Registration is now open for the US Tak Open. It will be hosted online at playtak.com and run from 23 October to 21 November. Registration closes Friday, 22 October at 10pm BST. The tournament is free and open to all. You do NOT need to be in the U.S. or a USTA member to participate.
The first place prize will be unique wood and resin capstones handmade by Bill Leighton with your input. Second and third place will receive Wolf & Hawk Metal Capstones and Chandrian Cloth Board respectively, both from Worldbuilders Market. The top 3 finishers will also qualify for the 2022 Tak Championship.
The format for this tournament is the Nohat system. This is a modification of the Swiss system that has been optimized for online play, invented by tak player NohatCoder. The important feature is that each round has multiple matches with all of the pairings created at once, which allows much greater flexibility in scheduling matches. For this particular tournament, there will be four rounds: the first round will last 10 days (Saturday to the following Sunday) and each player will play four matches, the second and third rounds will last one week each with two matches, and the final round will last one week with a single match.
All matches will be played on playtak.com, and consist of two 6×6 games with a time control of 15 minutes + 15 seconds per move. A komi of 2 will be used. Any ties for first, second, or third place will be broken by playing pairs of blitz games until one player comes out on top. If more than two players are tied, a double round robin will be played between tied players. The time control for all tiebreak games is 3 minutes + 5 seconds per move.
The tournament director will be Bill Leighton, and the day to day organization will be done by Al Rossin. They can both be contacted on the tak Discord server if you have any questions (@rabbitboy84 and @archvenison respectively).