There will be a total of 4 tournaments, each with a separate prize fund. the prizes are paid in the NXT cryptocurrency, and are provided by the NXT community.

The tournament schedule is as follows:

Dates and times refer to FICS server time, which is Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8). The "date" command always shows official server time.

All 4 tournaments have this prize fund:

The tournaments will open for entry 20 minutes prior to the announced starting time. Follow the on-screen instructions to enter. They will be announced with regular bot announcements, in t-shouts and in channel 49. To make sure you see all tournament announcements, issue the command "td set tourneyinfo on".
info on NXT can be found here: http://www.nxtcrypto.org/ and here: http://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Main_Page

All FICS members are eligible to play, however, the following exceptions apply: Computer accounts cannot play. Players subject to a tournament sanction (like having been placed on the tournament bot's offender list) cannot play. Players subject to certain server sanctions cannot play, e.g. anyone on the server's ban, ratedban and/or abuser lists. The TM managing the tourney cannot play.

The tournaments will be 9 rounds with a 5 0 time control, i.e. 5 minutes for each player and no increment. They will be paired using mamer's Dinamo system, a.k.a. Accelerated Swiss pairings. There will be 2 rounds of late-joins.

Tiebreaking, if needed,  will be done in the following order:

- Median Buchholz, i.e. the sum of the opponent's score excluding the worst and best

- Median Buchholz 2, excluding the 2 worst and 2 best opponents' scores.

- Head to head.

- Player with the most wins.

- Player with the most games as black.

-Iif still tied, the prizes will be shared. the arbiter will decide on a distribution formula at his discretion, dependent on the situation.

All the rules and policies from "td help player_guide", "help abuse" and "help disclaimer" apply. The rules about receiving assistance, using a chess engine or otherwise, will be particularly enforced. So will our one-account-per-person policy. Duplicate accounts are kicked without notice.

When entering a FICS tournament you are expected to stay for its entire duration. Please plan accordingly. withdrawing from a tournament should be cleared with the TM running it. Playing and losing a few games and not being able win a prize is not a valid excuse for withdrawing half-way through the tournament.

The TM will monitor lag, and laggers may be forfeited without notice. How much lag is tolerated is up to the TMs discretion. Any TM decision regarding this is final and cannot be appealed.

If a player doesn't start his game in a prompt manner he risks being forfeited without notice.

Any player being disconnected when a round is about to start risks being forfeited without notice.

These tournaments will have no particular provision regarding noescape, so the server's normal noescpe rules are in effect. We do, however, strongly encourage that you do "set noescape off", but as we expect a relatively large number of players, we have no practical way of enforcing this as a rule.

If you want to dispute a decision made by the TM, the Chief Arbiter or the ComputerAbuse and Abuse Committees, an appeal should be sent to the Head TM at htm@freechess.org, within 72 hours of the tournament ending. The rulings of the Chief Arbiter are final, and cannot be appealed.

Any reference to Arbiter or Chief Arbiter in this document means the FICS Head TM or any FICS official he appoints to act on his behalf. Reference to TM is understood to be the Tournament Manager conducting the tournament.

All games are subject to scrutiny for signs of engine use or other forms of cheating. Anyone caught for cheating faces a minimum of one year ban from tournaments on top of any server sanction. In case a winner is caught cheating or is exposed as a duplicate account, the prize will be awarded to the next player in the standings.

The NXT community has set up the prize fund; except from that FICS has no affiliation with NXT or the NXT community. Our liaison to the NXT community is FICS user Rivaldo, and he'll be happy to answer any question about it. He will also be assisting the winners with setting up a NXT account and client software.

Neither FICS nor the sponsor have any responsibility for any games lost or obstructed due to losing connection, server malfunction, interface malfunction or similar. In case a server or mamer downtime or other technical issues) disturb the schedule, the Arbiter and the sponsor will agree on the best course of action.
Neither FICS nor the sponsor have any responsibility for any funds being subject to theft by hacking or other forms of criminal activity.

All players have a personal responsibility to ensure that participation is legal from their country/location. similarly it's the personal responsibility of the winners to deal with any taxes or fees their country may have related to prizes. Any legality issues pertaining to cryptocurrency are also the players' personal responsibility. FICS or NXT have no reponsibilty for any transfer or exchange fees related to NXT.

Prizes will be paid by the FICS Head TM from the prize fund being escrowed to him by the NXT community. Winners will be contacted within a week of the event; after the appeal deadline and after the Abuse and ComputerAbuse committees have had their say. Make sure your e-mail address is valid. use the "finger" command to see the e-mail address currently associated with your account.

These rules are subject to change as the situation warrants. in case of ambiguities or contradictions, either in these rules or between these rules and other documents, the Arbiter makes the final decision, and this cannot be appealed.