[12 Days of Christmas] Day 11 – International Saimoe League
Aside from working full-time now, much of my extra time lately has been on developing the 2010 website and programming for International Saimoe League (ISML). Since my first involvement as a statistics guy in 2008, I have found inspiration to take the tournament further, and I have now been elected to the Commissioner position for the 2010 season. This means a lot of work but a lot of potential for something exciting.
The main event will be the same as the previous two years: round-robin tournament lasting a few months, then a double-elimination finale for the championship. But don’t discount the preliminary period early in the year; it’s been revamped to something that’ll be a lot better than in 2009.
All the official news is or will be on its respective page, but I can offer some statements here as a contributor to this blog. ^^; We just put up a draft of our Constitution, which is a much more solid set of rules that I hope is easier to read than the rules from last year. It’s only half of the documentation for this year, though, as we have a Charter coming out, too, that’ll iron out all the details.
Mainly, we’ll have 50 characters this year instead of 64. It’ll make the tournament a bit less overwhelming, and it should make the whole contest more competitive, too. No more overtime matches, because that carried way too much overhead from an organizational standpoint. And then the exhibition matches were very well-received, so we’ll have a lot more of those.
ISML 2010 begins at the first of the year in January 1, 2010, with the Nomination Period lasting seven days. The page for that isn’t quite up yet, but it will have the rules you need to do things right. There’s also a “Do Not Nominate” list indicating characters who have already auto-qualified for ISML based on pre-determined criteria.
If you’re a fan of the moe genre of anime … or just know of some characters who just warm (or break) your heart in that special way, ISML will be a nice year-long event to enjoy. Stay for the whole deal or just come and go and vote whenever it’s convenient. The tournament staff and I are here to make everything easy for you. So please give us a look throughout the year.
~Crisu
