Who can enter?

The Pan-American Tantrix Championship is open to players of all standards who either live in or come from North, South or Central America.(*) While there are deadlines for matches to be completed, there are no fixed match times - you arrange a mutually convenient date and time for each match with your opponents.

(*) Choice of nationality is offered to those who live in a different country from the one on their passport in order to allow players to enter regional tournaments in a convenient time zone. However, to be fair to those who do not have this choice, you cannot keep changing - the selection you make now will define the regional and national tournaments you can enter and the country you can play for in world tournaments until you next change your usual country of residence. So, if you do live in a different country from the one on your passport, please think very carefully before choosing which country to play for and hence which regional or national tournaments to enter. Please do not enter a regional or national tournament unless you are willing to play most of your matches at convenient times for players in that region, which usually means evenings and weekends.

Tournament format:

The precise format of the Championship is subject to review once we know the number of entrants, however there are usually two phases as follows:

1) Phase 1 (3 weeks) consists of all-play-all groups of 6-9 players each, with the top 2-4 players in each group (depending on the number of groups) qualifying for Phase 2.

2) Phase 2 (3 weeks) is the knockout phase for all those qualifying from Phase 1 - quarter-finals, semi-finals, Final and 3rd place playoff, with round deadlines at weekly intervals.

You will need to arrange and play about 2 matches per week on average during Phase 1 and they will consist of 3 games, so they will take an hour or more each. Knockout phase matches will be about twice as long, so in Phase 2 you will need to play one match per week for as long as you remain in the tournament.Please do not enter the Championship unless you intend to find the time to arrange and play all of your matches.

Rules:

The standard tournament rules apply eg. the time limit is 15 minutes per player per game and matches are scored using tournament points, which are mainly based on who wins and loses each game but also make some allowance for margins of victory.

Click here if you want to see the full rules or click here for just a summary of the main rules. The rules are also available in other languages as follows: French le règlement, German die Regeln and Hungarian, a bajnokságok általános szabályai.

Free Entry:

There is no entry fee and the winner will be able to call themselves this year's Pan-American Tantrix Champion. In order to maintain the integrity of online tournaments, we do not seek to award big prizes in order to ensure that there is no incentive for anyone to try to play unfairly.

Elo ratings / Seeding method:

All games played will count towards the Tantrix Tournament Elo Ratings which are the main factor in deciding seedings for future tournaments. See the Elo seeding list page for details, but please note that you do NOT need to have an Elo rating in order to enter.

Final note:

The Overall Controller for this tournament and their contact details are shown near the bottom of the list of links just above these Notes for Entrants. If the Overall Controller is playing in the tournament, a player from elsewhere in the world will act as the independent non-playing controller in any situations where a conflict of interest might arise. In the case of disputes, the decisions of these controllers will be final.

Assistant Controllers ("ACs"), who will be the first point of contact for players in specific sections of the draw, will be appointed after the draw.

To avoid chaos, we have to reserve the right to default at our discretion people whom we have very good reason to think are either cheating or not making an effort to arrange a match, even if (given the nature of the Internet) we cannot conclusively prove it. We will not, however, abuse this right and it is only ever used in extreme circumstances.