Flash Flash Revolution - 2nd Official FFR Tournament

Hi! Welcome to the second Official FFR R1 Tournament! This tournament, like the first one, is for players of any and all skill levels, from the barest beginners to the most seasoned veterans. As always, it's free to join, and there are cash prizes for not only the winners this time, but also the runner-ups! This time, there will be a whopping 32 prizes total at stake--read more for details.

Sign up for the tournament by posting in this thread. To be eligible for the tournament, you must have played at least 150 games of FFR. There are no other signup restrictions, except for one: if you have more than one account, please sign up with your main account only (i.e. the one you use the most).

Signups will end on Tuesday, January 30th at 11:00 PM eastern, and the first round will start when the thread for the first round is posted.
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Tournament Rules and Overview

In this tournament, there will be FOUR divisions (one more than last time): Beginner (difficulties Very Easy to Tricky), Intermediate (difficulties Standard to Very Difficult), Advanced (difficulties Difficult to Very Challenging), and Expert (difficulties Challenging to For Guru's Only). When you sign up, I will place you in one of these divisions based on your accomplishments in FFR--you cannot just "sign up" for any specific division, so don't even bother saying which division you want to be in. There is NO LIMIT to the number of spots in this tournament--signups will last for the full week this time, no matter how many players we get.

When signups are over, I will determine seed numbers for the top players in each division. These players will simply be guaranteed not to play against each other in the first few rounds of the tournament. They get no other advantage.

Differences from the last tournament:

-Four divisions instead of three
-Infinite signup space
-The first round will be a free-for all, rather than a match-based round. To qualify for the second round, you must tie or beat at least half of the players in your division on the first round's song. The first round will have no tiebreaker song.
-In the second round, a large number of players may get a bye to the third round. These players will be the players who scored the highest on the first round song. In case of a tie, the player(s) who submitted the earliest will be given the byes.
-At some pretedermined point in each division, there will be no more matchups--each player will submit their best score each round, and a given number of lowest-scoring players will be removed. This continues until there is one player left--the winner.
-A loss means you're out. This tournament is all single-elimination, except for the first round and the last few rounds.
-Scores will be made public as they're recorded by me, not just at the end of a round.

General rules:

When the first round of the tournament starts and with each new round after that, I will announce the main song, the tiebreak song if applicable, and the matchups for that round if applicable. Your goal is to get and submit a higher score on the main song than your opponent.

-You can only play the specified main song for that round (assuming the tiebreaker is unnecessary).

-When you think you have a score you want to submit, take a screenshot of it and send it to me via forum PM or email at shashakiro@yahoo.com. If you don't know how to take a screenshot, follow these steps:
1. Press the Print Screen button on your keyboard.
2. Go into Paint (Start>Programs>Accessories) or another imaging program and hit Ctrl-V, which should make the screenshot pop up on the screen.
3. Save the screenshot somewhere in your computer.
4. Go to an image hosting site, such as www.photobucket.com or www.imageshack.com, and upload the screenshot from your computer.
5. Send me a link to the screenshot via forum PM or email.

-You can submit any number of screenshots to me. I will only count your last one. Do not submit any scores that are lower than previously submitted scores, or you will be credited with the lower score.

-Your screenshots must be from some time after the round starts. This means that you cannot submit a screenshot of a score you got months ago, or even the day before that round starts. If you are caught submitting an old screenshot (and you WILL be caught if you try) you will be immediately disqualified.

-If you and your opponent both get a perfect score for the song, I will put the message "***AAA TIE--PLAY TIEBREAKER***" next to your names in the matchups list, which means you two must play and submit scores for the tiebreaker song as if it was the main song. If you and your opponent are tied at some point without a perfect score, the message will be "***UNDER AAA TIE--IMPROVE SCORE OR PLAY TIEBREAKER***", which means that you can still improve your score, but if neither player improves their score before the round ends, scores from the tiebreaker song will determine the winner. If both players tie on the tiebreaker song, I will decide a song for them to play.

-If you do not submit a score by the end of the round, you will be considered to have gotten a score of negative infinity on the song. If two players tie with negative infinity points, a coinflip will determine the winner of that round.

-Don't bother trying to cheat, you'll be caught and immediately disqualified. Using "secret arrows" and getting a higher combo than should normally be possible is considered cheating unless specified otherwise (I'll make it very clear if I decide to use the song where this could be a confusion). It's also cheating to somehow try to secretly play in a lower division than you are placed in. Cheating will not be tolerated, and any evidence of cheating will result in disqualification. Also note that trying to piss me off by trying to bend the rules or trying to find loopholes will get you disqualified.

-The time at which the round ends will be posted when the thread for that round is posted. After that time, the round is over and no more scores will be accepted.

After each round ends, I'll tally up the scores and post the results of who won, who lost, and the statistics of each score for each player at the start of the next round. If you lose once, you're eliminated.
At the end of the tournament, there will be one winner from each division, plus two runner-ups. The division winners will win the following prizes:

Expert:
1st: $60
2nd: $30
3rd: $15
Advanced:
1st: $40
2nd: $20
3rd: $10
Intermediate:
1st: $30
2nd: $15
3rd: $7
Beginner:
1st: $20
2nd: $10
3rd: $5

4th-8th place in all divisions will get a mystery prize.

Lastly: if you're on staff, you can still join, but you CANNOT win a prize. If a staff member places in the top 8, prizes will be awarded as though the staff member weren't there.
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Well, that's it! Hope you have fun playing! Remember, posting in this thread means that you're signing up. I'm not going to bother un-signing people up, so don't post unless you're sure you want to sign up.