NSPDCL Season 4 Rules

~Rules are subject to change

General Format

The NSPDCL will have seasons beginning every 9 months. Each season will consist of a regular season phase and a playoffs phase. The teams qualified for the playoffs phase will be determined either by group winners/runners up, or the top 4 teams overall, depending on how many teams there are. For more information, see Divisions Format.

Registration and Team Formation

For rating collection purposes, the Team Formation phase is from January 1, 2023 to February 1, 2023. Teams will consist of four players. At registration, each player's current daily rating will be taken if the player meets the Player Eligibility requirements (see below) and recorded as that player's qualification rating (Q-rating). The average of a team's four players' rating must be 1500 ELO or below [EXCEPTION: See #2].  Team registration ends 3 days before the regular season opens, on January 28, 2023. 

1. Players may only play for one team during the duration of a season. 
2. If, in any prior season of NSPDCL, a team has been formed and participated according to the standard rules, that team may bring back that identical lineup in any succeeding season regardless of rating limitations. 
3. If necessary towards the maximum rating average, the lowest accurate rating ('accurate' is deemed by the League Admins at their discretion, based on the amount of recent games played, games timed out or resigned early, and standard live ratings) at any point between the beginning of Team Formation and the beginning of the Season will be used as the Q-Rating

Player Eligibility 

1. All players' accounts must be at least 3 months old (counted from the beginning of the season, in this case October 31, 2022) to be eligible to play in the NSPDCL. If a player's account is not 3 months old, they may participate as a Substitute Player (see #4) once their account reaches 3 months old.
2. Players must have completed at least 10 daily games against humans in the past 12 months to participate in NSPDCL. If a player registers (and receives a Q-rating) before they have done so, admins will update the Q-rating to what it was after 10 games completed. 
3. Players with any timeout ratio may participate in the NSPDCL, however, players who have a timeout ratio above 10% in the last 3 months at the time of calculation of their Q-rating may have their Q-rating adjusted at the Admins’ discretion based on games lost by timeout. It is advised for captains to take into account the timeout ratio of their players.
4. Substitute Players (players who take the place of a player who cannot play that month's match) may only play for one team throughout the course of the season. The substitute player's rating will count for the rating average, meaning if the average Q-rating of the team after substitutes replace the previous players is above 1500, that team is not valid and will be forfeited for the match. 

Divisions Format

If possible, the league will be divided into divisions of 4 teams each. If the amount of teams is not divisible by 4, there will be no divisions and pairings will be drawn randomly. If there are divisions, the format will be Round Robin within a division; meaning each team will play each other team in their division once. The match format has changed since last season, see Regular season play. The playoffs format depends on the amount of teams participating in the Regular Season, but the playoffs will likely also be a round-robin format. 

Regular Season Play

Matches will have the same format they did in seasons 1 & 2. Each player will play 1 game against each player from the other team, for a total of 16 games. For each match, a forum will be made in the club with the pairings. 

Players are required to challenge their opponents to games compliant to the specifications (color, time control) of the game. Games must start by one week (168 hours) from when the admins post pairings. Players must post the game links in the game link forums. All games that start after the deadline will NOT count for the league, and instead of a game result, admins will declare a forfeit result. If players start a game with incorrect colors, they will be made aware and given the option to restart with the correct colors. If both players agree to count the already started game, they may do so.

Games will have a time control of 3 day correspondence chess, on chess.com.

If a correct challenge was sent, but not accepted, before the game-start deadline, the challenger gets a forfeit win. If one player attempted to send a challenge, but the challenge settings of the other player did not allow the first player to send the challenge, and the other player did not make an effort to change their settings and/or send a challenge to the first player, the challenger will be awarded a forfeit win. If no challenge was sent, it is a 0-0 forfeit draw.  

The team that score the most points wins the match.

On February 1, 2023, Round 1 of the 2023 regular season will begin. The NSPDCL admins will post a news post with all team pairings for that round, and forum posts with individual game pairings.

Round 2 will begin March 1; the same procedures will apply. 

Round 3 begins April 1. 

If playoff teams are not decided by August 31, the admins may decide to push back the opening playoff date by a week or two. This will not, however, affect the second playoff pairings date. 

Playoff Play

Teams that qualify for the playoffs are determined either by division placement (if there are divisions) or by overall standing, both based on match points (overall match results) and then, if those are tied, game points (individual game results). Ideally there will be 4 teams in the playoffs, but this may change based on the total number of teams.

On September 1, 2023 the playoffs will begin. If playoff teams are not decided by then, the beginning of the playoffs may be delayed until the playoff field is set.

The next season will likely begin November 1, 2023, but the NSPDCL champion might not be determined until after that, meaning there may be overlap between seasons.

If you have any questions, please contact @Typewriter44. Amendments may be made to the rules, in which case they will be noted at the beginning.