2023 Tournament Format

All new rules for 2023 will show up in this color.

In 2023, NHRL will switch tournament formats, away from double elimination.

We will start the day with a 2-round Qualifier. All competitors will be placed in a single-elimination bracket based on the result of their Qualifier fight.

We will also hold NHRL Freestyle Fights, which is a series of grudge fights that eliminated competitors can participate in for most of the day.

This means that most competitors will get at least two fights in the bracket. Competitors who get knocked out of the bracket early are welcome to fight grudges until closing time.

We will continue to allow anyone to fight here for free (other than a refundable deposit), and we will continue to provide complimentary builder services in our workshop during and between events. We are also making repair timing adjustments to better accommodate the 12lb and 30lb weight classes.

We want you to spend the entire day with us, fighting with your bot!

Why make this change?

This is a big change, and we’re making it for a few reasons.

• Our events in 2023 will be shorter. We anticipate each event will end between 8 and 10 pm.
• Less crunch and stress for repair time.
• No registration cap or fee, other than the refundable deposit. Our events continue to be open to the public, and we can continue to grow.
• We will stream most Qualifier fights and all bracket fights.
• Fights will be more fun to watch and participate in, especially at the end of the tournament.
• Freestyle fights means plentiful opportunities for grudge fights. If you want to fight all day, you will fight all day.
• You will have a predictable maximum number of fights, and it will be easier for you to strategize for your next fight.
• Single-elimination is far easier for spectators to follow.

That said, we received a lot of feedback from builders about the preliminary round we ran in January. Many builders felt it could be improved to make the fights more meaningful, and to reduce the opportunity for tactical forfeits.

We’ve taken a lot of this feedback, and we’ve consulted with several builders to tweak our preliminary rounds to address these concerns.

The 2-round Qualifier, summarized

Starting in March, our preliminary round for all weight classes will be updated to a 2-round Qualifier. Any bot that goes 0-2 in the Qualifier will be eliminated. All other bots will be seeded into the bracket depending on their performance in the Qualifier.

Seeding the Qualifier

Bots will be seeded into the first round of the Qualifier on the Tuesday before the event, in a bracket reveal livestream similar to the one we made in January. Note that we will hold this bracket reveal 4 days before the event instead of 10 days.

We’re making another change from January: Any bots from the same individual builder will not meet in the Qualifiers, up to a maximum of 4 bots. They will also not meet in the bracket, as long as all related bots win all their Qualifier fights. This should reduce opportunities for tactical forfeits.

To create the initial seeds for the Qualifiers, we will use the same seeding rubric that we used in January, based on a bot’s experience level.

• Level 1: Bots that have fought at NHRL before.
  • If bots are tied in rank, they will be seeded randomly.
  • Any unranked Level 1 bots (bots who haven’t fought at NHRL since 2021) will be seeded randomly below the ranked bots.
• Level 2: Bots that have fought outside of NHRL.
  • These bots will be seeded randomly within the level.
• Level 3: New bots, from experienced builders.
  • These bots will be seeded randomly within the level.
• Level 4: New bots, from new builders.
  • These bots will be seeded randomly within the level.

Once we have an ordered list of Qualifier seeds, we do not have to worry about Levels anymore; we will go off the ordered list instead.

Bracket Seeds

Bracket seeds are different from Qualifier seeds. We give bots Qualifier seeds the Tuesday before the event. We give bots bracket seeds based on their performance in the Qualifiers.

There are four kinds of Bracket seeds we can give a bot.

• Top seed - the highest seeds in the bracket, with the easiest path through the bracket.
• Upper-middle seed
• Lower-middle seed
• Bottom seed - the lowest seeds in the bracket, with the hardest path through the bracket.

Most bots will have to win a fight to earn a spot in the bracket. Bots with high Qualifier seeds are guaranteed to make the bracket, but will need to win a fight to earn a top bracket seed. Some bots will be eliminated before the bracket begins.

The Four Qualifier Groups

There will be four groups of bots in the Qualifiers.

In the first round of Qualifiers, we will have the Challenger Group and the Rival Group.

In the second round of Qualifiers, we will have the Boss Group and the Last Chance Group.

