Tournaments add some serious competition to your gameplay. There are many places to play in tournaments while you chat. Some sites offer programs that are designed to be used in addition to chat. They offer tools to let you run a tournament with any game, whether or not it's online. Yahoo offers tournaments for many of their games, however that chat part of it is kind of an afterthought. Chat websites offer games and tournaments. Account holders can buy a game ladder. A ladder is sort of like a league in which all the players are ranked. Someone who has a ladder can set up tournaments for that ladder. Tournaments can be single elimination, double elimination, round robin, or Swiss rules. The ladder owner can assign privileges to a Tournament Director (TD) to help with scheduling. The games, including backgammon, ace deucy, chess, checkers, battleship, yahtzee and spades, are automatically scored, making this a very fair, reliable system. Up to 256 players can participate in a tournament. Playing tournaments in a chat community can be a highly entertaining experience. You'll find most game ladders welcome new players into their chat family. A chess tournament can take a long time, of course. In tournaments you can end rounds manually or have timed rounds. Timed rounds can be as long as you want, up to 365 days.
