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Official rules

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Starts . These are the official rules of this tournament, a contest of skill. Entering it means you accept them, along with our terms of use.

1. Who runs it

Chess Millions (Lyria Group Pty Ltd, ABN 30 685 333 206), Level 1, 63-73 Ann Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010. Questions and complaints: support@chessmillions.com.

2. Who can enter

  • Anyone with a Chess Millions account and a contestant name, once each. One account per person. Accounts are for people 16 or older.
  • Prizes are only for people 18 or older. Anyone younger can play, but a prize they win isn't paid.
  • To pay the entry fee you must be 18 or older and live in Australia (not Queensland or the Australian Capital Territory), and be there when you pay. We check where you say you live, where you're connecting from (the state too, and not through Tor), your PayPal account's country, and your browser's location as you pay: anyone close enough to a border that we can't tell which side they're on can't pay.
  • Prizes can't be paid to people living in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar (Burma), Ukraine, Venezuela or Yemen: sanctions forbid it.

3. Entering

  • Entries close at the start time. Up to 100 people.
  • Entry is A$2, one flat fee for this tournament paid with PayPal, or one ticket won in a free qualifier. The fee is only for entering: it buys no advantage in play.
  • Withdraw before the start and your fee is refunded in full, or your ticket comes back.
  • Be online at the start: anyone still not online 2 minutes after it loses their place, and a fee or ticket they entered with is spent.

4. When it's called off

  • It runs with at least 2 entries. With fewer at the start, it's called off. It also needs 2 people online at the start to make a table.
  • When we call it off, before or during play, every entry fee is refunded in full except those of anyone who didn't turn up, and tickets come back to everyone still in or waiting to play, with at least a week left to use them.
  • Refunds go back to the PayPal account that paid. Nothing in these rules limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

5. How it's played

  • Classic: turns round the table, 60 seconds each. A player who runs out of time, or has no legal move at the start of their turn, is out. The stage's rings fall exactly as a round begins, on a published schedule. Tournament rules apply: no prize wheel and no prize squares. How to play has the rest.
  • People only: no computer players. A seat nobody fills stays empty and is out from the start.
  • Seats go by rating, with nothing drawn: the highest-rated player sits in seat 1 and the rest follow in rating order, as evenly spaced round the board as ten seats allow. Equal ratings go by who entered first. With several tables, players are dealt round them in rating order: seeds 1, 2 and 3 head tables 1, 2 and 3, and so on. Seat 1 moves first.
  • Tables of up to ten play at once. The best-placed person at each table goes through to the next stage, until one table is left: the final. Its winner wins the tournament.
  • Matches don't pause. If your connection drops, reconnect to carry on: your turn clock keeps running. Choosing to leave a match is resigning from it.
  • If our server stops during a stage, every table that hadn't finished is played again from the start, by the same people in the same seats, about a minute after it's back so everyone can reconnect. Tables that had finished stand. A table that can't be finished is played again too; if it still can't be, after two tries, the tournament is called off: tickets come back and entry fees are refunded to everyone still in it.

6. Placing, points and ties

  • At each table the last king standing wins; everyone else is placed by the order they go out, the first out last.
  • Every capture scores the piece's value: pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9, king 10. Pieces lost to a falling ring score nobody anything, and the army that changes sides with its king scores for whoever takes its pieces later.
  • Players caught on the same falling ring are placed by their points, then by the material they had, then by their pieces left, then by seat.
  • Final standings go by the stage reached, then the place at the last table, then points over the whole tournament. Anyone level on all three shares the position, and the prize money for the places they cover, in equal parts. Nothing is decided by chance.

7. The prize

  • A$1, winner takes all.
  • The prize is fixed before entries open and paid by Chess Millions from its own funds. It never grows with the number of entries.
  • Before a prize is sent, an admin reviews it, and the winner passes an ID check: who they are, that they're 18 or older, and where they live. A prize won by breaking these rules, by someone who couldn't enter, or by someone who paid to enter but lives where paid entry isn't open (by their ID), is withheld.
  • Prizes are paid with PayPal into the winner's PayPal account, in Australian dollars. A winner without a PayPal account is emailed by PayPal to open one with the email they claimed with; a prize not accepted within 30 days comes back to Chess Millions, which then contacts the winner to pay it again.

8. Fair play

No computer help, engines or outside advice, no playing on someone else's account, and no working with other players. We may disqualify anyone who breaks these rules or the terms of use, and withhold their prize.