Official Season 2 An WELCOME I would like to welcome everyone here to our second season of Top Spin. Season one was more or less a test season, and went off pretty decently. We hope that we can grow and learn from season one, and make season two a premier season and league for LeagueGaming.com. SEASON INFORMATION AND FORMAT Our season will consist of 13 tournaments which will be played for points towards your overall ranking. At the end of the season, we will declare our season champion to the player with the most points. New for season two will be the addition of the Masters Cup. This is where the top 8 players of the league will battle it out in a round robin to see who really is crowned the Top Spin Champion. SIGN UPS Sign ups for season two will start sometime in mid-February, and end early March. New for season 2 will be the way you sign up. Like every other league at LG.com, you will be automatically signed up for every tournament for the entirety of the season. If you sign up, and decide to quit later on (after knowing all the dates), you will be penalized, and probably banned from the whole entire league. This is nothing new, just something that I didn't incorporate in season one...but should've. So please make sure you are completely loyal to this league, if not, just like the other leagues, you will be serverly penalized. SCHEDULE New for season 2 will be the official ATP tour schedule, complete with all 4 Grand Slams, and the 9 Master Series events. Events in bold are Grand Slams, and all others underlined are Master Series events. TOURNAMENT / COURT / SURFACE Australian Open / Oceania Tennis Championship / Hard Pacific Life Open / Indian Wells - Pacific Life Open / Hard Nasdaq 100 Open / Nasdaq 100 Open / Hard Monte-Carlo / The Babolat Monaco Open / Clay Telecom Italia Masters / Casablanca Pro-Am Cup / Clay Hamburg / Acapulco Adidas Pro Open / Clay Roland Garros / Paris International Championship / Clay Wimbledon / Great Britain Championships / Grass Montreal / The Select Comfort Hardcourt Open / Hard Western and Southern Financial Group Masters / Sergio / Hard US Open / The Americans Championships / Hard Madrid / Romania Indoor Pro Open / Hard Masters Cup / Vienna Adidas Pro Indoor Tournament / Hard If for some reason, you know you cannot make a ceratin tournament, then it's up to you to notify either the commish or co-commish, to take you out before hand. Like I have mentioned before, the dates will be clearly posted for each tournament, and all you need to do is cancel before the start of that tournament. If not, you will be penalized. You can only use a custom player that you have made, no real, or pre-made players. You can also use any different characters you might have, there are no limitations to how many you can use. Any player is welcome to host the match. If by chance you see that there is bad lag, please restart the match and let the other player host. If there is still lag, make sure everything that takes up bandwidth is off (ie. IM programs, Kazaa, other internet users on at the same time). If you still have lag, try again at another time, or just deal with it. After the match is complete, the winner will take stats and input the scores. To understand how this works, please go here: http://www.leaguegaming.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2248 MATCH FORMAT New for season 2 will be a change for the match formats. Grand Slam tournaments will have each round being played for best of 5 sets. And all the Master Series events will be best of 3 sets - UNLESS you are in the finals, which will be best of 5 sets. This all follows the format of the official ATP Tour. RANKINGS AND SEEDINGS Rankings will be determined by how many points you get after each tournament. The more points you get, the better chance you will be seeded. Seedings come from your rank, which lets higher ranked players not have to play one another until later in the tournament. For each tourney, we will have between 16 and 20 seeded players. To get one of these seeds, you have to be among the top 8-16 ranked people who enter the tourney. So in theory, you can be seeded if you are the #26 ranked player. As long as 10 people ahead of you in the ranks don't enter. STYLE OF PLAY Not really new for season two, but I want to make this clear. Any style of play is allowed, only because every style of play is beatable. If you have the right stars on your player, and the right strategy, you can beat anyone. There will be no toleration of bashing other players for thier style of play. I will say that only once! If you are heated up from a loss, please take an hour to calm down before you post anything that might hurt your reputation. Bashing WILL NOT be tolerated. POINTS SYSTEM Each tournament may consist of 6 rounds (6 rounds for a 64 player draw, 5 rounds for a 32 player draw). For reaching each round, you get a certain number of points, This point system is the standard for Master Series events. Grand Slams are doubled. 1 - 1st Round 7 - 2nd Round 15 - 3rd Round 25 - Quarterfinals 45 - Semifinals 70 - Finals 100 - Champion After each tournament is played, the overall rankings board will be updated. POSTING SCORES As for using the calculator and scoreboard, the winning player always enters the score. There will be no tolerence for cheating, leaving the game before the stats page is up, cursing, or lewdness. No cheating, quitting, plug pulling, intentional pausing, etc... just play the game straight and how it's meant to be. Please play cleanly and have some fun. No sore losers! And most importantly, do not exit, disconnect, turn off your Xbox, etc until the game is 100% complete and you are given access to the stats. There will be no tolerance for people exiting the game before the game is completed. LADDER PROGRESSION After each round is played, the next rounds will be open on the scheduled date. So there is no playing ahead. CONDUCT AND SPORTMANSHIP I don't think I need to tell you guys that vulgarity, name calling, cheating, quitting a game, disconnecting intentionally, shutting off your XBox, etc. etc. is not allowed. Reports of such conduct will result in a quick removal of your league membership. Harmless trash talking is one thing, but please respect your opponent and treat them as you would want to be treated. Lag. We all have broadband, and this game doesn't seem to be a bandwidth hog at all. However, if you do not have 100% access to your broadband connection, I would ask that you do not play the game until you can be assured of that. That means, if your wife, brother, parents, child, sister, etc might get on the computer and start checking email or using AIM, or browsing the net, you should reschedule your game until the broadband is all yours. It should also be said that turning off ALL internet applications is vital to a smooth online experience. If you leave MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Trillian, Outlook Express, your browser, etc running on your computer, it can and will cause lag (or at least make voice chat very choppy). Please turn this stuff off before you play your games! Voice chat. It is an official requirement that every league member have an operational XBL communicator and wear their headset the entire time while playing league games. This is not a suggestion, it is a rule and applies to all leaguegaming leagues and events. If not just to chat with your fellow gamer, at a minimum you need it to talk and hear each other if something should come up (ie. phone call, door bell, bathroom break, etc). The voice chat feature is what makes these games great, and it helps build comradery with fellow members. So please use it and get to know each other. Instant Messengers and PM's. Please try and make yourself available on AIM, MSN, ICQ, etc and add all of the league members to your buddy lists. Most of use one or all of these chat clients and it is our primary tool for getting our games scheduled, lined up and started. PM's are also effective, but not as efficient and a slower way of getting in touch. In case of not getting matches in time, we will see if you used PM's to get in touch with your opponent. If no attempts were made, then both players will get the loss. CLARIFICATION OF MISSED MATCHES This is what probably killed season one. So let me get into this in detail so there isn't any confusion. When you look at the draw sheet, above each round will be the dates each round has to played by. If you cannot make this match, please be curtious enough to tell the other player. Reasons might include vacationing, sudden emergencies, internet problems, whatever. Just please don't let the other player hanging, because that will result in penalties. Now, if you have tried contacting your opponent, and he has not replied by the date of the round deadline, you will be given the win. You need to get approval by me, or the assistant co-commish before doing anything. If you have both contacted each other, and still can't get that match in, there will be a random drawing (50/50) and someone will advance. This is the fairest thing I can do. It's not fair to give someone an extra day, and have the opponent in the next round waiting, becaues that might mess with his schedule. In closing, if there are any problems with getting matches in, please contact me or the assistant commish. If there are no PM's given to me, I will assume that you don't care, and penalties will be brought forth. All I ask is a reason, it takes 1 minute, and everything will be fine. There is only a one strike rule this season, so please take time out. If you can't, then don't sign up. EXHIBITION RULES For those of you that don't know, the exhibition scoreboard is up and running. This will give you a quick rundown of how to use it (Winner always inserts scores). And of course, I will make this as simple as possible. To get there, click on leagues on the top right corner on the LG.com home page, then click the Tennis "Ex Scoreboard". On the right hand column, you will have the "Input Singles Score", click on that. "Player LG Name" is where you put in the persons names. "Away" is the person that joined into the game, and "Home" is the host's name. Once you have that done, you will have to insert the stats. Aces is pretty self explanitory, and winners is all the total winners added together (Volley, Forehand, Backhand winners), and unforces error is the errors each player had. Then you have the set scores, which again was made very simple. Insert the scores, and make sure you have the Home and Away scores in the proper spaces then click on "Input Scores".
