For the final standings of the Swiss elimination portion of the event:

Current Event Standings (Round #5 Completed)

For the current backet of the single elimination portion of the event for the six qualifiers from the five Swiss rounds:

Current Final Bracket (Six Players Remaining)

Jonathan Lockwood recently prevailed over Bruce Reiff to win the 2001-2002 championship.  Can he, Ed Menzel or Vince Meconi, the previous champions, repeat?  Or will a new champion be crowned?

The fourth BPA War At Sea PBeM tournament will begin March 1, 2003.  38 players are participating.  Be sure to join the fun this time around.

The tournament format will similar to the Swiss elimination format used at the WBC.  There will be five Swiss rounds, with the top six scoring players advancing to the single elimination quarterfinals (the top two scoring players will receive byes into the semifinals).  Any ties will be resolved using a strength of schedule tiebreaker, which is calculated by taking the average number of VP each players opponents averaged scoring each game they played.

Players will initially be seeded by their AREA rating (as of February 28).  The top seeded players will play the bottom seeded players in the first round.  In subsequent rounds, players will be matched against players with similar records and victory point totals.  During the 5th and final Swiss round, all players with a mathematical chance of advancing to the final will be placed in one pool).

At the start of each game, bidding for sides will be used.  Each player will email the GM (Bruce Monnin) their preferred side for the game (games involving the GM will be handled by assistant GM's Jonathan Lockwood or Vince Meconi).  If both players choose the same side, the GM then sends out a die roll to determine who starts the bidding.  That player emails how many (if any) POC he is willing to give up to play the preferred side.  The other player can then accept the non preferred side or bid a higher amount of POC.  This continues until one of the players accepts the POC and the non preferred side.  Bidding must be in no finer than 1/2 POC increments.

Victory points will be awarded as follows:
A 2 or more POC victory is worth 10 VP to the winner and 0 VP to the loser.
A less than 2 POC victory is worth 8 VP to the winner and 2 VP to the loser.
A tie is worth 5 VP to each player.

In the single elimination portion, the player who finished higher in the Swiss elimination portion will win any ties.

A time limit will be set for each round.  It will be 3 months.  If a game is running past the time limit, I will ask the two players to mutually agree on the final outcome of the game.  If they cannot agree, I will have the two assistant GM's and myself adjudicate the game.  However, after making our decision, I will then deduct 1 VP from each player for slow play.  (For example, if the adjudicated decision is that the game is a tie, both players will receive only 4 VP, not the 5 VP normally awarded for a tie).  I do not expect to need to do this (and did not have to last tournament), as long as everyone plays at a reasonable speed.

I have had to mediate a few die roll disputes in previous events.  Just so everyone knows where I stand on this, if there is a disputed die roll, my procedure is to encourage players to resolve their problems themselves.  If they can not, I will rule in the following manners:
1)  If too few dice are rolled, those rolls are kept and additional rolls are ordered.
2)  If too many dice are rolled, the excess rolls are ignored.
3)  If the format of the die rolls are wrong (such as it is not possible to definitely tell which were the hit rolls and which were the damage rolls), the die rolls are rerolled using the correct format.