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.
BoardGameArena BGA (ran from Discord)
These are tournaments where the games are played on BoardGameArena (BGA) but rather than using BGA’s automated tournament system the tournament is organised manually by an admin on Discord and the games are played as custom games on BGA. The reasons for choosing this method can vary but the most common are because either the games take longer than the BGA system can handle or because we cannot run the desired format on the automated system. Fortunately these tournaments are still straightforward for you to take part in!
You can identify a Discord ran tournament because the join link in the table above will be a link to Discord rather than a BGA tournament page. These events will also have an Info link to a Tournament Information file which will contain all of the details about the tournament – this should answer any questions you might have about how to join, how the tournament is going to work, how the winner is decided and more!
Generally these tournaments require you to join the dedicated Discord channel prior to the published start time where you will be invited to “Check In” to the tournament. Check In usually becomes available 30 minutes prior to the tournament start time, checking in is how you tell us that you want to take part and allows the organiser to collect a list of all of the entrants ready to begin the tournament. Once check in closes (at the published start time) the draw will be made and players will be told in Discord who they are playing with for their first match. Once matches are completed, players report the results via Discord and once all games in a round are completed the next round is drawn and so on until we have found a winner.
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.
For Swiss tournaments, users won’t be able to join the tournament on PlayStrategy until 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.
A change for 2025 is a setting for Swiss tournaments on PlayStrategy which have two rounds for each pairing (e.g. Draughts variants) which will now take the ‘raw score’ of the pairing. For example, if Player A beats Player B in the first game, and ties them in the second game of the pairing, the score in the tournament will be 1.5-0.5. (In previous years this would be evaluated as 1-0).
There was an update to the tiebreaker used for Arena tournaments in 2025, that has been maintained for 2026. The standings as shown on PlayStrategy are ordered by tournament points and in the case of ties the ‘Performance’ metric is used which looks at the difficulty of your opponents throughout the tournament, measured by site rating. The MSO does not use platform rating tiebreakers in any tournaments, and so the tiebreakers that will be manually applied to all MSO arena tournaments are as follows:
- When separating precisely two players, a head-to-head tiebreaker is used. The player who has recorded the most wins in games between the two players in question will be ranked higher. Note this is not tournament points scored in these games, but simply most games won.
- Should the above tiebreaker not be applicable or not resolve the tiebreak, then the player who has played the fewest games in the tournament will be ranked higher. (This was the primary tiebreaker in 2024).
- Else, the players are considered tied, and medals are shared.
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.
