The BOD keeps getting harder.
There have been three different stages to the tournament with some formatting tweaks along the way.
Back in the beginning (the first four tournaments; 2009-2011), only the top team from each division advanced to the bracket. If you lost in the round-robin stage, you were likely done for the day.
Unfortunately for me, I was never one of the top teams, so I changed the rules so that the top TWO teams would advance. This phase of the BOD lasted from 2012 until Aug of 2019.
In Aug of 2019 John Stolte suggested that ALL teams should advance to the bracket reasoning that it’d keep more people playing and give everyone false hope that they could win the tournament. This was a terrific idea and it’s been the SOP for the BOD since Sept of 2019.
You can see the effect it’s had on the average number of games people play in this graph:
