Soccer Tournament September 2020 Rules

This page contains the rules of 4th Soccer Tournament, held mainly in August 2020. Please read them carefully.

Important changes are in blue.

The rules are not final and will be updated later.

Tournament structure

The tournament consists of several matches. If there are at most 6 participating teams, each two teams play exactly one match with each other.

If there are 8 teams, matches are grouped into Group stage and Knockout stage.

Group stage: Teams are divided into 2 groups (ABCD and EFGH), each two teams play exactly one match with each other. At the end all teams in a group are ranked according to the results of the matches.

Knockout stage: Top 2 teams from each group advance to knockout stage. Winning team from one group plays one match with the runner-up from another group. The winners of these two matches then play another match for first place, while the losers of these matches play a match for 3rd place.

Teams ranked 3rd and 4th in their groups play the same knockout stage between themselves but fighting for places 5-8. However, the match for 7th place is not obligatory and is held if both teams agree.

Group ranking

Teams are given points in their group: 3 points for winning a match, 1 point for a match resulting in a draw, and 0 points for losing a match.

To obtain the group ranking, the following criteria are used (the next criterion is checked only if teams are equal according to all previous criteria):

• If a team has more points, it is ranked higher.
• If a team has bigger difference between the numbers of won and lost games, it is ranked higher.
• If a team has bigger difference between the numbers of scored and missed goals, it is ranked higher.
• If a team has bigger number of scored goals, it is ranked higher.
• If there are several (but not all) teams that are still equal, they are compared using the above criteria but counting only matches between those teams. This step is repeated several times until it fails to distinguish any new pair of teams.
• If two equal teams remain, the ranking between them is defined by organizers.

Match structure

A match is a competition between two teams, the first team and the second team, and usually consists of 3 games. All games are played on arenas chosen by players in-game, with the requirement that all the arenas played during the first three games are different.

All three games are played with 10 minutes time limit, and should usually have 3 players on each side. The third game may be omitted if the match is held in knockout round, both previous games have the same winner (and haven't ended in a draw), and all team players agree to skip this game.

The team who wins more games in the match, wins the match. If both teams won the same number of games (one or zero), then a draw is declared. However, if the match is held in knockout round, draws are not acceptable, so in this case a fourth game is played on Icy Soccer Field until 10 goals. The winner of this game wins the match.

During the first game, the first team is playing with red color, and the second team is playing with blue color. Before games 2 and 4, the colors are swapped.

Teams and Players

Tournament players need to register for the tournament first, the link will appear later. Instead of registering as a tournament (official) player, one can register as a substitute player.

Each team consists of 4 players, but only 3 players from each team can play in each game. An official member of a team cannot participate as a player of other team and/or use alternate accounts for playing as this is considered as unfair play. Substituting using several accounts is also not allowed. Official tournament players cannot agree, directly or indirectly, on the result of the match beforehand.

To avoid extra suspicions on unfair play, players who use the same network or device should tell organizers about it beforehand, and in case of using the same device they should provide a fair plan of actions in case their teams need to play with each other (or they appear to be in the same team).

Scheduling and Substitutions

Scheduling is done manually, for that all players should fill the corresponding availability polls.

As all games require at most 3 players per team, in case a team has 4 players available before the game, they need to decide who plays and report it to referee/organizers.

In case there is at least one team which has at most 2 members present, substitutions can be done. Players who will replace missing team members are taken first from the list of present substitutes, and then among other independent players present on the match server or online.

If there is only one incomplete team with one or two players present, then two or one substitutions can be done if possible, so the team still has 3 players in the game.

If both teams are incomplete and have 2 players each, then two cases are possible:

• If there are at least 2 players ready to replace the missing ones, 2 players join the game and the match is played 3 vs 3 players.
• Otherwise, the game is played 2 vs 2 players.

Otherwise, the match should be rescheduled, or one or both teams should receive a technical loss.

Server

Tournament servers should use a custom version of server, with soccer-tournament option enabled. The server typically looks like this.

