Tournament Primer

Berfore you arrive at your first tournament, you should make sure you know a few things. You can usually find these out from the start.gg page or on Discord, but you can also find out when you get to the venue in some cases.

• Make sure your venue and entry fees are paid. Some tournaments require pre-registration, and others require you to pay when you get to the venue. Pre-registration will almost always be on start.gg.

• Find out who the tournament organizer (TO) is. This info will also be on the start.gg page. It's very helpful to the TO to know if there's a new player attending their tournament, so they can walk you through how to participate and can answer any questions you have.

• Most local tournaments will be very lax in regards to where to play.  You find your opponent, and just plop down at any available setup. Larger events, which often take place on Saturdays, will have locations where your pool will take place, and you must go to that location to begin your tournament.

• Do not be afraid to ask the TO to call for your opponents. Some people are hesitant to do this, but TOs will be very happy to help you find your match faster. You'll have to do this less and less as you attend more tournaments, but early on, you should always do this to help the tournament run more smoothly.

• Make sure you know when to begin playing. The TO will likely start shouting to stop your friendlies (casual matches with another player) when bracket is going to start, but that's only if you're already there. Don't be late for bracket!

• Sometimes you'll be late for bracket and that's also fine! If you suspect you'll be running a little late, make absolutely certain you let the TO know in Discord. TOs can easily account for this, especially at a local, but if you don't tell them, the usual disqualification timer applies (usually 10-15 minutes after your match was supposed to start).

• Ask your TO any questions you can think of. Same with calling matches, TOs will always be happy to help, because ultimately, that's their job. If you're concerned that you're bothering the TO, or they appear to be busy a lot of the time, you can also ask the TO if there's somebody else you can go to for help. There's usually several people at an event who have enough experience to give you answers to 99.9% of the questions you have, and it's worth knowing these veteran players or TOs just in case the actual TO is busy (usually only a concern at larger events).

• Make sure you know the rules:

• Stage Striking: The very first thing you will do as you sit down with your opponent. There are 6 legal stages in Melee:

Neutral Stages

• Battlefield (BF)

• Yoshi’s Story (YS)

• Dream Land (DL)

• Pokemon Stadium (PS)

• Fountain of Dreams (FoD)

Counterpick

• Final Destination (FD)

You have to find out what stage you and your opponent will begin playing on, and to do this, you will stage strike. You will play one round of rock, paper, scissors with your opponent, and whoever wins decides who gets to strike first; the winner usually strikes first, but they can defer if they want.

If you win, you will strike 1 stage from that list of Neutral Stages.

Your opponent will then strike 2 stages. 

You will then strike 1 stage. 

This will leave one stage available to play on, and you can begin your set on that stage. This is reversed if your opponent strikes first; you will strike 2 stages and they will strike 1. It's important to know what stages are advantageous for your character against your opponent's character, but early on, don't worry too much about which stage you start on, just try to strike stages you don't want to play on.

NOTE: Most large tournaments have Pokemon Stadium as the counterpick stage and Final Destination as the neutral stage. In Michigan, we have recently been using FROZEN Pokemon Stadium at most of our events, which swaps these stages, as Final Destination tends to give more of an advantage to certain characters compared to Frozen Pokemon Stadium. Make sure to triple check this before you start your first set of the day, because some tournament organizers don't use Frozen Pokemon Stadium yet.

• Stage Bans: After each game in a best-of-3 set, the winner of the previous game can ban a single stage, and the loser will select their stage from the remaining stages. If you win game 1 in the set, you will decide what stage you DO NOT want to play on and tell your opponent, and they won't be able to select that stage, and vice versa if your opponent wins game 1. Best-of-5 sets do NOT have stage bans, so the loser of each game can choose any legal stage, except...

• Stage Clause: A player may not counterpick any stage they previously won on during the set, unless agreed upon by the opponent. So if you won game 1 on Yoshi's Story, and you lose game 2, you CANNOT go back to Yoshi's Story.

• Wobbling is banned. If you don't know what wobbling is, here's a video explaining it. Wobbling is defined in most rulesets as "a sequence of more than four player-controlled pummels by the player-controlled Ice Climber between each of which the opponent is hit with any number of non-pummel hitboxes by the other Climber, plausibly locking them in continuous grab hitstun". This is very confusing to you, surely, but thankfully, this will virtually never come up; Ice Climber players are rare, and most of them are very aware of the wobbling rules. If an Ice Climbers player grabs you, make sure you count how many times the Ice Climber that grabbed you does a pummel attack; if you count 5 or more pummels, you have the authority to pause the game and go find a TO.

