 3, but are possible from Round 1 to Round 3.

Within a group, the seeding of the #1's vis-a-vis each other (and similarly for the #2's) is:

1. Round 2 win-loss records
2. Round 2 points differences
3. Head-to-head from Round 1 (if available)
4. Round 1 win-loss-record ⁽¹⁾
5. Round 1 overall points differences ⁽¹⁾
6. Random chance

The top two players from each Round 3 group advance to the semi-final round.

Semi-finals - 2 Pairings of 2 Players: (Single games)

Each semi-final has a #1 from one group and the #2 from the other group. The #1's have the higher seed in the semi-finals.

If a semi-final or final game is a tie game, it is replayed, with the players switching A and B roles.

Finals - 2 Players, 1 Game: (Single game)

The winners of the two semi-finals play.

The #1 seed is given to the player who:

1. Won by more in the Semi-finals
2. Had the higher ranking in Round 3, then Round 2, then Round 1.
3. Won the most recent head-to-head game (repeated as necessary and available)
4. Had the better win-loss record in Round 3
5. Had the greater points margin in Round 3
6. Had the better Win-Loss record in Round 2, better points difference in Round 2, and then Round 1⁽¹⁾.

The losing players in the Semi-Finals play off for 3rd/4th place, seeded similarly.

Player withdrawals from the tournament

If a player withdraws from the tournament after it has begun, what happens depends when it occurs.

If a round is in-progress, his games (even if he played all of them) do not count and the remaining players continue without him.

If it is between rounds, then he is removed from the next round, and everyone who finished below him in the previous round moves up one place.

Random processes for Round 2 and Round 3 groups

After Round 1 or Round 2 completes - sometimes immediately, sometimes by pre-announcement,
one of the tournament organizers uses the Pentolla /random [range] function which produces a random number in the desired range (1-n), or 0-9 if no range is specified.

For Round 2, /random 6 is used to choose one of the six possible groupings.

For Round 3, /random (3, or 6, or 9) is used, and the choice is made as follows:

For seeding within Round 3, if it comes down to random chance,
the /random function is used, with one of the players calling
odd or even. If the call matches the result, that player is seeded higher.

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Notes:
(1): In case groups are not of equal sizes, normalized win-loss percentages, or per-game points differences are used in lieu of totals.

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Updated: Jan 9, 2022.