apterous.org

Notes from the organizer: Introducing the apterous World Darts Championship!

Here's how it works:

Players will be drawn into a tournament bracket. I'm hoping we'll get 32 players for a round of 32. Due to the nature of the tournament (more on that below) bots won't be able to make up the numbers so if we don't get a power of 2 entry number then we'll have to do byes to the second round.

You will be given games to play against Apterous Prune (no H2H games will be scheduled in this tourney unless an extreme-case last-ditch tiebreak is required). Your goal is to score an exact target score with the cumulative score of your games. What's more, you MUST 'check out' (score the last 10 points to land on your target score) with a conundrum. So if your target is 301, you must accrue an aggregate score of 291 over your games before hitting a conundrum to check out the 301.

The target score will be:

Round of 63/32/16: 301
Quarter Finals/Semi Finals/ Final: 501

Each fixture will have a note attached in the following format:

"xxx - dd/mm/yy - Game XYz"

Where xxx is your target score for the game, dd/mm/yy is the deadline for that game to be played (this will be one week from the date the game is created), and Game XYz is an unique identifer for the game within the tournament. That bit is just to help me automate the tracking of results. Please play all games by the deadline given in the notes. The round itself will have a longer deadline to avoid the need for continuously adding new tourney rounds given I don't yet have an Owl Licence. Any games not played by their game-specific deadline as given in the notes will go down as No Score!

So your games are against Prune but you will be competing against your opponent in the tournament bracket. The winner of each fixture will be determined by the following gauntlet of criteria:

1 - Fewest 'darts' before checking out wins
2 - If this is a tie, fewest in-game rounds to reach 491 wins.
3 - if still tied, fastest 'checkout' (final con solve)
4 - if still tied, fastest conundrum solve across the match
5 - if still tied, fastest aggregate conundrum solve time across the match (with unsolved cons counting as 30.0s)
6 - if still tied, most maxes scored across the match wins.
7 - if still tied, a 'nearest bull' tie-break match (H2H Conundrum x5) will be arranged to decide the match.

Still following? Good.

A 'dart' is measured by conundrums. For 301 games, every player will be given an initial 4x9R games to play. For 501 games, it will be 6x9R games. Once you have played your initial allocation of games:

- If you have reached your target score while checking out on a conundrum, congrats! You have checked out.
- If you haven't reached your target score yet but your opponent has done in the same or fewer darts as you, you will not be given any more darts. Unfortunately, you have lost.
- If you are exactly 10 short of your target score, you now just need a conundrum to check out. You will be given a Conundrum x3 game in a separate round for checkouts only. Each of these counundrums count as a dart.
- If you are more than 10 short of your target score you will be given another 9 Rounder to play. This will continue until one of the above criteria have met.
- If you have exceeded your target score, or landed within 9 points of it without hitting it exactly, or reached the score on a round other than a conundrum: bust! Your last game is counted as no score, your score reverts to what it was before you played that game, and you get another 9 Rounder to try again and not be such a silly goose this time.

A spreadsheet link will be provided when the tourney kicks off to track progress. This should mostly be automated but might occasionally require me to give it a kick or fix it if it breaks. I hope that all makes sense and look forward to welcoming you into the apterous World Darts Championship 2024-2025! Sign-ups will remain open up to and including 10th November 2024.

Some information to consider for aspiring participants:
- You will have one week to play your games from when they are added but please bear in mind this could involve as many as SIX 9 round games being added at a time. If you are unable to commit to playing the games in that timeframe, please consider carefully whether or not you would like to enter this tournament as you run the risk of being timed out. Given these are bot games, no extensions or leeway will be given on deadlines (unless there's extended server downtime or something).
- Game play will begin on 11th November 2024. Depending on the number of entrants, this tournament could potentially run as far as early January 2025 to coincide with the real-life World Darts Championship. Please consider your availability to play tourney games across this possible two-month period before signing up.
- Ticket floating tourney idea with some debate around format here: https://www.apterous.org/ticket_view.php?ticket=7043
- Test tourney round here to see how the gameplay works: https://www.apterous.org/to_tourney.php?tourney=6076
- I will add a demonstration 301 leg to this sign-up page that I will play myself to show how the gameplay works

Ran from: 24 October – 10 November 2024. Format: 9 Rounder. Matches: One-off. Approved.

Fixtures: 5. Completed: 5.

Results and fixtures

Key. Green: winner. Red: loser. Grey: tie. (Stripes: provisional, match in progress.)