Announcing 2021 Online Teams World 4 Player Chess Championships! (DISCUSSION)

Hey, everyone!

Thank you all for your interest in playing and watching the World 4 Player Chess Championships! I am pleased to announce the dates for the Teams Championship with a chess.com sponsored prize pool of $1000 (see prize money disclaimer)! Please understand that due to the merge to chess.com/variants, there may need to be some adjustments. The following is currently proposed for this year's championship:

• Qualifiers: September 4, 5, 11, 12 at (0, 12, 16, and 20 UTC) 1600+ minimum rating. Partners-only tournaments (no random pairings; one must select a partner and re-invite him/her for the rest of the tournament). Teams may join and leave as they wish.
• If champions return, then the only 14 of the above qualifiers will take place; that is 16 qualifier arenas minus two at the same time and day that the defending champions prefer.
  Clarification on exact times will take place once we get closer to the start date of the Championship.
• 1 hour 20 min qualifiers. Top 4 teams in each qualifier battle in single-game single-elimination. Within 1 minute of when the results are displayed, Teams ranked 2nd&3rd will be invited to a single 2|15 D rated teams game by the tournament referee, unless that referee is on one of those two teams, in which case, 1st&4th will be invited first. Within 5 minutes of when the results are displayed, the 1st&4th teams will be invited to a single 2|15 D rated teams game. Players must accept within 3 minutes of their invite. Once the two games finish, the winning two teams will be invited within 1 minute, and must accept within the next 3 minutes of the invite. The winning team will be Qualify.
• As this is partners-only, there is no "Play This Game Again" option. Players will only be allowed to qualify with the same partner within that tournament. Within a tournament, accidentally accepting the wrong player's invite will go on a two-strike basis.
  Once qualified, a team must refrain from playing the 2021 W4PCC Qualifier Arenas. Having already qualified, accidentally accepting an invite to a Teams W4PCC Qualifier will go on a three-strike basis.
• Round 1 of the preliminaries (Sep 17 and 18) will be single elimination, Week 1 qualifier vs Week 2 qualifier of the same qualifying day of the week and time. Round 2 preliminaries (Sep 24 and 25) will be double elimination, Ranking the Defending Champs #1, and the highest ratings of the higher rated team of the brackets, #2, #3, #4. The opponents of these ranked teams will be #8, 7, 6, and 5. Round 2 teams will battle at the same qualifying times of the day as their opponents, but on a Saturday. Preliminaries are again best of 5, 2 |15 Delay. Round 3 and onward will be worked out between teams and the tournament director. Brackets should play their matches in a span of 1 to 2 weeks.
• Finalists after the Double Elimination Phase will play Best-of-12. First-to-6.5 will be declared the 2021 Teams W4PCC Champions! There may be TV coverage on chess.com and/or commentary on chess.com's primary and/or secondary Twitch channels. For details of rematching and in the case of tiebreaks, please see the Handbook.
• Prizes: $350 to each teammate of the Champions; $150 to each teammate of the Runner-Ups.
  Please see Prize Money Disclaimer.
  
  For Round 2 and onward, please see the following:
  
  https://challonge.com/2021teamsW4PCC

For entire Handbook document of 2021-2022 Championship Rules, please see the following:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1khcBXNECasJZ8Q4gLuP5HiyUQaD27PMzzlPRI1Yk_MA/edit#

• Prize Money Disclaimer: The 2021 Teams W4PCC Finalists will provisionally be awarded from a prize pool of $1000 from chess.com. Please understand this may take days to process. Only finalists will be awarded prize money, and those players must agree to use the email directly linked to their chess.com accounts to find the link to the Prize Money when Awarded. Please note that the link may appear in your junk/trash/spam folder, so be sure to check those soon after you win prizes from the Championship! 

WTF

THE MERGE TO VARIANTS IS HAPPENING?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY HYPER RATING 

Nice

do we have to reveal personal information

eventually...... duh. Did you look at the dates for the event?

2-3 months isn't that long lmao

lol

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

lets go!

another place to lose rating

No thanks 

psssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh! I will be free from September 4! And the championship will begin! Maybe this is a sign that I need to take part? Then I need to decide on a partner...

amazing!!

probably...name and country

i'd rather not do name, but country obviously yes

Apologies to those who tried accessing the link to the Handbook. I forgot to change to Anyone with this link can view. Should work now.

cool.

Is there any need for registration, if yes, how to register?

how do I join?