Just wanted to clarify the moderator position, since what Lando posted was just one reply in a larger thread of discussion, and several things were in response to specific questions that he asked.
Can you organize a tournament where players pay an upfront fee for a prize pool to be distributed based on results? Yes, as long it's balanced.
Can tournaments give out bonus points (more than what was taken in from the entrance fees)? No, not without specific approval first. Zero-sum tournaments are fine, but we won't generally allow tournaments that require the prize pool to be sweetened with additional points coming from nowhere. This has been abused in the past, when players would request their games to be considered "mini tournaments" demanding bonus points just because.
Can one player give another player points? No, we discontinued this since a lot of issues were coming when people were doing this and it undermines the points system.
Can one player donate points for another to pay for a tournament fee? No, as this is essentially one player giving points to another.
What if I just need 5
to join a game? Ideally, players should set aside enough points for the individual buy-ins of all tournament games. We've been flexible in the past with helping players in the past, but we don't want to see that being abused just for free points.
The refill remark was in response to a question about Lando, suggesting that we essentially pull the points out of thin air for players that didn't have enough to pay the tournament fee. I was explaining that we were not going to do that. I was also clarifying that once players have bought into a tournament (which would require a manual point dock), they won't be automatically refilled back up to 100 total points since it was a manual dock, but we can manually reset back up to 100 total points after their run in the tournament has ended. This would ensure similar point system behavior as with committing their points into a game.
We also suggested as an alternative (in response to a question by Lando), that he could set up of side pot, where everyone who could afford to would pay a fixed amount, and only those that paid for that could win points from that pot.
Why all of this? We basically don't want to the point system abused by allowing points to be pulled out of thin air or arbitrarily transferred between players.
GUNBOAT TOURNAMENT
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