But how does it all work? How can we have a tournament when the players are scattered all over the globe, and all with jobs and kids and busy schedules? Organizing a webcam tournament on a single day or weekend seems like it should be possible, but in practice that would require each player to devote six or seven hours in a solid, uninterrupted block of time, with the Americans playing in the early morning, the Europeans playing in the afternoon through the evening, and players further east all but prohibited from the action without seriously sacrificing their sleep. And, bear in mind that many of us who play Old School on Skype have real-life obligations that make playing all day on a Saturday very unlikely, if not totally out of the question.

So, the structure of the event has to match the needs and habits of the group. When pairings are posted, the players have about 10 days (always including two weekends) to schedule their matches at a time that works for both their opponent and themselves. Less than 10 days would make it difficult for players to participate if they had to be away for a weekend, and more than 10-14 days would make the event much too long to reasonably commit to, and more difficult to keep player attention and momentum.

Unfortunately, this also means that having a tournament with true Swiss pairings is unworkable; if we waited for each match in a round to be scheduled and finished in a 10 day window, it would easily take 2-3 months to complete six or more rounds of Swiss. So instead, we assign multiple pairings for each player at the same time, and post them together in batches. This allows for three or four “rounds” to be completed within the same 10 day span, with fully flexible scheduling for the players. The results can then be compiled all at once, after which a new batch of pairings is posted.

We had experimented with different ways of doing batch pairings during previous instances of the tournament -- the 2017 Summer Derby and the first “Web Qualifier Derby” in 2016/17 -- and our tinkering continued this time: we introduced a “group stage” batch, in which players were assigned to self-contained round robin pods of four players each, according to geography and interest in competing for the n00bcon invitation. After the group stage, players were assigned four new opponents: two according to Swiss pairing rules (based on overall standings), and two completely randomized.