apterous.org

Martin Long Everyone sign up! Registration is now open!

Callum Todd Thanks for doing this Martin, should be a lot of fun! :)

Martin Long It's a pleasure Callum! Reasonable amount of sign-ups already. We will definitely have enough people registered in order to do a league phase first as planned. :-)

Martin Long 16 entrants already. The same number that we had last time! Hopefully, more people will join. Keep the applications coming! :-)

Martin Long 20 entrants! :-) One week to go!

Martin Long Everyone okay with a random draw for the group stages?

Matthew Tassier If it is similar structure to last time (4 groups, 2 to qualify from each) then I like a random draw.

Martin Long As it stands, we will have 4 groups of 5 with 2 going through from each group. This will have to be adjusted if we have more entrants though. 21, 24 or 25 entrants would be absolutely fine as well, although the best way to do the tournament with 25 entrants will be to do two lots of group stages then semi-final and final.

Martin Long In fact, 23 is great too as I'll just add Prune to one of the groups. Going to do some testing now to see how good Nude is at Spoilage Numbers too. :-)

Matthew Tassier Do the groups need to be exactly the same size? 3 groups of 6 and 1 group of 5 seems fine to me if it's randomly drawn, some people just lucky to be in a smaller group.

Martin Long Its not ideal. I prefer all the groups to be the same size. It appears that Nude is useless at Spoilage Numbers so placing her in the tournament could be an option.

Martin Long Just beat me in a round so maybe not lol :D

Matthew Tassier Think this is the only time I've played her http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=447762 She managed a raw 70

Jack Worsley Nude's not terrible at Spoilage NA. http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=1334195

I'm also OK with a random draw, unless I end up with you, Bob and Matthew. :P

Martin Long Cheers guys, I just had a game with Nude that went on similar lines. :-)

Martin Long Not long to go until the start now. The draw will be made at midnight on the 14th October so the fixtures will be in the system for 15th October. As it stands, you will all have four games to play in the group stages but this may change depending on the entrants we get.

The draw itself will be random as planned. Each of you will be numbered in the order in which you signed up (for example, James Laverty is number 2 and Peter Fenton is number 5) and I will use a random number generator to decide who goes in each group. First number from the generator goes in Group A, next one goes in Group B etc. so it will work very similar to the Champions League draw on Football Manager 2014. The draw will be live on Apterous and will be 'broadcast' in a similar way to Ben Wilson's tournaments!

After the group stage, the draw will be done in the same way as Euro 2012 just like the last time (unless we get more entrants then plans will change slightly).

Martin Long Also if anyone has any questions before the tournament actually starts then please feel free to ask them in here or by aptomail. Thanks very much for your time!

Martin Long Thanks for joining us Jason! :-)

For 21 entrants, the draw will work in the same way but we'll have 7 groups of 3 (with each player playing 4 games in the group stages, 2 against each opponent) and one person from each group advancing to the next round, which will be a group stage comprising of the 7 group winners. :-)

Adam Gillard Can you use Mr Dog or The Duellist in tournaments?

Martin Long I very much doubt it but don't know for sure!

Jack Worsley I tried typing their names in the fixtures boxes for my tourney and The Duellist's name came up but Dog's didn't. Sherpa Shilty also came up. I didn't enter the fixture so not absolutely sure it would work but I suppose you could try entering their names as a test and see if they will play.

Callum Todd Mr Dog doesn't appear in user search at the top so that's a no. The Duellist does but is specified as a "duel bot" so I doubt it would work. Sherpa specified as "ascensioner" so, again, doubtful.

I wouldn't recommend testing it ad hoc as I'm not sure what ramifications it could have on the server. I'm sure when the bots playing each other thing was introduced Charlie said to limit use of that feature to necessary situations only. Probably wouldn't do any harm, but better safe than sorry and all that.

Perhaps the Ask a Thing ticket might be a suitable place to find out?

Martin Long If necessary, I can just use Prune in the group stages. Even if I need a bot in more than one group, Prune can be in more than one group. If there are 22, 23, 26 or 29 entrants, then Prune will be used. With 22 entrants, he/she will be used twice but is only needed once in the other scenarios.

Jon Stitcher Martin, should we have some kind of gentlemen's code that no one should pick 6 large if they're up by say 7 points with 1 round to go? Not really in the spirit of the contest.

Callum Todd ^ strongly disagree. People should be able to pick what they want when they want.

