Tournament Rules:
- General tournament rules and regulations can be found here.
- Grand Slam rules can be found here.
- Standard SV NU.
- Best-of-three, single elimination.
- Battles should take place on Pokemon Showdown!
- SV cartridge win conditions are in place; there are no ties.
- Tiers are locked at the beginning of each round.
Identity
About playing on alts: It is entirely allowed to play on an alt other than your own main forum name, though if your opponent wishes to confirm your identity, you must log on to your main alt to show them you are who you claim to be. This is to prevent people from pretending to be who they're not.
About playing on different servers: Tournament matches must be played on the Smogtours server. The Main PS! server is also acceptable if both parties agree to that. Other servers are not sanctioned by the TD team and playing in them might result in your game not counting. Protect yourself from that by playing in Smogtours, where we also have the power to recreate games that end due to DC's.
Scouting
On scouting opponents: Going through your opponents replays of tournament and ladder games is entirely allowed, as long as a game is public there is nothing preventing you from watching it. An exception to this is abusing powers granted to you by being staff on Smogon or PS! to gain access to information a normal user wouldn't have access to, which is strictly forbidden.
On leaking teams: Divulging private information about someone's planned team to their opponent is never allowed, and will be heavily sanctioned. Requesting that such information be divulged is also grounds for punishment. Keep your scouting to publicly available information and you'll be fine.
Timer Clause / Disconnections
On the Timer: The timer must stay on throughout the whole battle, not to be turned off even in the case of a player disconnecting as we now have a separate disconnection timer (more details here). The timer may not be turned off in any circumstance.
On Timeout losses: A player that loses by having all his time run out loses the game. This is only not the case if the player that received the timeout loss can be verified to have suffered a True Disconnection. Rematches in such cases are not allowed.
On True Disconnection: The TD team has a secret threshold of seconds that your timer must be at or above, from the moment you disconnect, for a timeout loss to be considered a True disconnection. If your game is determined to be a true disconnection if you played on Smogtours and contacted a TD before the room expired your game will be recreated up to the point the disconnect happened. It is the responsibility of the player that disconnected to get a TD into the room before it expires.
About playing on alts: It is entirely allowed to play on an alt other than your own main forum name, though if your opponent wishes to confirm your identity, you must log on to your main alt to show them you are who you claim to be. This is to prevent people from pretending to be who they're not.
About playing on different servers: Tournament matches must be played on the Smogtours server. The Main PS! server is also acceptable if both parties agree to that. Other servers are not sanctioned by the TD team and playing in them might result in your game not counting. Protect yourself from that by playing in Smogtours, where we also have the power to recreate games that end due to DC's.
Scouting
On scouting opponents: Going through your opponents replays of tournament and ladder games is entirely allowed, as long as a game is public there is nothing preventing you from watching it. An exception to this is abusing powers granted to you by being staff on Smogon or PS! to gain access to information a normal user wouldn't have access to, which is strictly forbidden.
On leaking teams: Divulging private information about someone's planned team to their opponent is never allowed, and will be heavily sanctioned. Requesting that such information be divulged is also grounds for punishment. Keep your scouting to publicly available information and you'll be fine.
Timer Clause / Disconnections
On the Timer: The timer must stay on throughout the whole battle, not to be turned off even in the case of a player disconnecting as we now have a separate disconnection timer (more details here). The timer may not be turned off in any circumstance.
On Timeout losses: A player that loses by having all his time run out loses the game. This is only not the case if the player that received the timeout loss can be verified to have suffered a True Disconnection. Rematches in such cases are not allowed.
On True Disconnection: The TD team has a secret threshold of seconds that your timer must be at or above, from the moment you disconnect, for a timeout loss to be considered a True disconnection. If your game is determined to be a true disconnection if you played on Smogtours and contacted a TD before the room expired your game will be recreated up to the point the disconnect happened. It is the responsibility of the player that disconnected to get a TD into the room before it expires.
Battle Clauses:
- Evasion Clause
- OHKO Clause
- Sleep Clause
- Species Clause
- Timed Battle
- Team Preview
- Contact your opponent as soon as possible upon the round going up. Activity cases are going to be handled in a very strict manner.
- When scheduling, offer a wide selection of times when you are available to play. 1 hour of activity on one or two weeknights is unlikely to be considered acceptable.
- Schedule specifically - do not schedule for "Friday afternoon" or "Sunday morning", pick a date, a time and note the timezone.
- If I catch news of ghosting or some other sort of atrocious behavior, I reserve the right to investigate to the full limits of my ability in conjunction with the TD team provided there is adequate evidence to warrant it.
Good luck to all competitors!
Signups will close at Sunday, May 5th at 11:59 PM EDT (GMT-4). Post "in" to enter.
