League Rules 2025

Welcome to the page for the 2025 games league. This page summarises how the new year's League will work. Following the vote in September, this will be a significant change from the Tournament format used in previous years.

The Scoring

The aim of the League is to allow players to participate in an ongoing competition, above and beyond winning or losing in individual games. The current format seeks to do this as inclusively and discreetly as possible. All main games played at the club on Thursdays and Saturdays will count, so long as they are recorded as set out below. If you're not interested, that's fine: you can choose to opt in or out from the published results.

Your score in the league will be the total number of people that you have beaten in games, divided by the total number of people that you have played against (that is, the number that you could have beaten). This appears as a percentage: 100% means you've beaten everyone (won every game), 0% means everyone's beaten you. 50% means you've beaten half of the people - whether that comes by winning half your games and losing the other half, or by placing 2nd in a succession of 3-player games, or any other way.

For example, you play 2 games: a 3-player game and then a 5-player game. You finish 1st in the 3-player, so beating 2 out of a possible 2 other people in that one; then you finish 4th in the 5-player game, so beating 1 out of a possible 4 other people in that one. In total you have beaten 3 out of a possible 6 people, so your score in the league from these 2 games will be 50%. Your results over the whole league will contribute to this score.

Your score will be an average, not a sum total, so you do not have to be at the club every week to be in with a chance of winning.

Recording Results

To log the results of a game, at least 1 person has to record the results in BoardGameGeek.com's database. You can do this either via their website or app, or with an app such as BG Stats. If you need a crash-course in how to do that, just ask one of the club admins, or one of the many other seasoned game-loggers at the club.

The location of the game that you record must be NPBGC in order for it to be picked up by the League database.

You do not have to use the other players' BGG user IDs - you just have to record names that look like the names of players at the club, and the database will match them.

Naturally, the onus for recording results will fall on the player who wins a game, but any player can record it. Duplicates will be identified by matching dates and player names and scores, and filtered out. You can see your recently-logged games for the league on this page, if you want to check that your results have been captured correctly.

Tie-breaks have to be handled by recording a higher score for the player who wins a tie-break than for the player who loses it: this is typically done by recording scores of, for example 6.1 and 6, for two players tied on 6 points, where the first player won the tie-break.

Which Games Count?

The intention is for only "main" games played at the club to count - so for short filler games to be excluded. To that end, only games that have ever been listed on the Looking To Play page will be counted.

So even if you turn up without pre-arranging a game, so long as it has ever been previously listed on Looking To Play, it will count. In the unlikely event that you play a game that has never been listed on Looking To Play for your main game (not even for the time when you play it), you can add it retrospectively and it will still count.

Short filler games are not intended to count. So, if the likes of 6-Nimmt are listed on Looking To Play, club admin will remove them - unless people start coming to the club specifically to play 6-Nimmt, in which case it would then legitimately qualify as a main game.

Games that do not give placings to all players will not count, and fully cooperative games will not count. Games that divide players into two teams will count, though the players on each team will be considered tied. Real ties such as this will be handled in the scoring as if each tied player beats an equal share of the tied players - ie. the points are shared.

Single-player games will not count. Only games logged against a Thursday, or against a day listed as a Saturday Games Day, will be counted.

The Main League

The main league will run from 1st January to 1st November 2025, covering all games played at the club (Thursdays and Saturdays) between those dates. The league will end at the start of November to allow time for the Final (see below).

Prizes will be awarded at the end of the year for finishing positions in this league. To qualify for a position in the final league table, you must have played in at least 15 games at the club over the course of the year. This is to avoid a scenario in which someone comes for 1 week only, wins a game and would therefore top the league. People who have played fewer than 15 games will still appear in the league table, but will not be counted in the league results.

Mini-Leagues

A parallel league table will run for each quarter, with prizes for top placings in this each time too. So even if you had a bad run, or were away for a few months, you can still be in with a chance to do well in the quarterly league.

The quarterly league will run every calendar quarter, including through November and December (as this will have no impact on qualifying for the Final). The minimum qualifying number of games for a quarterly league is 4 within a given quarter.

The Final

The Final will work much as it did in the old Tournament: the top players in the league at the end of the year will qualify for the Final, which will be another playing of one of the games played that year, between those top players. The winner of the Final will be declared the winner of the Tournament this year, and will get their name on the long-established trophy!

But this year, we will all choose the game to be played in the Final: the game played at the club most often during the year will also be the Final game. If multiple games have been played the joint-most often, then the player who finishes top of the league can choose which of them to play.

So, whereas in the past the top 4 players qualify for the Final, this year it will depend on the game. Based on games currently played at the club, it will likely be at least 4 players, but possibly 5 or even 6.