BuzzerBeater Community

Elections

Elections are held in order to decide who will become the manager of a national team. Elections last for one week. Users may register for only one election, but they may register in any country, including those not their own. The winner of the election is decided by the votes of other BuzzerBeater users. Users can only vote for managers of their own national team.

National team elections have two distinct phases. In the first phase, which lasts for four days, interested candidates can register for consideration for the managerial position. During this time, these candidates will start to receive votes from the country's users. After the fourth day, the election pool is reduced to the top five candidates, plus ties, including only those with at least 5% of the total number of votes. No new registrations are allowed in the second phase of the election if there had been at least 10 votes cast up to that moment. The election ends after three more days, with the candidate with the highest number of votes winning the managership. In the case of a tie, the candidate who has been playing BuzzerBeater for longer is declared to be the winner

Votes can be changed or canceled at any time. If the candidate that a user has voted for is culled from the election pool after the first phase, the user's vote is canceled, and he or she is welcome to vote for one of the remaining candidates.

Information and debate about the candidates for an election are found in the relevant country's national forum. Threads related to the election are strictly moderated by BuzzerBeater Game Masters, who determine detailed rules for each election and its corresponding forum threads.

BuzzerBeater administrators (BBs) are not allowed to run in elections. Game Masters (GMs) are, although they are not allowed to moderate forum threads pertaining to the election in which they are registered.

The winner of a National Team Manager election is elected for a two season term, with the relevant competitions outlined in the next section.

Competitions

The national team competitions take place over the course of two seasons. During the first season, teams will compete in a continental championship tournament that also serves as the qualifying tournament for the World Championships. During the second season, the best teams will compete in the World Championships

Continental qualifying takes place for the National Teams in odd-numbered seasons, and the World Championships take place in even-numbered seasons. Conversely, qualifying for the U21 teams takes place in even-numbered seasons, and the U21 World Championships take place in odd-numbered seasons.

Past performance will be used to seed teams based upon the World Rankings. National team competitions take place during the game time of the host country. One country will host each continental championship, determined during the season of the World Championships, and a fifth country will host the Second Chance Qualifiers and World Championships.

• Africa Schedule: There are 8 teams in BuzzerBeater Africa. The 8 teams will compete in a single round robin starting on Monday of Week 2 and completing on Monday of Week 8. The top six teams will then compete in another single round-robin, with results of games against other qualified teams carrying forward. The top 4 teams advance to semifinals during Week 14 and finals the Friday of Week 14. The two finalists qualify for the World Championships. Every other team will play the consolation tournament.


• Americas Schedule: There are 21 teams in BuzzerBeater Americas. The 21 teams are drawn into three first-round groups of six teams and play a round robin from Week 2 to Week 8. The top four teams from each group are placed into one of two 2nd round groups, with results not carrying forward. The 2nd round is played from Week 9 until Week 13. The top two teams in each group advance to semifinals during Weeks 13&14, semifinals on Friday and Finals on Monday. The two finalists qualify for the World Championships. The remaining semifinalists as well as the 3rd placed teams in each 2nd round group qualify for the Second Chance Qualifiers


• Asia Schedule: There are 21 teams in BuzzerBeater Asia. The 21 teams are drawn into three first-round groups of six teams and play a round robin from Week 2 to Week 8. The top four teams from each group are placed into one of two 2nd round groups, with results not carrying forward. The 2nd round is played from Week 9 until Week 13. The top two teams in each group advance to semifinals during Weeks 13&14, semifinals on Friday and Finals on Monday. The two finalists qualify for the World Championships. The remaining semifinalists as well as the 3rd placed teams in each 2nd round group qualify for the Second Chance Qualifiers.


• Europe Schedule: There are 48 teams in BuzzerBeater Europe. The 48 teams are drawn into six groups containing eight teams each. Each group will play a round robin from Week 2 to Week 8. The top two teams will advance into two second-round groups of six, with no teams from the same 1st Round group drawn into the same 2nd round group. Results will not carry forward from the 1st Round to the 2nd Round. These groups play a round robin from Week 9 to Week 13. The top two teams in each group advance to semifinals during Weeks 13&14, semifinals on Friday and Finals on Monday. The four Semi-Finalists qualify for the World Championships. The teams finishing third and fourth in the second round group qualify for the Second Chance Qualifiers.


• Second Chance Qualifiers: Four teams from each confederation (besides Africa confederation) qualify for the Second Chance Qualifiers, with qualification to the Second Chance Qualifiers outlined in the continental setup. Only one game will be played on monday of week 14 (in the same time that the continental finals are played) and 6 matches will be played on neutral court and neutral enthusiasm, on this draw format:

  1) #3 EUR vs #3 ASIA

  2) #3 EUR vs #3 AME

  3) semi-finalist ASIA vs #4 EUR

  4) sem-finalist ASIA vs #3 AME

  5) semi-finalist AME vs #4 EUR

  6) semi-finalist AME vs #3 ASIA



• World Championships: 16 teams qualify for the World Championships, and are drawn into two first-round groups of eight. Each group plays a single round robin from Week 2 until Week 8. The top four teams advance to the final group, with the three results against other top-four teams from the first-round groups carrying forward. The 2nd Round is played from Week 9 until Week 12 The last four teams are put together, keep their result against the 3 other teams, and play 4 additionnal games to fight for the #9 through #16 ranks of the World Championship. The top four teams advance to semifinals during Week 13, with the 4th-placed team playing the 1st-placed team and the 3rd-placed team playing the 2nd-placed team. The finals are played Week 14. The winning team will be the World Champions of BuzzerBeater for the next two seasons!


