Glamdring Sorry for you that you missed the game! I just noticed the timeout, it looked as if you just hadn't played your turn.
I am not sure how to handle repetitive timeouts. I don't want to be too hard on this, but if someone just doesn't play anymore, I'll probably replace him/her.

      How will ties in standings be handled?

        donwalsh1 I haven't thought about that yet. Let's say we take direct comparison. Each player play each opponent twice, so we add points of each player in those games and break the tie like this.

            16 days later

            I'll be on holidays next week. Unfortunately, Stage 1 will probably finish then. Please be patient, I'll move on to Stage 2 as soon as I have a stable internet connection.

              5 days later

              Sorry for timing out, fast async is not always compatible when Iā€™m away from home for work (no internet). Anyway, ready for the next round šŸ™‚

                I have started the next round now. I hope I didn't make any mistake in the seeding.
                I have decided to take all players from last stage to the next one. In the future I'll replace those with a negative overall score (for timeouts). This is not too harsh, I think, it shouldn't be too serious, either. We're all here for fun.
                I have tried this time to start four games each group such that every player plays two games and two players each game have three. Unfortunately, I noticed that the seeding algorithm isn't always consistent, so this didn't work out for the first league, for example. This is all manual work, so bear with me if it didn't work 100%. Any suggestions always welcome, of course.
                So now, have fun and play!

                Thanks for your efforts Jorrig, really looking forward to the tournament.

                  Thanks, you're welcome!
                  Sorry for the early timeouts. I have tried to contact the affected players, but there is no way to do this if they don't open their app. As far as I know there is also no additional information that a tournament has started. I'd really appreciate that feature to allow for a bit more of interaction.

                    6 days later

                    I decided to launch the second wave today on Sunday. Most of the first wave are finishing or at least in good progress. The first moves of the new games should be easy, anyway. In about three weeks, this stage could be finished.
                    We already had a couple of timeouts. I repeat: Whoever ends up with a negative score will be ejected from the tournament. I'll promote from lower leagues accordingly and invite new players to the lowest division.

                      One Note. My game crashed and I couldnt play unto Ende. Was in good Position...

                        Could you restart this game?

                        Cleveman Unfortunately, no. I can't do this as a normal tournament admin. I contacted support, though, about that game. If they suggest such a solution (reset and restart the game), I'd go for it. I'll keep you posted.

                            Cleveman Support has replied and offered a restart as an option. I'll let them figure out how to do it and hope that you will be able to restart that game. All progress of the previous one would be lost, though. They cannot recover any mid-game status, apparently.
                            In case this doesn't work, we'll probably just ignore that game and score it neutrally for all players (like 2.5 for each player). I hope I don't have to do that.

                                9 days later

                                Jorrig, may I suggest to relegate all no-shows in the last group. They really mess up the comp.

                                  Diogenes I firmly intend to kick them out for next season, move all remaining players up accordingly and invite replacements for the last tier. Sorry for that, this is the problem for anonymous signup.

                                      @Jorrig, speaking of suggestions for next round, can you give some notice (1 week?) of when it will start via here and maybe FB? Some folks may be no-shows because of unknown, surprise start dates, and not having particular reason to check on app w/in 2 day window.

                                        NyaLala Yes, sure, will do that. So notice given now, Stage 2 has just 2 outstanding game, and I'll launch next stage as soon as they're finished. This might be by next weekend, although there may be some delay, since I'll try to invite new players for the timeouts.
                                        I was thinking your way, too, but I launched the games in two waves, and those players timed out in both batches. So I doubt that this was a problem of notification. It is also possible for those players to complain either here, on FB or via ingame message. I even tried to contact them there, to no avail. So I doubt that this will improve by a notification. Though I do wish there was some possibility to send some ingame message to all tournament as a moderator. A push message on the mobile/laptop would be the most effective way to contact players.

                                          Stage 2 has finished, thanks to the players of that restarted game for finishing so quickly! I have to kick out 6 players who finished with a negative score (=many timeouts), so I have opened the signup for 6 additional players. It is posted on FB, and 4 slots are already filled. I'll launch stage 3 as soon as we're complete. I have also decided to launch all games at once. I cannot split them in any meaningful way, and timeouts didn't seem to depend on the number of parallel games. I hope that's fine for all of you.
                                          I'll place the newjoiners in the lowest division unless I know that they are very strong players, in which case I might advance them to some higher division.

                                            All sessions are created, but I cannot launch them, since I get an http 500 Server Error. Please be patient, I'll try again later and otherwise contact support.