The Garden Gate - BLOOM: Skud Pai Sho Tournament

Welcome to BLOOM, a Skud Pai Sho Celebration of Spring!

Endure the bitter cold of Winter to flourish in the vibrant life of Spring!

General Information:

This will be a two stage tournament, with a brief single elimination phase followed by a double elimination playoffs.
The winner will receive the Tournament Winner role on the official Garden Gate Discord server, as well as the associated bragging rights.
All games will be hosted on The Garden Gate website: skudpaisho.com.
The official bracket for the tournament will be hosted on the Toornament website: https://play.toornament.com/en_US/tourna...022065664/
Tournament participants will be required to join The Garden Gate server for at least the duration of the tournament: https://discord.gg/YqbyPTWUWg
The host timezone for this tournament will be American CDT
There is a soft player cap at 64 players, though this can be modified if a significant portion of people still want to join. Claim your spot while you can!
Signups end on April 9th at 7:00 pm CDT, and the tournament begins on April 10th at 5:00 pm CDT. To properly ensure that you end up in the tournament, make sure to be both signed up and confirmed into the tournament at least two days before the deadline.

How to sign up:
To register for the tournament, you must complete a few steps:

First, register for the BLOOM tournament at skudpaisho.com. To do so, you must first make sure you have created and/or signed into your Garden Gate account. Then, navigate to the sidebar menu, select "tournaments," select "BLOOM," and scroll down to the bottom and select "sign up."
Then, go to https://play.toornament.com/en_US/tourna...022065664/, create a Toornament account if you do not have one, then select "register" and fill out the required information. Note: the username you use on Toornament will often be the username participants try to find you by, so do your best to match it with your skudpaisho.com username!
When registering on Toornament, participants must fill out their actual discord ID. If you do not yet have an account on discord, you must create one and join The Garden Gate server to participate in the tournament, as this is the main way for your opponents to contact you about scheduling matches: https://discord.gg/YqbyPTWUWg
Participants must also submit their country of residence/origin. This option will be set to Antarctica by default for participants who prefer not to share this information.

Once all other steps are complete, go to the #tournaments channel in The Garden Gate Discord server and confirm with the host (@Cannoli#5677) that you have completed the previous steps. If you have done everything correctly, you will officially be confirmed into the tournament!

Tournament Format:
This tournament will be split up into two stages.

First, contestants must make it through the Winter stage: two single elimination matches that will narrow down the competition as the bitter cold strikes. Those that make it through single elimination will then enter the Spring stage: a double elimination playoffs with both a grand finals and a 3rd/4th place decider match. The contestant that wins the grand finals will be crowned BLOOM champion, receiving the Skud Pai Sho Tournament Winner role on the official Garden Gate Discord server.

Match Format and Rules

Match-ups will be displayed on the Toornament website brackets, and will be created and hosted on The Garden Gate website at the start of each round.
The start and end of each round of matches will be announced in #tournaments on The Garden Gate Discord server.
Once a round of matches begins, participants will have 3 days to complete their matches.
When a match is completed, at least one player should report the result in #tournaments on discord.
Matches that remain incomplete at the end of a round will be decided by the tournament host. This decision will prioritize comparative player activity/inactivity over game state in order to discourage abuse (accidental or intentional) of these time limitations.
To help provide evidence of activity even when it is not your move, be sure to leave messages in the in-game chat or in the #tournaments channel on the Discord server whenever checking up on the match, as otherwise it is difficult to tell to what extent a participant has been active in the match. The best way to avoid an inactive match is to communicate with your opponent publicly on the server and planning out how/when to play out the match. Playing correspondence without communication is valid, but it runs the risk of disqualification if the match is not finished before the end of the round. Remember, it is difficult to tell just how long a game will last! When in doubt, plan to start earlier in the round rather than later.
Sandboxing is allowed, though heavy use is discouraged in the interest of faster play and general courtesy. Please do not delay games by spending excessive time in the sandbox.
Undos are allowed. Asking for and granting undos is encouraged, but not strictly required.
Though this tournament is competitive, participant interactions should still be respectful. Excessive trash talk, bullying, harassment, or any discriminatory behavior will lead to an instant disqualification from a match, and indeed the tournament if behavior continues/becomes notably egregious.
Skud Pai Sho engines are not to be used in any circumstance in tournament matches! The use of engines to evaluate moves publicly or privately, along with the entrance of computer opponents, is forbidden. Engine evaluations of tournament matches are forbidden not only as the match is ongoing, but also all the way until at least 2 weeks after the end of the entire tournament.

For any questions, contact @Cannoli#5677 on Discord.

I look forward to sharing a splendid event with you all!

- Cannoli