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 is usually a group phase (3-4 weeks), consisting of one or more all-play-all groups of 6-10 players each, with the top 2 players in each group (4 if it is a single all-play-all group) qualifying for the knockout phase.

You will need to arrange and play about two matches per week on average during the group phase and they will consist of 3 games each, so they will take an hour or more each. Knockout phase matches will be about twice as long (though they can of course be spread over more than one session) and 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.

Tournament Controller:

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.

Boring but important ...

1) We have to reserve the right to default and/or ban 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 prove it. We will not, however, abuse this right - in previous tournaments it has only been very rarely necessary to make use of it and we very much hope that will continue to be the case.

2) We have had two instances in the last four years of people using different names to enter the World Championship more than once in the same year. This is grossly unfair to the other players so, in order to protect the integrity of the major Tantrix tournaments and to be fair to the vast majority of players who are honest, we reserve the right to request evidence of identity from participants during the tournament if this is felt to be necessary at any stage and to disqualify anyone who cannot prove that they are who they say they are if requested to do so. This is unlikely to affect you, but you need to be aware of this possibility before entering.

3) If you enter, please ensure that emails from tournaments@tantrix.co.uk and auto@tantrix.co.uk (and, once the tournament starts, emails from your AC and opponents) will not be blocked under any circumstances. This is because if we are unable to contact you by email for an extended period, we may have to default you out of the competition and this may lead to a ban from future tournaments.

4) If you enter this tournament, please ensure that you have anti-virus software that is updated regularly on the computer you use to email your opponents.