Hello everybody, welcome back to the American styled Community Grand Playoffs. Before I get to the interim qualifying scores after the first week, I would like to confirm the format of the tournament and clarify some rules following questions I received in the comments.
The Format
Our final number of entries for the tournament was 336, which we will whittle down to 256 through a simple aggregation of scores over Gameweek 6 and the upcoming two Gameweeks.
The 256 highest scorers will be seeded for the first round and the bottom 80 players will be eliminated. In the case of level scores there will be three steps to tie-breaking: most points benched; fewest transfers made and finally drawing of lots.
Between Gameweeks 9 and 26, the 256 qualifiers will compete in six knockout rounds, each round a best of three head to head, bringing us down to the final four. The semi-finals will be a best of five head to head between Gameweeks 27 and 31 with the winners entering the World Series best of seven head to head over the final seven Gameweeks of the season.
For clarification of the knockout rounds each week is an isolated head to head match and the winner of the round is the player who wins the most matches over the three, five or seven weeks. There are six stages to splitting tie-breakers in the knockout matches and they are in order: most points benched; fewest transfers that Gameweek; most goals; most assists; most defensive clean sheets and finally a coin toss.
Here’s a handy picture guide to the rounds.
Scores on the Doors
Without further ado this is how qualifying stands after the first Gameweek.
Congratulations to SomewhatPleasing who had a storming first week, topping the table with 77 points, while the community’s bookie tracker Your Mum’s Athletic sits in the 256th seed spot on 46 points with six points benched. Though of course everything is still to play for as 12 points cover the median 200 places, a good captaincy decision or a dud one could yet make or break your qualifying charge.
To keep track of qualifying scores throughout the next two Gameweeks this link will update nightly over each weekend:
Finally, thank you all for your kind words in your entry emails and good luck over the next two weeks of qualifying.