• Boss Group: The highest-seeded bots start the Qualifiers here, getting a bye in Qualifiers Round 1. They will be joined by winners from the Challenger Group.
• Challenger Group: This group is made up of the next-highest seeded bots, and will be twice the size of the Boss Group. This group fights in Qualifiers Round 1. The winners from this group challenge the Boss Group, while the losers have to go to the Last Chance Group.
• Rival Group: This group is made up of all remaining bots that did not go into the Boss or Challenger Groups. This group fights in Qualifiers Round 1. The winners from this group get a bye in Qualifiers Round 2 and are seeded directly into the bracket, while the losers have to go to the Last Chance Group.
• Last Chance Group: This group fights in Qualifiers Round 2. The winners from this group will make it into the bottom of the bracket, while the losers are eliminated. Bots eliminated this way will be eligible to fight Freestyle fights.

'Within each group, the highest-seeded bot will always face the lowest-seeded bot, the second-highest-seeded bot will always face the second-lowest-seeded bot, and so on.

'If a bot drops out of the competition between the bracket reveal and the start of the competition, then its Qualifiers Round 1 fight will be considered a forfeit. At the start of Qualifiers Round 2, its seed will change to the lowest possible seed in its group. That will give the highest-seeded bot in the group a bye during Qualifiers Round 2.

Round	Group	On win	On loss
Qualifiers Round 1	Challenger Group	Go to Boss Group	Go to Last Chance Group
Qualifiers Round 1	Rival Group	Get a Lower-Middle bracket seed and a Qualifiers Round 2 bye	Go to Last Chance Group
Qualifiers Round 2	Boss Group	Get a Top bracket seed	Get a Upper-Middle bracket seed
Qualifiers Round 2	Last Chance Group	Get a Bottom bracket seed	Eliminated

Why do we give byes to the top-seeded bots?

For two reasons:

• We don’t want a large disparity in skill level in Qualifier fights. Splitting the top seeds to the Boss group will help with that greatly.
• In order for the Qualifiers math to work, the number of bots seeded into the Challenger and Rival Groups must be a multiple of 4. Giving byes to the top-seeded bots guarantees this.

An example

Let’s say we have a 15-bot tournament. We will eliminate 3 bots in the Qualifier, and determine new bracket seeds for the rest.

Qualifiers Round 1 would look like this. Note that the top 3 bots get a bye in Qualifiers Round 1.

Group	Competitor A	Competitor B	Winner bracket seed
Challenger Group	Bot 4	Bot 9	Determined in Boss Group fight
Challenger Group	Bot 5	Bot 8	Determined in Boss Group fight
Challenger Group	Bot 6	Bot 7	Determined in Boss Group fight
Rival Group	Bot 10	Bot 15	7
Rival Group	Bot 11	Bot 14	8
Rival Group	Bot 12	Bot 13	9

Let’s assume the higher Qualifier seed (lower number) defeats the lower Qualifier seed (higher number) in each fight.

Here’s what Qualifiers Round 2 would look like. Note that the top 3 seeds will fight this round, but Bots 10, 11, and 12 earned Qualifiers Round 2 byes with their Rival Group wins and have already locked in their bracket positions.

Group	Competitor A	Competitor B	Winner bracket seed	Loser bracket seed
Boss Group	Bot 1	Bot 6	1	6
Boss Group	Bot 2	Bot 5	2	5
Boss Group	Bot 3	Bot 4	3	4
Last Chance Group	Bot 7	Bot 15	10	Eliminated
Last Chance Group	Bot 8	Bot 14	11	Eliminated
Last Chance Group	Bot 9	Bot 13	12	Eliminated

If we continue to assume that high seed beats low seed, then we would eliminate the bottom 3 seeds (13, 14, and 15). Everyone else now has positions in the bracket based on their Qualifier performance.

Here is the bracket this generates, assuming high seed continues to beat low seed.

Boss Group forfeits

If a bot forfeits their Boss Group fight, they get a Bottom bracket seed. This is to discourage tactical forfeits in a Boss Group fight.

If a bot taps out of their Boss Group fight immediately after the start of the match, clearly showing no attempt to actually fight, we will consider it a forfeit in this case.

