GoldToken's site run tournaments are a fun way for all to show some of their competitive nature and demonstrate their ability in their favorite games. However, there are a few guidelines and rules that must be followed to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and tournament ratings are displayed as accurately as possible.

Tournaments

Basic Rules

Tournament play is a more 'professional' way of playing games. This being the case, players who deliberately delay tournament games will be penalized. Things that will be classified as 'delaying' tournaments include:

• Waiting until the last minute to play tournament games
• Not making moves in tournament games in a timely matter while still playing friendly games as normal
• Taking on more friendly games while claiming that you do not have time to make tournament moves.
• Management receiving complaints in writing regarding the amount of time it is taking you to move on Site Tournament games.
• Your Clock activities have been reviewed from the system and Management has found that your times are extremely lengthy or high, thus holding up one or more Site Tournament games.
• Reports producing your playing records have been viewed that you wait until the last minute before your Tournament games expire, then set a vacation day, while you still remain on site. Thus causing you to be in violation for abusing time limits, days off, emergency days or vacation day uses to avoid moving in games and timing out etc.

Note: The only time GoldToken would become involved is if the player was deliberately delaying a game to stall the outcome or pressure his opponent into resigning or accepting a resignation in an effort to cheat. Lets remember the whole purpose of turn based game playing...it allows you to play a game at your convenience because you do not have time to play head to head games. If you have a slow opponent, take it up with them individually, asking them to please speed up their game play...but be kind about it. And above all, do not be complaining to others here about it.

Draws

Offering and/or Agreeing to a draw too early in a game for the benefit of one or both players will be considered cheating and will result in disqualification of both players involved.

• Draws in tournament play are not allowed prior to the 25th move in games unless the draw is obvious.

Throwing Games

"Throwing" tournament games to benefit another member will not be allowed in any case, by any membership level player.

• It has come to our attention that some guests are asking members to 'throw' games in sponsorship tournaments so that said guest can place higher and win the offered membership. Any guest who is reported as doing so will be placed on a list and not eligible to win any offered memberships from the site. We also ask any current members to be vigilant in reporting any such behavior. Any member found to be obliging these guest requests will also be penalized. This is a form of cheating and will be treated as such, with the appropriate consequences that are applied to cheating in all other areas of the site.
• "Deals" made for throwing tournaments, ("If you let me win this backgammon prize, I will let you win that go-moku prize"), will be given the same penalties as all aforementioned offenses. Again, we ask that any members who receive such requests report them to Administration. If such a 'deal' is found to be made, both players will face penalties.

Penalties

Penalties for any of these offenses may include, but will not be limited to:

• Removal from ladders and tournaments
• Forfeiture of current tournaments
• Forfeiture of current ladder or tournament games
• Possible forfeiture of your membership, returning you to guest status
• Losing your privilege to renew as a member, or the level at which you are allowed to renew at thus limiting the tournaments you can join

Further information on these policies can be found at GoldToken's Acceptable Use Policy and Cheating pages.

• Question: - I have don't have a rating in a game yet, but am blocked from playing in a "1500 and under" tournament of that game type. Why is this?
  • Answer - Our "1500 and under" tournaments are meant to give GoldToken's less skilled players a chance to win a tournament based on similarly rated players. If anyone starts to play a new game, their auto provisional rating starts at 1600 before it is listed as a provisional rating. At that point we have no idea how skilled such a player is or isn't, when in fact the 1500 or under tournaments are specifically for players who are less skilled. Players without a rating need to prove what their skill level is before we know if they have a right to be in a 1500 or under tournament or not. To allow an unrated player in one of these tournaments would hardly be fair to those who are joining a tournament with similarly rated players when such a player could be a master for all we know. It only takes 20 games to establish a provisional rating. If you would like to play in one of these tournaments for 1500 and under rated players, please take the time to prove your skills first.

Simply put: Rating-restricted tournaments are not open to players who do not have a rating in an attempt to ensure that the participants are more evenly matched - if you haven't been assigned any rating yet, we do not yet know your skill in the game.

Ladders

• All of the above mentioned rules for tournaments also apply to ladders, but ladders have a few additional rules that are specific to them only.

• A draw cannot be offered in a ladder game other than checkers or chess. It is possible for a ladder game to end in a draw, but this is only when the game has been played out to a stalemate conclusion. The point of the ladders are to climb above the other players, and mutually agreed upon draws are not allowed for that reason. To allow this would affect the accuracy of the ladder results.

• If a player has not been on site for longer than a month and is on rung one of a ladder, they will be removed. If you see players in this situation, send a PM to GoldToken Support so we can remove them.

Want to view your past and won tournaments?

1. Click on the Tournaments link at the top of your game sheet
There you will see a page that looks something like this:

Tournaments

See Ladder Tournaments
See Inter-Club Ladder Tournaments
Tournament Signups: 33
Tournaments in progress: 832
Completed tournaments:	 4198
Your active tournaments: 1
Your won tournaments:	3
Your completed tournaments: 66

2. Click on the Your won tournaments link to view your won tournaments
3. Click on the Your completed tournaments link to view your past tournaments
4. Click on the Ladder Tournaments link to view the site ladders
5. Click on the Inter-Club Ladder Tournaments link to view the club -vs- club ladder tournaments

Prizes

• Prizes are not given for ladder games

• If you have won a GoldToken Tournament Prize in the past year, you will still receive credit for the win, but will not receive the tournament prize. You will instead receive a GoldToken Tournament Winner Certificate! Suitable for framing, these awards come on gold-flecked paper with the GoldToken logo and the player's name and date.

• In the case of guest membership tournaments, you must be a guest from the start through to the end of the tournament to be eligible to receive the membership.

• When two guests win a membership prize from the same tournament, the prize will be split in half between them. But when three guests win the tournament, a play off will be set up for them.

Olympic Prizes and Rules

• Contestants are to join and remain in the prospective clubs of their origin unless given permission by Badger, for the duration of the tournament.

• Each Olympic club has one main team manager who organizes and runs that specific club.

• Each club has a set date to send the names of up to 6 nominees per game variation and the games they will be entered in to The Olympic Club Presidents Club.

• It is the responsibility of each tournament winner to report their wins to their club manager so they can have the win entered in the [ Goldtoken Olympics ] wiki, their first, second and third place winnings.

• Players are required to remain in their Olympic Team to play, place or win Olympic prizes and/or memberships.

US Postal Rates and How Prizes are Affected

Unfortunately, our shipping costs have risen substantially with the latest postage increase. And everything now has to go first class overseas. This has led us to have to require players pay the shipping costs for all prizes.

What does this mean for you?

This will mean all players have to pay the cost of shipping to receive their prizes. For shipping rates, please see the information posted in GoldToken Store.


Is there any way I can prevent this?

While there is no way we can prevent the cost you must pay for each package, what we can do is allow you to 'save' your prizes. GoldToken Management will keep track of your prizes in a wiki, after you notify us of what was won. You can then choose to 'store' these up until such a time that you feel the postage reimbursement would be worth it. Be advised, if your 'stored' prizes do become larger than the size that will fit in one manila envelope we will have to mail these out to you with the required postage reimbursement.

How big is a two ounce package?

You can figure on about 5 heavy or 10 light pens, or 1 carabiner for each two ounces.

What if I do not want to pay the shipping costs?

You can also, at any time choose not to receive a specific prize. We will not force you to pay the postal fees, but if you choose not to, we will not be able to send the prize or give it to another player unless they pay for the shipping.