One Name Left Standing
Ratings are a good way of saying who is probably better. They're a poor way of settling who actually won. The Cup exists to settle it.
Open, and genuinely open
There is no qualification. No rating floor, no invitation, no seeding - a Grandmaster and somebody who joined in November enter on identical terms and can meet in the first round. If that produces an upset, the upset stands.
Registration will run from 1 October to 30 November. The hall opens on 1 December.
No fixture list
This is the part that makes it different from every other bracket you've played in.
You won't be given an opponent and a time to meet them. You press Play, and you're drawn there and then against another survivor who has also just pressed Play. No waiting on somebody else's diary. No dead weeks. If you want to play at seven in the morning, the Cup will find you somebody who also wants to play at seven in the morning.
Single elimination throughout. Lose once and your Cup is over until next year.
To stop the whole thing being won in an afternoon by whoever has the most free time, there's a ceiling of three wins a day. Each round carries a deadline, and missing it means going out without playing.
No qualification, no rating floor, no seeding. A Grandmaster can meet a beginner in round one.
The last hundred and twenty-eight
Once the field is down to 128 the character changes. From that point it becomes a named draw - you'll know who you're facing - and the tie is arranged rather than stumbled into.
Three one-hour meeting windows will be delivered to your Cup mailbox in the Post Room. Turn up to any one of them. Miss all three and you forfeit, which is why those letters carry a read receipt: the record of when a notice was delivered and when it was opened is the thing that makes a forfeit fair rather than arbitrary.
A truce, and a finish
The Cup observes Christmas. There's no play on the 24th or 25th, and none on New Year's Eve.
The semi-finals and the Final are played on New Year's Day, which means that if you're still alive on 31 December you know exactly how your new year begins.
Nothing at stake but the trophy
Cup ties are unranked. Your Glicko rating doesn't move, in either direction, no matter who you beat or who beats you. Nobody should be protecting a rating in a knockout, and nobody should be able to farm one either.
There's one champion a year, and the badge is stamped with the year. It cannot be won twice in the same December, and it cannot be taken away in January.
When
The first Cup is planned for December 2026. Registration is not open yet, and the draw does not exist - this is a statement of intent rather than an invitation. We'll announce in the Post Room when the doors open.