Hi All,

This year I'll be judging the championships and I want to make anyone who's playing in the tournament aware of the timekeeping of the championship this year. The reason for imposing this method of timekeeping is to try and improve the efficiency of the tournament which has often seen the final games been played well after midnight which is just not optimal or fun. So the intent this year is to have a more rigid schedule around the swiss rounds so that we can have the whole early rounds done within the allocated 6 hours, and the whole tournament finished by midnight.

Each swiss round will run as follows.

Once pairings are posted there will be 5 minutes to seat, reveal squads, pick reinforcements, roll for a map and set up.
The round clock starts promptly on after 5 minutes and will run 60 minutes.
At the end of round time, there will be a 10-minute limit to finish up the last round.
There will then be 5 minutes of break before the pairings are read, and the cycle repeats.

If you are not set up before the round clock starts then your game will run short as everyone will run to the same clock so it's down to the players to be prompt with their set up and selections.
If after 10 minutes of the end of round time there are games still finishing up, the players still playing will receive a warning.
On a 2nd warning, a point will be deducted from your final tournament score. Additional warnings after the 2nd will result in additional points.

Running this way the tournament should run to 7:30, allowing a short break before the knockout rounds start which should then run until Midnight based on three rounds if they start at 8.

I hope you feel this is a fair way to run the tournament and that the time limits are not too restrictive.

Please feel free to respond to this with any questions, comments or concerns.
This is currently a blueprint and I want to make sure that, if you plan on playing, you are comfortable with the intended organization.

I appreciate the structure and the transparency. It helps having everyone on the same page.

+1 to Bryan’s time announcements, that is very helpful. I would add if games are still being played after time, a 5 min call out (of the 10 max additional minutes) and a 1 min left call out. This will insure you (hopefully) never even have to give a warning.

Also, thanks for giving up your evening to support the game in this way. Forever a titan of SWM!

I'm all in for time limits...sally forth

Well, I haven't actually mentioned promptly starting at 2. I have also allowed a 30-minute buffer just in case some likeminded tardy souls need some time to get there.

Thank you Deri and Stephen for judging champs this year!
The 2019 championship finished in a timely manner and ran more smoothly than any in swm history.

Very few games went to time as Deri's implemented time structure kept players aware of time and finishing games. Also having two judges really helped; a judge was always available to answer questions, take results and generate parings. Brilliant!

Great work gentlemen.