[std] Hippo Cup 4 | 4v4 | 300 - 30,000 BWS | 14 UTC wins!‬ · forum‬

4v4, teams of 6 to 8
Score v1
Rank range 300 ~ 30,000 [BWS]
International
Group stage -> double elimination bracket
2 bans per team
Failed scores count
NF allowed on any map (no score penalty)
Roll winner = 1st warmup, 1st ban, 2nd pick
Roll loser = 2nd warmup, 2nd ban, 1st pick
GS: Best of 9
RO32/RO16: Best of 11
QF/SF: Best of 13
F/GF: Best of 15

This is a 4v4, osu! standard tournament.
The rank range is 300 to 30,000, with BWS applied. (See the BWS section below if you're confused!)
The team size ranges from 6 to 8 players.
The tournament will hold 64 teams.
Registration is international, so you can team up with anyone in the rank range regardless of country.
The tournament will be played in Score v1.
The tournament will have a group stage first, and the top two teams of each group will advance to a double elimination bracket stage.
The Grand Finals match will have a traditional bracket reset if necessary.
Initial seeding will be done by average BWS rank of all players on the team.
The bracket stage will be seeded as follows: Group 1 #1 vs Group 16 #2, Group 2 #1 vs Group 15 #2, etc.
Match schedules and mappools will be released on the Monday before those matches should be played.
Match schedules will be written in UTC. Find your personal time zone and convert your match times here: http://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/
Joining the discord is REQUIRED by the captain of your team, or else your registration will not be counted.
No staff members are allowed to play other than streamers, commentators, and graphics designers.

Registration: Mon. January 18 ~ Sun. January 31
Roster Screening: Sun. January 31 ~ Sun. February 7
Group Stage: Sat. February 20 ~ Sun. February 28 | Best of 9
Round of 32: Sat. March 6 ~ Sun. March 7 | Best of 11
Round of 16: Sat. March 13 ~ Sun. March 14 | Best of 11
Quarter Finals: Sat. March 20 ~ Sun. March 21 | Best of 13
Semi Finals: Sat. March 27 ~ Sun. March 28 | Best of 13
Finals: Sat. April 3 ~ Sun. April 4 | Best of 15
Grand Finals: Sat. April 10 ~ Sun. April 11 | Best of 15

All matches in a given week will be played on the same mappool. The Winners Bracket and the Losers Bracket will always be on the same mappool at any given point of the tournament. The format of the pools will be as follows:
Group Stage: 5 Nomod / 3 Hidden / 3 Hard Rock / 4 Double Time / 3 Freemod / 1 Tiebreaker
RO32 / RO16 / QF / SF: 6 Nomod / 3 Hidden / 3 Hard Rock / 4 Double Time / 3 Freemod / 1 Tiebreaker
Finals / Grand Finals: 6 Nomod / 4 Hidden / 4 Hard Rock / 5 Double Time / 4 Freemod / 1 Tiebreaker

On Freemod picks, at least two players from each team must use Hidden, Hard Rock, or both.
On tiebreakers, Hidden and/or Hard Rock are allowed, but not required.

The match lobby will be created by the referee, and the team captains of both teams will be invited. The captain is then responsible for inviting the rest of their team. If the captain of a team is not online, the referee will invite any other player from that team, and that player will be responsible for inviting their team.
Teams have a 10 minute grace period to have at least 4 players available to play the match. If 10 minutes pass and a team does not have enough players to play the match, the other team will receive a win by default.
All matches must be played as a 4v4. No 3v3s or 3v4s allowed. Warmups also must be played as 4v4.
Once all players have joined the lobby, captains will be asked to !roll; the winner of the roll will have the first warmup, first ban, and second pick. Note that there will be no warmups in group stage.
The referee can give host to the players for warmups only. No player will have match host after warmups. A team will select a map by naming the map in the multiplayer chat, and the referee will select it.
The referee is not allowed to play in the match.
Each team is allowed 2 bans per match. Banned maps are effectively removed from the mappool for the duration of the match and are not allowed to be picked. A team is allowed to ban 2 maps from the same mod pool.
Teams have 2 minutes (120 seconds) to select a map; if they fail to choose in the allotted time, the map choice will pass to the other team. This will have no effect on the order of picks afterward; for example, if Team 1 failed to pick within the timer, Team 2 would get to pick a map, then Team 1 would pick the next map.
Once the map choice is locked in, players will have 90 seconds to ready up. The referee will start the match when all players are ready. If the 90 second timer ends, the referee will force an !mp start 15 command, and the match will start with whoever is in the lobby.
The winner of a map is determined by which team's four scores add up to a higher number. Basically, that just means failed scores count.
For any map and with no penalty, a team is allowed to ask the referee to enable freemod so that a player can take No Fail. This is to prevent them from team failing if they think it might happen. Any player playing with No Fail will have their score doubled at the end of the map.
In the case of a genuine disconnection, if the map result was ambiguous (uncertain), the map will be replayed. However, if the map was already clearly decided and there is substantial evidence of the fact, the referee may apply common sense to give the point to whoever would have won the map.

Short for Badge Weighted Seeding, BWS is a tournament-minded seeding method intended to more accurately seed players and enforce rank restrictions based on the player's tournament badges.
In short, BWS artificially "ranks up" players based on the amount of badges they have.
In terms of how much a player ranks up per badge, each badge is worth more than the one before it.
More specifically, the formula is as follows:

rank^(0.9937^(badges^2))

The formula caps at rank 1. That is, a player can't go past rank 1.00 BWS (even if you were rank 2 it'd take like 30 badges to actually get rank 1.00 BWS).
Remember, BWS is not intended to reflect solo play skill. Read the first bullet point again.
Sample BWS rank values can be found on this spreadsheet.