We are implementing changes for major tournaments such as World Championships. All major tournament have been run as Non Real Time (NRT) tournaments where matches must be scheduled with opponents and played by a deadline date. We are going to continue with NRT for majors, but are making some changes based on feedback from players and observed issues in play and scheduling. Here is the down low on changes:

- The time to play is going to be increased for both winners and losers side. The Snooker WC used 6 days on the winners side and 3 on the losers. We felt neither was enough time. The next major will use at least 10 days on the winners and 7 days on the loser side.

- Some matches were played after the deadline and we accepted those results because players were not given enough time to play. Our plan is to be much less accepting of late matches because it is unfair to players participating in the next round as their scheduling time is diminished.

- There was a software issue that could cause players to not advance properly in the tournament. We saw this in the first round of Snooker WC and fixed that immediately and it worked fine the rest of the tournament.

- We have increased capability to fix match issues after the fact. Based upon our experiences we feel that was necessary in case something does happen. There is still a possibility of an unexpected outcome with poor connections that may happens once and a while. We may also change matches based upon scheduling disputes, though any change would have to be made shortly after the result. Players need to contact the Tournament Director (TD) and Support ASAP if there are any issues with the result.

The next tournament scheduled is going to be the World 14:1 Championship. If you have any request for match lengths (winners and losers side) or any other format ideas, please comment below.

NRT Primer

Non Real Time Tournaments (NRT) do not play matches back to back and are used for larger tournaments. Matches are played at a date/time agreed upon by the players. Player schedule matches by going to the tournament page on vponline.celeris.com and clicking the match schedule icon. They then propose 2-3 date/times that they can play. The match opponent receives the proposal via website messaging and also email if turned on in the player account. The opponent either accepts a date or chooses other date/times to play and sends it back. There is a cutoff time for playing each round of a NRT tournament. Matches not scheduled by the deadline will be decided automatically by the server based on player scheduling communication. If neither players scheduled, then it is a coin flip. A TD may get involved if necessary.

http://vponline.celeris.com/news/post/53