Adam Gillard My nose, my rules

Callum Todd haha :)

Martin Long There will be no official ruling on the 6 large situation as described by Jon above. Its not for me to decide how people play the game. :-)

Martin Long This is the last day for you all to enter this tournament. Please enter and experience the greatest game format on Apterous!

The draw for the group stages will be made at midnight tonight. :-)

Martin Long The draw is as follows:

Group A: David Barnard, Jason Turner, Thomas Carey, Jyothisree Sandeepani, Adam Gillard and Jon Stitcher

Group B: Ian Volante, Martin Long, Matthew Tassier, Chris Marshall, Steve Balog and Peter Fenton

Group C: Callum Todd, Apterous Prune, James Laverty, Jack Worsley, Jamie M and Jamie French

Group D: Apterous Prune, Sam Cappleman-Lynes, Joe Denniss, George Pryn, Dave Mattingly and Bob De Caux.

Good luck to all participants!

Steve Balog Haha, I'm third best in a group of 6 with Matthew AND Martin first round?

This makes any World Cup "Group of Death" look feasible.

Matthew Tassier Tricky Steve, but overall a relatively even draw. What are the rules on drawn games and on splitting ties in the group stage Martin?

Martin Long I was quite pleased with how the draw worked out, could have easily had much more unbalanced groups.

Matthew: For the group stages, only the first 20 rounds are counted as scoring rounds. If there is a tie after 20 rounds, then it will be counted as a draw.

Martin Long And to clarify, two people qualify from each group for the quarter finals. The same system as Euro 2012 will be used to decide the draw.

1: Winner Group A vs. Runner Up Group B
2: Winner Group C vs. Runner Up Group D
3: Winner Group B vs. Runner Up Group A
4: Winner Group D vs. Runner Up Group C

Match 1 vs. Match 2
Match 3 vs. Match 4

Then the final.

Martin Long Quarter finals will be best of 3, semi-finals will be best of 5 and the final will be best of 7.

Martin Long http://challonge.com/SNAIIGA
http://challonge.com/SNAIIGB
http://challonge.com/SNAIIGC
http://challonge.com/SNAIIGD

Steve Balog Hah, yea. I suppose the groups could've been much worse. Not super privy to how people have gotten better at Spoilage NA in the past.

Figured though that whatever group the obvious #1 seed Matthew's in is at an auto-disadvantage, and Martin as the next best is pretty absurd, haha.

Jon Stitcher I think the groups have worked out relatively even, every group has at least 3 players capable of consistently scoring over 100 so should be a great tournament!

Callum Todd I don't know about the consistently scoring 100+ point Jon. Each group contains 3 players (and only 3) who have EVER scored over 100. That doesn't mean they can do it consistently.

Jon Stitcher Nope, but means they are capable of it.

Callum Todd Capable of scoring 100+ yes, but not necessarily consistently. Not at the current moment anyway.

Matthew Tassier 9 140+ scorers and the other 3 having set their pbs over the last 3 months suggests it's not far from the truth. Plus a raw score century from Sam yesterday. 4 exciting groups.

Martin Long Cracking start to the tournament! Lots of very close matches and some magnificent individual performances too! :-)

Jon Stitcher What's the tiebreak procedure for players level on wins?

Martin Long Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier. Thanks for reminding me. :-)

If two (or more) players are level on wins in the group stages, then the placing would be decided on points difference (unless of course one player has a draw and the other doesn't).

Jon Stitcher Martin, this is incredibly selfish because I'm almost certainly eliminated, BUT why not change it so the top 3 in each group get through to a second group of 6 with top 2 in each of them making the semi finals.

Reason being we don't get that many opportunities for competitive spoilage numbers games and would be nice to play 5 more games against some of the best players.

Martin Long Jon: I think you make a very good point here but I'm not going to change the tournament structure at this particular time as it has been already decided. And also, this change in rule would actually benefit my prospects in this tournament too (as I could easily finish third in my group behind Matthew and Steve) so I can't do it for this reason too.

However, I will definitely take your considerations into account when doing the next Spoilage Numbers tournament (which will happen at some point if Apterous still exists and Spoilage Numbers Attack still exists as a format by then!) :-)

Jason Turner Hopefully catch my remaining games over weekend I'll keep popping in.

Steve Balog Had some problems with life recently, but I'll try and hop in this weekend to play my rounds. Don't expect much, anyone thinking the weakest 140 club member might upset Matthew or Martin :P