Rules
Playing in Tournaments
Playing in tournament is rather simple, and not as complex as hosting a tournament. However, getting banned is much easier. Follow these rules and you should be alright.
- Players who currently have the status Tournament Banned are not allowed to participate in tournaments.
- Get your match done on time. It's not smart to forget to play your match. Not to mention that it delays the tournament. Try to schedule a time by contacting your opponent through their Smogon Wall or by other means of contact. This will help you a lot in the long run! You can refer to the Tournament Scheduling Guidelines for information on good scheduling practices.
- Be a good sport. Poor sportsmanship, including but not limited to insulting your opponent in battle and making inflammatory winposts, may be grounds for an infraction.
- All tournament matches should be played using your forum nickname, or by informing your opponent that you are under a different nickname on Pokémon Showdown or the Smogtours server.
- Decisions by the tournament host are generally final. However, if you feel a ruling is ridiculous, please send a PM to one of the Tournament Directors listed in the Tournaments forum.
- Do not break the rules of a tournament. Always read through them carefully before your battle. If you don't agree to them, then don't sign up for it!
For a more detailed listing of tournament rules, please visit the Tournament Rules and General Guidelines thread. Failure to follow these rules may result in disqualification and/or infractions.
Hosting A Tournament
To host a Pokémon tournament on Smogon, there are a few simple guidelines.
- Hosts for official tournaments and circuit tournaments are chosen at the discretion of the Tournament Directors or relevant Tier Leaders.
- To host an unofficial tournament, submit an application to the Tournament Director team for approval. If your idea is denied, don't repost your application unless you have adequately addressed the issues presented. You'll be denied again because you didn't meet the requirements.
- You must be a responsible user who has spent a good amount of time at Smogon. If you are close to being banned, banned, have had a lot of infractions in general, or are too new to the forums, your tournament request will be denied.
Once you have had tournament approved, create your thread and start your sign-ups. Be sure that you know you can handle the amount of people who have registered. If it's your first time hosting a tournament, it's recommended (but not required) that you limit your registrations to 32 players.
Here are requirements while you are hosting your tournament:
- You must give deadlines each round of your tournament. Deadlines force players to do their battles.
- Do NOT let players who are banned from tournaments or banned from Smogon join your tournaments.
- If a player is banned during your tournament:
- If it is round one and their game has not been played yet, replace them with one of your substitutes.
- If it is round two or later, advance their opponent (see below for exceptions).
- If the game has already been played and the banned user won, advance them to the next round and replace them with a bye.
- If the user was banned for reasons that would cause them to have an unfair advantage over their opponent (alting, ghosting, etc.) and already played and won that round, advance their opponent. See Mid-Round Bans In Individual Tours for more detail on this rule.
- Give as few deadline extensions as you possibly can. This helps keep the tournament on pace to finish in a reasonable timeframe.
- Do not let your tournament die. Pester your participants who have not completed their match yet to do so. If you let your tournament die, not only will you receive an infraction, but you will also be banned from hosting tournaments in the future.
- Disqualify players fairly.
- If two players are trying their hardest to complete their match even past the deadline, move their match as a part of the next round and let them play their battle. Then the winner of their match will play who they were originally supposed to be put up against.
- If one player is being very active while another is not, disqualify the inactive player.
- If both players are inactive, flip a coin. Advance the winner of the coin flip and move on.
- If a situation cannot be handled, ask a Tournament Director and the one you've contacted will help you make a final decision. You can join the Tournament Hosting Discord to quickly get in contact with a Tournament Director.
- Usually, tournaments on Smogon are played using the Random Pairings method. Use the Smogon Bracketmaker to generate random pairings. The "Randomize signups beyond 5/8 * size" option should always be checked when generating your bracket.
- For most tournaments, you will use either the Normal Pairing mode (for single elimination tournaments) or the Double Elimination mode (for double elimination tournaments). Advanced options on the bracketmaker should not be touched unless you know what you're doing.
- Strict 2^n pairing should almost never be used, only in exceptionally rare circumstances where either a double elimination tournament has a number of byes that causes the losers bracket to generate improperly or where a tournament needs to be forced not to conclude with round robin finals.
- Pair All should only be used for Swiss tournaments with a non-square number of players in each bracket. Do not use pair all to generate single or double elimination brackets.
- We suggest that new hosts do not host Swiss or Round Robin-style tournaments.
- Under no circumstance should you fix the rules in your favor or to that of another person's favor as a tournament host!
- Tournament hosts may play in their own tournament if and only if it is an individual tournament with a bracket generated by the bracketmaker. An unbiased third party, such as a Tournament Director, should rule on activity calls involving the host. Hosts may not play or manage in team tournaments they are hosting.
- It is recommended that you set a rule to have players post replays of their match.