SJC Freeroll Dates and Info

So who's ready for the biggest free online Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament of all time? I know we are! Without further ado, here's all of the info for our SJC Freeroll, in which we're giving away SJC prize card Dark End Dragon!
​

Stage 1: SJC Freeroll Qualifiers​

When: Saturdays 8/10/2019, 8/17/2019, 8/24/2019, and 8/31/2019 at 1 PM EST (10 AM PST, 6 PM UK time)
How to enter: Entry will be in the #tournaments channel of our discord server. Signups will start approximately 2 hours before the tournament does. You must submit your decklist when you enter.
Simulator: DuelingBook.com only
Decks: Locked. You cannot change any cards in your deck between rounds.
Rounds: Double elimination, no time limits. All rounds are played "live." Once pairings are announced, you will have 20 minutes to find your opponent before you are given a match loss.
Prizes: Winner's bracket finalist will move onto the winner's bracket of stage 2 of the tournament (see below). The loser's bracket finalist will move onto the loser's bracket of stage 2.
Glitch/disconnect policy: Any provable glitches that render the game unplayable will result in a redo of the game in progress. Glitches caused by one particular player (such as the "hand reveal glitch") will result in that player being given a game loss. All disconnections will result in a game loss (unless they occur during sidedecking).
Expected total tournament duration: 7-8 hours
​

Stage 2: SJC Freeroll Playoffs

When: 9/1/2019 and onwards, until the tournament concludes
How to enter: You will automatically be entered for being a winner's bracket or loser's bracket finalist in one of the four qualifiers above. You must submit your decklist when you enter.
Simulator: DuelingBook.com only
Decks: Locked. You cannot change any cards in your deck between rounds. However, you may use a different deck than the one that you played in the qualifiers.
Rounds: Double elimination, no time limits. All rounds are played "non-live" (arrange a time with your opponent to play). All replays of your matches must be sent to staff.
Prizes: 1st place = SJC Dark End Dragon. If you wish, we will buy it back from you for $300, which is about 30% of its market value.
​Glitch/disconnect policy: Any provable glitches that render the game unplayable will result in a redo of the game in progress. Glitches caused by one particular player (such as the "hand reveal glitch") will result in that player being given a game loss. All disconnections will result in a game loss (unless they occur during sidedecking).
Expected total tournament duration: 15 days
​

This is roughly what the bracket for the playoffs will look like!

Why This Tournament Structure?

We anticipate the demand for this tournament to be extremely high, and thus our goal was to create a tournament structure that would be easy for our staff to run and provide the maximum potential for participation. Because of this, we decided to run a tournament in what is often called a "pool" structure.

The three double elimination tournaments that we ran in the past have all gone exceptionally well in terms of time-to-completion and player satisfaction, so we want to keep doing what's working. However, running this as one double elimination tournament would have the issue of the tournament taking a long time to conclude and providing interested players with only one particular date that they could enter; if they had something else going on that day, they would miss their one and only chance to win their SJC Dark End Dragon. By doing this hybrid pool structure, we feel that we will provide almost every player a chance to enter and win this tournament, regardless of whether they've got a wedding to attend on one particular Saturday or whether they live in America or Europe.

Our playoffs are effectively a continuation of these double elimination pools from stage 1, with one difference. It will be run "non-live" (aka "find your opponent"). Although these non-live tournaments tend to have inherent issues associated with them, we believe that these issues will be mitigated based on the fact that this stage of the tournament will only have 8 players, all of which will be highly motivated to find their opponents, as they will have a lot of skin in the game in that they will be very close to winning the big prize.

Although this pool structure may seem a bit complicated to those who are not familiar with it, we believe that it will overall offer the best possible experience for the Goat Format player-base. Pick a Saturday or two in August, make sure you've got several hours set aside, and you'll have a chance to win your very own SJC prize card, Dark End Dragon! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask us in the comments.