So, you want to know what's been going on behind the scenes?

As I'm writing this I'm waiting for my opponent in a tournament that tests a new format called Swiss. You could say that it's a variation of a knockout but where no one is actually knocked out. The tournament organizer specifies a number of rounds to be played and each round is generated one by one based on the score each player has. The ideal is that each round, you play against someone with the same number of points (2 for a win and 1 for a tie). However, you avoid playing against the same opponent if possible. This format is very common in tabletop tournaments as it lets everyone play an equal number of matches and also allows someone to win the tournament despite a tie or a loss.

This is added fairly close to the Open Round Robin format which is an unscheduled "everyone against everyone else" type of tournament. Nothing much to say, other than it seems to be a quickly running type of tournament.

What else? Hmm.. Oh, I finally got around to allow people to delete images from their personal gallery. It's just one of those things that has been on my to-do list for ages. :)

That about covers the recent changes to the site, so let's move on to what I have on my to-do list and what's on the planning/consideration stage.

I intend to add more seeding algorithms to the tournaments: TR, Str, Coach ranking and team ranking at first and maybe others as I think of them. Later on I would like it if it was possible to seed based on score from other tournaments and/or the group.

I also want to add a "max games" cutoff for the open round robin, so that the tournament organizer can have the tournament end after everyone has played a set number of games. This will streamline the tournament even more and allow them to be completed even faster.

The most recent "big thing" added is what is called Factions. It's actually so new I edited this article to update this section. As I'm writing this, I have it all in a testable state and will announce it shortly.

The basic concept is blatantly stolen from national soccer leagues. All teams are divided into factions(groups) of 20 teams. Every month, each team is allowed to play 10 games against the other teams in the faction and only once against the same opponent per month. At the end of the month, the top three teams in each faction (except for the topmost one), get promoted to a higher faction and the lowest three get relegated to a lower one. To make people who don't play move out of the way quicker, any team that has less than three games played in a month automatically gets relegated (as one of the three). This can, if necessary, relegate more than three teams after a round if necessary. Of course, retired teams get removed entirely when this "reordering" takes place.

I am hoping this will create a very competitive environment and there will surely be a lot of new strategies to consider.

And that's it for this issue! Catch you all next time.

Note: As you all probably know by now, the Swiss tournament format is publically available and the factions are chugging along now. Obviously, there have been some changes to the number of games played per round in order to build up the teams and let things settle. The current plans say that we will switch to a biweekly schedule with a maximum of 8 games and 4 required to not be automatically relegated. The switch is likely to happen at some point in November.