• Consolation Tournament National teams that do not qualify for the World Championships will enter the Consolation Tournament. The Consolation Tournament will consist of two phases, the round-robin phase and the knockout phase. In the round-robin phase, each team will play 8 games. The top 32 teams after 8 games will be seeded into a single-elimination knockout tournament. The team that advances the furthest from each confederation will host the next continental competition (See HCA Restrictions). In the event of multiple teams from the same confederation being knocked out in the same round, and being the final teams from that confederation alive, the highest seeded team will host the next continental competition. If no teams from a confederation reach the knockout phase, the team with the highest standing in the round-robin phase will host the next continental competition.


• Home Court Advantage Restrictions In our eyes, the HCA was never meant for the strongest nations, clearing their way to an easy trophy(the 1st place usually). Sometimes, in a funny way, a team would win the consolation, win the local championship that comes after that, and completely fail in the next local championship, leading to another consolation win and another HCA and another title in their local championship.


• - A NT&U21 team who won a trophy(1-4 places) in the past 6 seasons will not enjoy another HCA, even if they won the consolation tournament.

Standings

The standings page for a given national team displays the current status of the tournament in which the national team is taking part. Round robin pools and playoff matches are displayed in reverse chronological order. The standings page displays round robin pools and playoff matches for every team in the competition.

Rosters

National team rosters are comprised of players of the team's nationality. A national team roster cannot contain more than eighteen players at once. National team managers can recruit or dismiss players from a national team at their leisure, so long as these players are currently active (i.e. not retired). National teams cannot recruit players from teams that do not have active managers (i.e. bots). If a player that is on a National Team is owned by a team that becomes inactive, the player will, by request, be released to the Transfer List. Any requests to release a player that is on a National Team will not be honored until the team that owns the player officially becomes inactive. A National Team player cannot be fired directly, instead he can only be sold.

NT&U21 players, owned by an inactive(6 weeks) supporter manager, will be released and will be put to sale on a starting price of 1$.

National team managers can see the player ratings of any player on their national team, but cannot otherwise see player ratings they would not otherwise have access to.

If a player is on his national team, an icon appears on his player page, and his league team's roster, indicating him as such.

Having your player on a national team will not affect his player ratings or weekly minutes in any way. He will garner experience, but cannot suffer an injury that will carry on after the game.

National Team Enthusiasm

Dismissing a player from a National Team causes a drop in the national team's enthusiasm; the more frequent the dismissals, the greater effect they have on enthusiasm. Adding players does not impact enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for National Teams rises (if below 5) or drops (if above 5) at a slower rate than they do for club teams.

At the start of all competitions, there will be a national team enthusiasm reset that will occur between 18:00 server time on the Saturday before the competitions and their start.

Manager Popularity

Dissatisfied with your national team manager's performance? Express your opinion by casting your vote on whether you approve or disapprove of the way he or she has been handling the team, using the Manager Popularity box on the team's overview page. For the benefit of the National Team and the community as a whole, if more than 10% of the users per country will vote negatively and reduce the popularity of the national team manager under 25%, a replacement procedure is automatically starting (with next-in-line election candidate being used as a substitute) . For countries with less than 100 users a minimum number of 10 votes needed to kick off the procedure. The procedure will not take place only in cases when there are no available candidates for replacement.

Rankings

The world championships aren't the only way that national teams can compete for status. For every national team game that gets played, some number of ranking points get distributed between the participants. Even scrimmages are worth something, but the bigger the game, the more points get handed out. All ranking points that national teams receive, they keep for 28 weeks (i.e., two seasons). Points expire on a rolling basis.

The winning team gets a bigger share of the ranking points for a game, but it doesn't get all of them. Precisely how many points are received depends upon the relative strength of the two teams. If the teams are evenly matched, then the winning team will receive 75% of the points, and the losing team the other 25%. An underdog who scores an upset will get nearly 100%, but a strongly favored team that takes home a predictable victory will receive only a bare majority.

Although it's usually safe to assume that the team with more ranking points will be the one that we deem stronger, the two are not identical. We track teams' strength in a separate internal variable that we don't publish (so don't ask!). The algorithm we use is called Glicko-2 and is similar to the systems used by Baseball Prospectus and by the US Chess Federation. If you're interested in the gory details, click here, but the math might be scary. Don't complain that we didn't warn you.