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Notes from the organizer: This is a tourney based on the ITV game show “The Chase” but quiz questions will be replaced by letters, numbers and conundrums. Please take a few moments to read the eligibility criteria before signing up:

-You must be a full member and if your membership expires in the next three months or so, you must plan to renew.
-You must be flexible with your availability times. Also, anyone with a history of regularly failing to play their tournement games may not be accepted.
-If you are unavailable during the week commencing 23rd March, you must let me know in advance, so I can work around it.
-If you have not received an aptomail about the possibility of becoming a chaser and fit all of the above, you are free to join.

You will be split into teams of four when sign-ups close. In order to keep the teams fairly even in strength, all players will be seeded from one to four, most likely decided by letters max percentage at the time of sign-ups closing. Each team will consist of one player of each seeding, drawn randomly. After this draw is made, each team will be assigned a “chaser”, the person who will try to prevent you from winning. I will try to assign the stronger chasers to the strongest teams to keep it interesting but preferably without hand-picking them all. A certain amount of randomness will probably be used but I don't know exactly how it will be done yet.

On the show, the four players go one after another in a set order but for this tournament, it will be different, with there being no set order. The “cash builder” round will take place over just one week, as it will be a speed 15 against Prune. All players (but not chasers) will take part. For every max you manage, you will add £1000 (imaginary, sorry) to your total and this will be your default offer, which leads me onto the next round.

The next round is the head to head round, where you will face the chaser. By taking the default (middle) offer earned during your cash builder, you will start five steps ahead of the chaser, the equivalent of a five-max handicap in this case. Maxes scoring will be used and the format will be a regular 15-rounder. With the aid of your handicap, you must remain ahead of the chaser at all times until the end. If you survive, you are through to the final chase with the money you've earned. However, if you get caught, you are eliminated and lose the money for the team. If you want to go for more money, you can start just three steps ahead of the chaser, or you can choose seven steps away for a lower offer. The higher offer will be ten times as high as the middle offer, with the lower offer being a tenth of the middle. At least that's the plan but if anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. Only a maximum of one person per team will be allowed to take the lower offer, otherwise we run the risk of this stage being incredibly dull. All members of the team with the most money that successfully goes on to defeat the chaser in the final chase will be declared as tournament winners and will all gain automatic entry into the group stage of the next Champions League tournament I am planning to run after this one. Players of the team in question who did not make it through to the final chase will not get this honour, though. I will also keep a running leader board of how teams perform, in order to hopefully encourage some people to go for the higher offers. This means that teams will be competing against each other, as well as against the chasers. Like with the cash builder round, teammates can face the chaser in any order but you must all decide which offer to take before any games are played. This is different to how the show works but I think it's the best way to avoid delays. Teammates will be able to collude with each other and will have up to a week to make their decisions.

The final chase is a little more complicated. For each team, the surviving team members nominate one player to take control of the game (probably the strongest), while the others spectate and try to help. It will be a set of instant letters rounds, up to 10 seconds each and the aim is to score as many maxes as possible in the allotted time of three minutes. You are allowed to end rounds early whenever you like. Every player who successfully makes it through will count as an extra step, like the show. The chaser then has the same amount of time to try and equal the team's score. If (s)he manages to do so, the team is defeated but if not, the team wins the money they have earned. For every round the chaser fails to max, the team will gain the chance of a “push back”, but by playing an extra round of their own game, rather than trying to max the rounds the chaser failed to. I feel it's important to allow the players to spectate the chaser's game, otherwise it could take a lot of the fun and tension out of it. In testing, it was found that the teams would have a lot of chances for push backs, so I've thought of a rule where the chaser is allowed to “pass” by simply blanking the round, rather than having a go. The pass will not count as a chance for a push back. It's not ideal but I feel that it's necessary to make this a challenge for the team.

I may make minor amendments along the way but I won't do anything too drastic. This is an experimental idea but one I really hope can work. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. If you've somehow read up to this point, then thank you for your patience and I hope this will be a successful tournament!

You can view the tournament discussion here: http://www.apterous.org/ticket_view.php?ticket=2773

Ran from: 24 February – 22 March 2015. Format: 15 Rounder. Matches: One-off. Approved.

Fixtures: 0. Completed: 0.