• Ledge Grab Limit: Some characters are able to stall the game by grabbing the ledge and making it extremely difficult to hit them. This will happen most often with Jigglypuff. In the event of a timeout, either player may invoke the Ledge Grab Limit rule by asking to view the Cliffhangers statistic for all Players in the results screen. If either player exceeded 60 Cliffhangers during the game, that player forfeits the game. If both players exceeded 60 Cliffhangers, this rule is disregarded. Much like the wobbling rule, this is incredibly unlikely to happen. 60 ledge grabs is a LOT, and while some events lower this to 45 instead of 60, it's still extremely rare.

• Neutral Start: The vast majority of set-ups you'll play on in person will have mods that force neutral starts, but if you play on a set-up that doesn't, you can ask to do a neutral start. The reason for doing this is that the spawn locations in unmodded Melee can put you or your opponent in an unfair situation at the start of a game. Some players prefer to pick ports that force you to spawn in a neutral pattern, but most players just agree to run to either side of the stage and countdown from 3 before starting the game.

• Gentleman's Agreement: Always worth noting. You can make an agreement with your opponent to ignore any and all of these rules, with the general caveat that you should make sure you do not cause the tournament to run appreciably longer. Example: you do a gentleman to play your set on Poke Floats - good! That's funny! You do a gentleman to play a first-to-10 set - not good! Wasting everybody's time! No!

• Pausing: If you press pause during your set for any reason other than to report a broken rule such as wobbling, you will forfeit the current stock you are on. Most players will enforce this rule unless you had a very good reason to pause, such as your controller spontaneously breaking. If you genuinely accidentally pause the game, do not take offense to your opponent asking you to abide by this rule, but most players will let it slide if they aren't negatively affected by the pause (such as losing a stock or taking damage they wouldn't have without said pause). 

There's a dozen unspoken rules that you'll almost never see in writing, but apply to almost all players in any tournament. You'll learn most of these very quickly, but it's nice to have a heads up for a few of them.

• Try to ask your opponent if they want to do a handwarmer (here's an example of Plup and Mew2King doing a handwarmer) before your set, and don't be afraid to ask for one if you feel like you need one. You'll usually stage strike and then bring this up. Keep your handwarmer around a minute max. If you don't ask for one before the set, you're out of luck.

• Do a fistbump and give a "good luck" to your opponent before the set begins. 

• Don't talk to your opponent during your set unless you're very confident they are comfortable with it. Only tell them what your ban is, and/or ask if they're ready before each game.

• Mid-set popoffs are okay in certain cases, but don't be disrespectful. This goes for post-set popoffs as well.

• After your set, the overwhelming majority of the time, you're expected to fistbump your opponent and give them a "ggs" or "good games". If your set is especially close, or late in bracket (top 8, usually), you can opt for a handshake, but use your brain when deciding what to do. Hugs are reserved for friends, please don't initiate a hug with a stranger after your set.

• Try not to give unsolicited advice after your set, especially if you win. If one of you asks the other for advice, that's fine, but it's in very bad form to give your opponent advice they didn't ask for. After a loss, some people are very hot and they need to cool off, and giving somebody advice for the set they just lost can make them even more upset.

• When watching sets, please be respectful of the players. Try not to make comments about someone's play unless they're limited to "wow, X is so good!" or something to that effect. The worst feeling during a set is hearing somebody criticizing your play from behind you, because it gives your opponent an advantage, and it can take you out of the game. Treat people how you'd want to be treated during sets.

• The winner of a set is usually responsible for reporting the set count to the TO. If you lose the set, you can also do it, but it's usually worth confirming who is reporting the set after it's over.  Failing to quickly report your set can very easily hold up bracket, so make sure this is completed.

• Homie Stock: There could be an entire page dedicated to the subject of the Homie Stock, but we'll be brief here. A homie stock is the act of sacrificing your current stock after your opponent tragically loses their own stock from making a simple execution mistake, usually at a very low percent. Homie stocking is not at all expected of you, and nobody will ever blame you for not doing it, but many people still do this as an act of good sportsmanship and an indication of "no, I don't want to win just because you messed up and lost a stock". Homie stocks are generally agreed to only be acceptable in tournament; homie stocking in a friendly is usually in bad taste, as playing from behind in a friendly is viewed as good practice. Consider doing a homie ledgedash as an alternative.