★ Smogon Charity Bowl IV

[Lily]

SMOGON CHARITY BOWL IV
(Thanks to brightobject for the logo!)​

In case you haven't heard somehow, Turkey and Syria were recently struck by a massive earthquake, hitting a whopping 7.8 on the Richter scale, alongside a 7.6 aftershock mere hours later. Thousands of civilians have been killed, displaced, or majorly harmed; in an effort to provide relief to those affected, Smogon is going to be hosting its fourth Charity Bowl, this time in Scarlet and Violet OverUsed. This tournament will take place this Sunday, February 19th, at 12PM (noon) EST (GMT -5). We will be raising funds for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) Foundation.

You can join us for this tournament as a participant, or follow the action live on our Twitch streams at twitch.tv/smogonu. Smogon will be raising money via donations throughout the event, so we are encouraging all participants and spectators to donate whatever you can spare. You will be able to donate through Twitch itself in this event when the stream is live. You can also donate right now if you so choose! You can donate at Smogon's Twitch, link here.

FORMAT

The Smogon Charity Bowl will consist of two brackets that will merge into a single bracket from Round Three of the tournament onwards. The tournament will be single elimination, best-of-one. The format will be Scarlet and Violet OU.

Players will be randomly divided into two groups. Each group will play in a live best-of-one tournament, following the same rules and format as the Smogon Tour. From Round 4 onwards, players will play in one bracket.

All games will take place on the official Smogon Tournament server at http://smogtours.psim.us/.

Tournament Rules

General Smogon Tour rules:

• You must have a Smogon forum account to sign up for this tournament. You cannot participate if you do not post in the signup thread. Proxy signup posts are not allowed.
• When signups for this tour is posted, post as quickly as you can to ensure a place in the tournament. It is up to the discretion of the host on when sign-ups will be closed. On Xenforo (our current forum software), YOUR POST NUMBER IS NOT ALWAYS ACCURATE. Please do not attack the host or on SmogTours if your post number implies you should have been in the tournament and you are not.
• Substitute players will only be applied in the first round and as deemed necessary by the host.
• If you have signed up successfully, you must stay for the entire tournament unless you have lost.
• You may change teams between rounds without penalty. You are, in fact, encouraged to do so to prevent your opponents from knowing your team in advance.
• Do not hassle the host(s) of the current tournament.

Battling rules:

• The format is Scarlet and Violet. The current status of the appropriate standard ladder will function as the prevailing tier list. If you have any question about whether a particular Pokemon is banned or not in any particular tier, reference the banlist of the appropriate ladder on PS! with '/tier'. This is not confusing. There will be no exceptions.
• Species Clause: A player cannot have two (2) of the same species of Pokemon on their team, based on National Pokedex number. For example, a player cannot have two Koffing on their team.
• Sleep Clause: A player cannot put two or more different opposing Pokemon to sleep using attacks that induce sleep to opposing Pokemon.
• Evasion Clause: A player cannot increase their Pokemon's evasion stat with a move that specifically increases evasion. Items or indirect boosts do not break this clause.
• OHKO Clause: A player cannot use a move that has a chance of instantly KOing an opposing Pokemon. For example, Horn Drill or Sheer Cold are illegal moves.
• Timer Clause: If a player exhausts the timer, that player loses. SmogTours staff will not turn the timer off in any circumstance.
• Self-KO Clause: If a player uses a recoil move to cause a draw, that player wins. If a player uses Explosion, Selfdestruct, Destiny Bond, or Perish Song to cause a draw, that player loses. If a draw would be caused by a hold item or ability that causes recoil to the opponent, the player that controls the Pokémon with the hold item or ability wins. (This clause helps determine the winner of what would be called a tie in DPP. Later generations do not apply this clause, because their cartridge mechanics will prevent ties from happening.)
• Endless Battle Clause: A player cannot use a combination of items / moves / abilities to force a game that will never end (example: Recycle / Leppa Berry / Heal Pulse, etc).
• Moody Clause: A player can not use the ability Moody.
• Swagger Clause: A player can not use the move Swagger.

PRIZES

The winner of the Charity Bowl will receive a prize banner to appear on their Smogon account. In addition, the following Pokemon Showdown prizes are being offered, courtesy of PS! Staff:

• A custom avatar.
• The ability to recolor your PS username.
• The ability to claim an unused PS username.

