PlayStrategy's first month of variant shield tournaments has concluded and we have had 13 different users win a shield! Congratulations if you won a shield, can you defend it in October?

With the current tournament pairing algorithm, we've noticed the less popular tournaments can be frustrating for users to get games. So we've made some changes...

The most notable one is to allow official PlayStrategy bots to join tournaments. This will ensure a player can still get a game even if they are the only one waiting in a tournament. Only verified bots with the prefix 'PST-xxx' will be able to join these tournaments. These bots are officially affiliated to PlayStrategy and are only for tournament play - you won't be able to challenge these bots outside of tournaments. Our first 'PST' bot is PST-Rando who is the twin of PS-Random-Mover. PST-Rando is a random mover but can handle any game or variant on PlayStrategy. We hope to have more sophisticated bots introduced in the future, but for now you'll see PST-Rando joined to every upcoming shield tournament. PST-Rando will only be paired if there are less than 4 active human players in a tournament. The bot can take part in rated tournaments, and as the shield tournaments are all rated PST-Rando's rating will adjust to a value that is representative of its ability.

There are also a few other changes to how the pairing algorithm in arena tournaments work:

• It is now possible to rematch two players when there are only two active players in a tournament. Previously, there was a clause that prevented a player from being paired against their last opponent, but we have removed this restriction when there are just two players in an arena. This means if there are just two human players in a tournament they will be able to play consecutive matches against each other. If there is just one human player then they will play our bot consecutively. Less waiting around!
• The minimum wait time between games has been reduced. Previously, players would have to wait for up to 50 seconds before getting a pairing. This has now been reduced to 30 seconds, but is still a factor of the time control of the tournament. Less waiting around!
• Any player who registers for an arena but isn't present when the tournament starts will be automatically withdrawn. This has no real impact - a user can still join and re-join an arena at any point, but it marks these users as 'paused' which is helpful for the other users playing to see who is actually around. Less confusion!

So, from October 1st there will be one PlayStrategy bot in all of the variant shield tournaments and the weekly Medley shield tournaments. Since joining the site 6 weeks ago, PS-Random-Mover has won about 20% of its 500+ games. Will PST-Rando win a shield?

There are more extensions to shields in the pipeline over the coming weeks, all we can say at the moment is that playing in shields now may be of some benefit in the future...