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Bronze Bracket | Silver Bracket | Gold Bracket
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: MARCH 8, 2023 @ 23:59:59 PM UTC
DATES: MARCH 11, 2023 - APRIL 2, 2023
Note: Daylight Savings starts in the Americas on Sunday, March 12th. Daylight Savings does not start in Europe until Sunday, March 26th. Because of this, for two weeks, the time difference between Eastern Daylight Time and Central European Time will only be five hours, so please keep that in mind when signing up for this tournament.
Introduction & Future Plans
A brand-new year means brand-new tournaments for the MKCentral community. MK8DX Staff have been hard at work drafting and planning all-new tournament experiences for 2023 and beyond. We cannot wait to share what we have in store, but in the meantime, we are pleased to announce MKCentral Paradigm! Before we go into the specifics, we would like to quickly publicize something:
As previously mentioned, 2023 will consist of three MKU seasons. This new schedule ensures that there will be ample time between MKU seasons and will prevent any interference with the holidays near the end of December. Taking a page from MKU, 2023 will similarly consist of three team tournaments and two squad tournaments. That being said, here is the tentative schedule for the remainder of 2023:
- MKCentral Paradigm | March 2023 — April 2023
- Unannounced Team Tournament #1 | July 2023 — August 2023
- Unannounced Squad Tournament #1 | Summer 2023
- Unannounced Team Tournament #2 | November 2023 — December 2023
- Unannounced Squad Tournament #2 | Holiday 2023
What's new with MKCentral Paradigm?
We are proud to share that MKCentral Paradigm will implement a highly-requested gimmick in order to spice up the competition: track bans! For every match, teams are allowed to ban four tracks from being selected while also being able to protect one track from being banned. Please follow along below as we go over the proper etiquette for banning and protecting tracks:
Step 1. Protecting Tracks
The first step of every match, teams will decide on which singular track they wish to protect from being banned by the opposing team. The home/hosting team will go first, with the away/non-hosting team following suit.
Step 2. Banning Tracks
Next, teams will decide on which tracks they wish to ban. Teams will need to ban four tracks in total and must declare them to the opposing team all at once (i.e. in one message). Teams are unable to ban tracks that were protected by the opposing team. Similarly to the previous step, the home/hosting team will go first, with the away/non-hosting team following suit.
Step 3. Playing the Match
Once teams complete these steps, the match may begin with a grand total of eight tracks being unable to be selected by either team. Teams who pick a banned track will receive a -40 point penalty. Additionally, while we strongly discourage teams from picking the random track option due to its unpredictable nature, there will be no penalty if the random roulette selects a banned track.
Now, there are 96 teams playing in this tournament, with an estimated 434 total matches to be played, so we want coordinating track bans between teams to be a relatively quick and painless process. To do this, we highly encourage teams to contact each other ahead of their scheduled match time and be clear and concise when declaring tracks to the opposing team.
Tournament Information — Format, Ruleset, & Schedule
MKCentral Paradigm will utilize the exact same format and tournament structure as MKCentral Frontier IV. This does NOT mean that MKCentral Paradigm is a replacement for MKCentral Frontier. MKCentral Frontier will return at a later time. For anyone who needs a recap of this format, please refer to the spoiler below for a summary.
Tournament Information
MKCentral Paradigm is a 3-stage tournament, with teams starting in a different stage depending on their seed. The tournament will last for 4 weeks (7 days in total). However, most teams will end up playing for only 2-3 weeks, starting at different points depending on your seed. Below is a brief overview of the tournament structure. The tournament will be capped at 96 teams to allow the brackets to run smoothly.
STAGE 1 - 33rd-96th seeds start here - Starts on Day 1
Stage 1 will be 8 double-elimination pools with 8 teams each. This will take place on the first day of the tournament. To advance to Stage 2, teams must win 2 matches before being eliminated. Teams that get eliminated in stage 1 will be moved to the Bronze Bracket, described below.
Example Stage 1 Pool
BRONZE BRACKET - For teams eliminated from Stage 1
The Bronze Bracket will be a 32 team double-elimination bracket consisting of the teams eliminated from Stage 1 of the tournament. It will start on the second day of the tournament, and will take 2 weeks (4 days) to complete.
STAGE 2 - 17th-32nd seeds start here - Starts on Day 2
Stage 2 will be 4 double-elimination pools with 12 teams each. This will take place on the 2nd and 3rd days of the tournament. To advance to Stage 3, teams must win 3 matches before being eliminated (2 matches if you're a 17-32 seed). Teams eliminated from Stage 2 will be moved to the Silver Bracket.
Example Stage 2 Pool
SILVER BRACKET - For teams eliminated from Stage 2
Like the Bronze Bracket, the Silver Bracket will also be a 32-team double elimination bracket consisting of the teams eliminated from Stage 2 of the tournament. It will start on the 4th day of the tournament, and will take 2 weeks (4 days) to complete.
STAGE 3 - GOLD BRACKET - 1st-16th seeds start here - Starts on Day 4
The highest stage of the tournament is the Gold Bracket, consisting of the top 16 seeds as well as the 16 teams to advance from Stage 2. This is a 32-team double elimination bracket. This stage is winner-take-all, and the winner of this bracket will be declared the winner of MKCentral Paradigm. Like the Bronze and Silver brackets, this bracket will take 2 weeks (4 days) to complete, starting on the 4th day of the tournament.
About Placement Matches
Once a team gets double-eliminated in either the Bronze, Silver, or Gold brackets, they will then enter a small bracket of teams who lost in the same round as them. For example, here is what Losers Round 1 of each bracket would look like:
8 teams would normally lose this match and be eliminated from the tournament. However, instead of their tournament being over, they'll be entered into a placement bracket as shown below:
These brackets will look like the following for teams that get eliminated from the following losers rounds:
- For Losers Round 1 and Losers Round 2, the bracket will be similar to the image above (3 extra matches)
- For Losers Round 3 and 4, only 4 teams get eliminated during each of these rounds (2 extra matches)
- For Losers Round 5 and Losers Quarters, only 2 teams get eliminated during each of these rounds, so they would just play each other (1 extra match)
Similar to all other tournaments hosted on MKCentral, MKCentral Paradigm will utilize the MKCentral Universal Ruleset, which can be found here. Since this tournament features track bans, some modifications to the MKCentral Universal Ruleset are in order, which you can view below:
- For every match, each team is allowed to ban four tracks from being selected. Each team is also allowed to protect one track from being banned by the opposing team. As always, track bans and protects are reset after every match.
- Teams that pick a banned track will receive a -40 point penalty, instead of the usual -20 point penalty.
- If a team fails to provide the tracks they wish to ban and/or protect for a particular match, then that team will have no bans and/or protects for that match.
- Teams are not allowed to change their list of banned tracks once their match begins.
MKCentral Paradigm will begin on March 11, 2023 and will end on April 2, 2023.
TO SIGN UP FOR MKCENTRAL PARADIGM, CLICK HERE
TO SIGN UP FOR MKCENTRAL PARADIGM, CLICK HERE
