How do tournaments work, and how do I win and get paid a prize?

The schedule

There are three kinds of tournament, each held every 6 to 10 days:

Novice: for new teams and teams still finding their feet.
Intermediate: for teams with some tournaments behind them.
Open: for every team.

Novice and Intermediate have a rating limit, and each tournament says it openly. Each tournament is in a weight class drawn at random, for example 300–399 kg: your team's bots together must weigh within it. See them all under League › League schedule, or in Brain code's Tournaments tab.

Entering a team

Make a team and put your bots in it (League › My teams, or New team in Brain code).
In Brain code, load a saved program into every bot on the team.
Click Enter a team on the tournament. In Brain code's Tournaments tab you can also drag a team onto the tournament.
The dialog lists your teams in that weight class, and says why any of them can't enter (no program loaded, rated too high for the tier, and so on). Pick one and click Pay $5 and enter.
Pay on Stripe's page. Your entry shows entered ✓.

Your team plays with the programs loaded into its bots when you enter. They're sent with the entry and kept private. Entries close 30 minutes before the start. Until then, you can withdraw (refund) a paid entry.

How it's played

The teams are drawn into a bracket, with byes when the number of teams isn't a power of two.
Each pairing plays best of three, swapping sides each game.
If three games pass without anyone winning two (because of draws), the team with the most wins goes through, then the one with the most hull left over the three games, then a coin toss.

Prizes and payouts

The prize is 80% of the entry fees, shown as Prize so far while teams enter. If you win, a notice on the League schedule tells you how much. Click Set up payouts and fill in a few details with Stripe, once. After that, your prizes are sent to your payout account.

After the tournament

Each tournament has its own page: Meet the teams, the bracket with a ▶ to watch every game, and The conversation, where anyone signed in can post. Owners of teams that played can add a YouTube or Vimeo video of their team.