Tournament Details

The table below contains all of the information you’ll need to take part in any of our Grand Prix 2024 tournaments.  We are currently working through the details for each of the 100+ tournaments on our schedule and links will appear below as they become available, please bear with us!

You’ll find the following information in the table

• Date & Time – When the tournament will begin.  Note times are always given in UTC+0 and we recommend arriving approximately 15 minutes before a tournament starts to ensure you’re all set and ready for the tournament to begin at the published time.
• Tournament – The game/event that the tournament is for!
• Category – Our tournaments are categorised into one of seven categories.  As well as competing for medals in each tournament you might also try to win a Category Championship.
• Premier – Premier tournaments count towards the Grand Prix Championship which is our all-round competition.
• Platform – The platform is the place where the tournament is played.  There’s additional information about each of the platforms at the bottom of this page, or if you get stuck, please come and ask us in our Discord group.
• Join – This link will take you to the tournament.  Most platforms will show information about the tournament on this page including selected rules for the tournament and how many rounds will be played.
• Pre-Reg – Tournament’s with a Pre-Reg link require you to register in advance in order to participate.  Please refer to the Info link for details on registration deadlines where applicable.
• Discord – If there’s a Discord link, this means you’ll need to join the tournament’s Discord channel to participate in this tournament.
• Info – Sometimes it is not possible for the “Join” link to convey all of the information about a tournament.  In these cases we’ve provided an additional information sheet which explains everything you need to know.  It’s worth reading this as it likely contains information you’ll need to know about the tournament.

Don’t forget to register for the MSO Grand Prix if you’ve not done so already.  You only need to do this once, and it makes you eligible for our leaderboards and to order any medals that you may win!

Platform Information

BoardGameArena BGA (Automated)

BoardGameArena (BGA) automated tournaments are easy to join and play in.  If you’ve not done so already, join the Mind Sports Olympiad Grand Prix group on BGA (https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=9962498).  Once you’ve joined, you’ll be able to join tournaments from 24 hours prior to their start time by clicking on the Join link in the table above next to the tournament you want to play.  If you have not yet accrued 100 ELO points you will need to wait until 1 hour before the tournament, refresh this page (please use a hard-refresh of Ctrl+Shift+R to ensure your browser isn’t loading an old ‘cached’ version of the page) and use the Join link which will have been updated so that you are now able to join the tournament.  Don’t worry, all of our tournaments have plenty of space so there’s no risk of missing out.

At the tournament start time make sure you are logged into BGA and you’ll see an invite at the top of the screen inviting you to join your first match.  Click to join and play your game.  BGA will track all of the results and you can see the results of all tournament games and the overall standings via the tournament homepage.

The Join link’s are already active and you can see details of the tournament format from the BGA tournament page accessed through this link (although you cannot join the tournament until registration opens 24 hours before the start).

We have a dedicated page with details about how the BGA tournament system works, rules on when you can timeout an opponent and explanations of how we will resolve any tiebreaks during BGA automated tournaments.  If you have any queries during a tournament, contact us in the tournament’s channel in Discord.  There is a tournament chat on BGA but these are not always monitored.

PokerStars

Poker 2024 Information

PlayStrategy

PlayStrategy (PS) tournaments are organised using PlayStrategy’s tournament system which will automatically assign pairings.  You’ll need to join the Mind Sports Olympiad team and then you can join the tournament using the link provided in the table above, or by searching for it in the MSO team tournament list on PlayStrategy.

PlayStrategy tournaments fall into two main categories: Swiss tournaments and Arena tournaments.  Many of the Arena tournaments are also Medley tournaments.  Click through to the respective links to find out more about each type.

New for 2024 is a restriction that only allows users to join a Swiss tournament 1 hour before the start time – we hope that this limits the number of no-shows. Users can join Arena tournaments once created – these will not a pair a player who is not present on the tournament page.

BackgammonHub

Backgammon tournaments are organised using BackgammonHub’s tournament system from within our MSO club.  Sign up for each tournament you’d like to enter using the links in the table above.  Return to this page on the day of the tournament, check in will open 15 minutes before the published start time.  Do not be late, once the tournament has begun there is no way to join late!

For any questions that come up during the Backgammon tournaments we recommend contacting us via Discord in the Backgammon channel.

Other Platforms

The platforms already discussed will host the majority of Grand Prix tournaments, however we will be using some other platforms for select games.  There is information about each of these next to the tournaments using them above, however if you find yourself stuck you can come and ask us in our Discord group for help.