To enter, one needs to use an official STK account and to have 2 official arenas (Icy Soccer Field, Soccer Field) and one addon arena (Tournament Field). Tournament servers are usually public, but sometimes it can be not the case, then players need to search the server in both public and private server lists. If the server is private, usually anything can be typed as a password, but this can vary.

List of servers that plan to host the tournament:

• Frankfurt Tournament

If you wish to host a tournament server, please read this page. In case you already satisfy those requirements, please contact the organizers. We will update the list if other servers appear.

Referee

A match can have a referee who must spectate the match. In case there is no referee, at least one of organizers should be present and operate as referee. Organizers also can act as referees in case they are not playing. Other players can be additional referees.

The area of referee's actions contains:

• Game start and match control: the referee should make sure the game is started only when all present players are ready to start, and the game settings are correct. Referee is also assigning substitutions if the rules tell so (see above). Referee should control the match in such a way that the rules are followed.
• Interrupting the game: in some cases listed below, a referee has to interrupt the game. In all other cases, a referee should not interrupt the game.
  • An active player left the game: this means a player has technical problems.
  • An active player says publicly that he has severe lags using "STOP".
  • An active player misbehaves severely enough.
  • Server technical problems of any kind.
• Behaviour control: a referee can issue a verbal warning or a card to an active player, or can issue a verbal warning to a spectator, or can kick and/or ban a spectator from the server (see below).

A referee can interrupt a game either calling everyone to go back to lobby and then resume the game for the remaining time with saving count/restart it from scratch, or making active players wait for some time and add this time to the end of the match (or play a shorter addition to the match). Referee can ask players to move to another server in case technical problems repeat. Referee also determines the result of an interrupted game.

In-game replacements

Replacements are possible only between matches or due to major technical problems. A team should tell which of its members play before the start of each game, the remaining player (if any) spectates.

Rating

To win a match, a team should win the other team by the number of games (where the draw in any game is counted as 1-1 and a win is counted as 1-0). As stated here, the team winning the match gains 3 points into the tournament, the losing team gains 0, and in case of match draw both teams gain 1 point.

The games' count of the match (e.g. 1-2, 2-2, 3-0) is used in the Games column of the group stage and is not important during the knockout stage.

Referees' commands and players' actions

Before each game or game part referee should type /game X Y in the chat while X means the Xth game (the game with next number by default) and Y the time in minutes to be played (10 by default).

Once the start button is pressed, players will proceed to the selection screen, where they will be able to choose their karts and a valid soccer field for the game. Referees and spectators should stay in lobby (and quit from selection screen if it appears) until there is a possibility to spectate.

A referee can set a role to a person (including himself) using /role (role) (username). role can be one of R, B, J or S which corresponds to player of the red team, blue team, referee and spectator respectively. Note that teams colors change over time.

Fair Play and Misbehaviour

All players and spectators should behave fairly and respectfully towards others. Misbehaviour includes things like insulting other players, the referee or the spectators, abusive spamming during the game, but also repeated public exclamations such as “Fuck”. If you want to complain about something (like a decision which was made), please say it in a gentle tone. However, if a player decides to misbehave, following actions can be taken:

Verbal warnings

The game's referee or the organizer can give a verbal warning to a player in the event of easier misbehavior. This should include the reason the player was warned and that the next misbehavior could result in worse punishment.

Yellow card

If a player is noticed several times or strongly negative, the referee (or the organizer) can show him a yellow card. The yellow card remains until the end of the tournament. A given yellow card will be checked by the tournament organizers after the match and can be withdrawn if it seems incorrect, or approved otherwise.

Exclusion from the tournament/Red card

If, even after being shown the yellow card and being warned several times verbally, a player still shows misbehavior, he may be excluded from the tournament (or banned/muted from tournament servers for the running tournament). Such an important decision is made only in extreme cases, and both referees of the match and organizers must agree to the exclusion/ban/mute.

Given cards

See List of infractions in Soccer Tournament August 2020.

If you think a player is misbehaving, please report it to the referee or organizers.