Glossary
Every term used across the platform, in one alphabetical list -- for organizers, judges, and players new to competitive tournaments.
Terms A-Z
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Bo3 (Best-of-3) | A match format where the first player to win 2 games wins the match. The other option is Best of 1 (a single game decides the match). |
| Bracket | The elimination tree generated once a Top Cut starts (single or double elimination). A "Bracket" tab appears on the public live page once the first bracket round is generated, showing every match and who advances. |
| Bye | An automatic win given when a player has no opponent in a round. It earns bye points but never a toss, and is not counted as an opponent for anyone's tiebreakers. |
| Cancellation Protection | An optional paid add-on at registration. Without it, entry fees are generally non-refundable; with it, you get a full refund if you cancel 5 or more days before the event, or 50% if you cancel closer to the date. The fee (a percentage of the entry, currently 7%) is the platform's own share of revenue -- organizers never pay Stripe processing fees on their own sales. |
| Check-in | A presence record: staff mark a player as checked in at the door by scanning the ticket QR code (or from the roster). It is a badge and a filter only -- it never confirms a ticket, seats a player or removes one. See Ticket, Lobby and Enrolled for the two other states of a registration. |
| Cut / Top Cut | The transition from Swiss rounds into an elimination bracket (or a multiplayer Top Cut of pods) -- only the top-ranked players or teams advance. Configured by rank (Top 4, 8, 16...) when creating the elimination phase. |
| Decklist Submission | A player's deck as entered into ONE specific tournament, separate from their reusable library deck. A submission can be locked (usually a few minutes after the first round starts) so it stops changing even if the player keeps editing their library deck for a later event. |
| Disqualification (DQ) | Forced removal from the tournament by a judge or organizer, usually for a rules violation. Unlike a Drop, it is not the player's choice. |
| Distribution Station | The per-event screen staff use to scan a player's ticket QR (or search their name) and hand out prizes and goodie bags on the spot. |
| Double Elimination | A bracket with a Winners side and a Losers side -- a player must lose twice to be eliminated. Ends in a single Grand Final between the two bracket champions. |
| Drop | Voluntarily withdrawing (by the player) or being withdrawn (by staff) from future rounds -- past results are kept. The platform records who dropped a player and when, and a "Dropped" filter on the pairings screen lists them. |
| Enrolled | Seated in the tournament by the organizer. Only enrolled players are paired and ranked -- dropped, cut, disqualified or unenrolled players are not. Enrolling and unenrolling happen in the Player's Lobby, never from the ticket. |
| Join Code | A short code or QR code players can scan or type to register for a tournament directly, without browsing to the event page. |
| Lobby | Where a confirmed ticket lands: the player is on the tournament roster but not seated yet. Players in the lobby receive no pairings until the organizer enrolls them, one by one or with Enroll All Lobby. The lobby is not a check-in. |
| Match Points | Points earned from results (win / draw / loss / bye). The primary ranking criterion in every standings table -- tiebreakers only apply when Match Points are equal. |
| Metagame | The public breakdown of which archetypes are being played in a tournament and how they are performing against each other, built once decklists are submitted -- without exposing any single unpublished decklist. |
| Mirror Display | A live screen (projector or TV at the venue) showing pairings, standings, and the timer -- built for spectators, not for the organizer. |
| OMW% / GW% / OGW% | Opponent Match Win % / Game Win % / Opponent Game Win % -- the default 1v1 tiebreaker chain. See Scoring & Tiebreakers for the full catalog and formulas. |
| Open Decklists | A per-phase setting that lets paired opponents see each other's decklist in the player portal. Two extra toggles can hide exact card counts or collapse the sections (mainboard/sideboard) for a lighter view. |
| Pairing | A match assignment -- which players (or teams, or pods) face each other in a given round. |
| Phase | A stage of the tournament (e.g. Swiss rounds, then an elimination bracket). A tournament can chain several phases together. |
| Pod | A group of players (3 to 5) seated together for one match, used in multiplayer formats (e.g. Commander/EDH) and in Booster Draft. |
| Round | A set of matches within a phase, played at the same time. Every player (or team, or pod) has one pairing per round. |
| Seat Letters (A-E) | In multiplayer pods and Team Trio matches, each player's seat is labelled A through E (Team Trio only ever uses A/B/C) -- used on scorecards and standings to tell players in the same match apart. In Team Trio, the seat B player is the team's captain and the one whose record appears in standings. |
| Seed | A player's ranking position going into a bracket, used to decide bracket placement (top seed faces the lowest seed, and so on). |
| Self-Reporting | A phase setting that lets players report their own match results from the player portal, instead of requiring staff to enter every result. |
| Side Event | A smaller, separately-ticketed event run alongside a main tournament (or on its own), with its own queue and its own verified tickets. |
| Snake Seeding | A pod-formation method that distributes top-ranked players evenly across pods (1st seed to pod 1, 2nd to pod 2, and so on, then the direction reverses) -- used to seed multiplayer Top Cut pods. |
| Standings | The ranking of every player (or team) by Match Points and tiebreakers, refreshed after every completed round. |
| Swiss | A pairing system that matches players with similar records against each other. No one is eliminated -- everyone plays every round. |
| Team Trio | A team format where 3 players share one Swiss record, playing as a team of 3 boards each round. The seat B player represents the team in standings. |
| Ticket | Your registration to a tournament as a status -- Pending, Confirmed, Waitlisted or Cancelled. Capacity and payments count tickets; the organizer approves or rejects them. A confirmed ticket does not seat you: you land in the Lobby until the organizer enrolls you (see Enrolled). |
| Tiebreaker | A secondary criterion used to rank players who are tied on Match Points. See Scoring & Tiebreakers for the full list. |
| TIX | An event-scoped reward wallet. Players earn TIX for participating in an event and can spend them at that event's shop, or toward entry fees -- TIX never convert to real money and never leave the event they were earned in. |
| Toss | The platform's deterministic system for deciding who plays first each round in Swiss, balanced so it evens out over the phase. See Toss (Play / Draw). |
| Waiting Room | A virtual queue that holds players in line before letting them through to register or pay for a high-demand paid tournament, so a sudden rush of traffic does not overwhelm registration. |