The winner will be able to choose between a custom avatar and claiming an unused PS username, in addition to being granted a recolour; the remaining option will be granted to the runner-up.

Prize Rules

The prize banner will appear under the user’s custom title and state that they are the winner of the Smogon Charity Bowl. The winner will be allowed to choose from a range of colours.

The custom PS avatar must meet all ordinary rules for custom avatars, and is subject to Marty's approval.

The PS name recolor will allow you to change your PS username color to the color of another account that you own.

Regarding claiming an unused PS username, only names that have not been used for three or more years are eligible to be claimed.

DONATIONS

We strongly encourage all entrants to donate at least $5. However, if you are unable to give at this time, you will still be able to participate in this tournament.

Again, you can show your support here: twitch.tv/smogonu.

Thank you all.

Please follow this thread for updates and information regarding sign-ups.​

 

[Lily]

Signups are live!

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-charity-bowl-iv-signups.3716540/

 

[Lily]

Wouldn't be a charity bowl without a sappy post, would it? So to start that off, let's give big props to the winner Ox the Fox, an incredible player who put up a very dominant performance. More than deserved, very well done! It's great to see you take this one after the runner-up performance last year. Congrats!! The final was a wild one with a very... interesting chat, to say the least. Check it out here!

In total, at the time of this post, we raised $2,760.89. That's an absolutely enormous number that we really couldn't be more proud of. The enormous generosity of the userbase was as encouraging as it was charming; from SamanthaNatalie's enormous $1,000 donation to kick things off to mael's $5 donation for every game he won, we saw a ton of memorable moments that gave the stream a really great boost. And speaking of the stream, there is as usual a ton of credit to be given here:

Finchinator and ausma, two excellent hosts, made for very strong casters. I received multiple compliments after the stream ended directed at these two and it's not hard to see why, you guys were absolutely fantastic. Between the insightful commentary that helped many less experienced viewers easily keep track of what was going on and the mispronunciations of Pokemon names (Iron Yugulis??? Meowscardah???) that the chat loved, you guys really carried, and considering the state my voice is in atm I couldn't be more thankful for that lol.

Kalalokki, who deserves more credit than I do: on top of setting up the linking of the charity behind the scenes, Kala also streamed all the games and kept us focused on what we needed to actually be talking about, too. Not just this time, either; Kala has done this for at minimum every single one of these that I've been part of, and probably the first one too. Definitely the unsung hero, thank you so much.

Theia, Coconut, Eve and Lalaya (and possibly others, sorry!): Thanks a bunch for modding the stream chat! It can definitely get pretty rowdy in there, but you guys were able to keep it perfectly under control. Special thanks for the constant advertising and question-answering; it can be easy to miss that stuff when you're trying to multitask between that and covering the games on-screen, so it was really appreciated that you guys were picking up the slack. Tyvm for giving up your time for this!

And then while not stream-specific, I have to give an absolutely enormous thank you to the two bracket hosts, Kaede and Kris, who were so efficient that they made the process look entirely effortless. Even in the stressful beginning where there were difficulties with inexperienced players who needed a little bit of hand-holding, you guys never lost your patience and made it look easy (and believe me, if you've ever hosted a live tour, you know it isn't). You made it possible to completely take my mind off the actual running of the tournament and just focus on the show, which I really can't thank you enough for.

And finally, while I don't wanna namedrop all the individuals here - mostly because I don't know if they want me to - I received an outpouring of support from a number of users who either helped me scour through a list of charities to choose one to work with, or who live in/study in/have family in Turkey and Syria that were willing to provide me with support and information about what was going on so that we could more accurately spread the word and help out. Your patience and willingness to help is remarkable and beautiful and helped shape this event into what it was. I appreciate you all from the bottom of my heart.

If I've forgotten to thank anyone individually, I'm truly very sorry; these things may look short and simple but so much planning and time goes into them, and it can definitely be tough to keep track of everything. It's more than worth it to know that we've helped with something important though. I personally unfortunately fell ill a few days before the event started, so I was struggling to give it my A-game, and I'm sorry for that. I hope that it was still as enjoyable as the past ones, though, if not more. We saw a great turnout, some wonderful games, and overall I can safely say that I feel the experience was a massively successful one.

You guys rock. Thank you so much for being part of this. <3