Repair times

Unfortunately, we can no longer guarantee one hour of repair time like we did with the Preliminary round in January. Because the Qualifiers are 2 rounds, we will have to go back to guaranteeing 20/25/30 minutes of repair time for 3lb/12lb/30lb bots through the Qualifiers and tournament bracket.

We will divide fights into blocks of 10 each. Builders will be expected to be ready 5 minutes before their 10-fight block of fights. This is not just for event flow, but also to keep the playing field as level as possible.

That said, it is likely most builders will have more than 20-30 minutes between fights during the Qualifiers. We cannot guarantee one hour, but if our estimates hold, most builders will not have to deal with the minimum guaranteed repair time.

Bots from the same builder

In the Qualifiers, we will make every effort to ensure that bots from the same builder will not face each other. We will extend a similar effort to the bracket, but with a caveat: we can only ensure that all bots from the same builder will not face each other early in the bracket as long as all of their bots win all their Qualifier matches. Any bot that loses a Qualifier fight may face a related bot early in the bracket.

This is a reversal from our January policy, where we did not make this effort. Doing it this way removes an incentive to tactically forfeit a Qualifier fight. It also makes the competition fairer and more appealing to builders coming from a long distance.

This effort only applies for an individual builder bringing 2-4 bots. If a builder brings more, we will only split out 2-4 bots, and the rest will go where they will.

This effort does not apply to teams.

This is all the important stuff about our new 2-round Qualifiers. If you’re curious about more intricate details, like how we determine the number of bots in each group, click here.

What are the pogs for?

You’ll get a few pogs when you pass safety. These are poker chips that will have the date of the event on one side, and be blank on the other side. You’re welcome to decorate the blank side of your pog with the name of your bot, any way you’d like (nothing mean or dirty please!).You can draw directly on the pog or print out stickers that you can stick onto it.

When you lose a fight, be it in the Qualifers, bracket, or Freestyle, we ask that the losing captain give the winning captain one of their bot’s pogs.

That means you’ll have a physical history of all the bots you’ve beaten!

If you want to pre-print stickers for these chips, these stickers should work fine.

Will I still get 20 minutes to repair my bot?

You might get more!

Your guaranteed amount of repair time will depend on your weight class.

• 3lb bots are guaranteed 20 minutes of repair time.
• 12lb bots are guaranteed 25 minutes of repair time.
• 30lb bots are guaranteed 30 minutes of repair time.

Note that if you have multiple bots, their repair times will be concurrent. It'll be up to you to manage your time to repair all bots you have brought.

We hope this will make for less-stressful repairs!

How do bots qualify for the NHRL World Championships in November?

Just as in years past, the top 4 bots in each weight class will qualify for the NHRL World Championships. That means if you win the quarterfinal fight in the single-elimination bracket, you make it in!

In the past, if a bot that has already qualified for the Championships makes it into the top 4, we would take the two bots tied for 5th place. But in a single-elimination bracket, there is a 4-way tie for 5th place.

So in the case that a bot that has already qualified for the Championships makes it into the top 4 of an event, the bot with the highest ranking that lost its Quarterfinals fight going into the event will qualify.

If there is a tie in ranking, then the 5th-place bot that lost to the bot that already qualified will qualify for the Championships.

How are rankings determined?

Rankings are determined by a bot’s win-loss record from this season and the previous season. The basic idea is that you get 1 point for a win and lose 1 point for a loss, and the bot with the most points gets the highest ranking. We have extra modifiers for upsets, rookies, and bots that make it deep into a tournament.

If you want more detail about our ranking system, you can read about it here.

What happens if we don’t have a lot of signups for a weight class?

We will run the Qualifiers and single elimination bracket as long as we have at least 8 registered bots in that given weight class.

• If we have 4-7 registered bots in that weight class, we will run a standard double-elimination bracket instead, with no preliminary round.
• If we have 2-3 registered bots in that weight class, we will run a round-robin bracket instead, with no preliminary round, and all bots fighting each other head-to-head once.
• If we have only 1 registered bot in that weight class, we will not run it.

We will still seed the double-elimination or round-robin bracket on the seeding livestream, about 10 days before the event.