How the TCMG 24h Circuit Works

Hey everyone, Wallysson here.

I'm answering two questions in this article, the two I hear the most in the 24h group.

The first one is easy to ask and hard to answer off the top of your head: how much is winning a stage worth?

The second one is the one that actually matters, and almost nobody asks it: is it worth showing up to a stage I already know I won't win?

I'll give you the second answer first, because that's the heart of the circuit. Yes. And not because of some pretty speech about what matters is taking part. It is worth it because the math closes that way, and I'm going to show you the math.

What the 24h Circuit is trying to measure

The TCMG Top Cut overall ranking, the ELO one, measures one thing: how well you play. It does not care if you showed up to two tournaments or twenty. It wants to know whether you beat the people you were supposed to beat.

The 24h Circuit measures something completely different: how present and productive you were across eight stages.

There are eight stages in the season. All of them count. There is no drop, there is no my worst stage doesn't count. If you miss one, that stage is zero for you, and zero hurts more than it looks when everyone else is still adding.

That's why the two rankings can put different names on top, and that is not a bug in either of them. They ask different questions.

Why a champion gets a bonus here, and not on the overall ranking

If you read the overall ranking article, there's a section in there called Being champion doesn't give extra bonus. In ELO that's on purpose: what counts are the matches, one by one, and the title is a consequence of them, not a separate prize.

In the 24h Circuit it is the exact opposite. Winning a stage gives a bonus, and a big one. In a 39-player stage, the champion bonus alone is 240 points, while all of that player's Swiss wins added up to 50.

I want that to be clear because that's the difference in purpose. ELO is a strength rating. The Circuit is a competition with a prize, eight scheduled rounds, and it rewards whoever lifts the trophy.

The three pieces of your score

Your score in each stage is a sum of three things. Only three.

1. Participation: 10 points.

You get 10 points for registering, paying the R$22.00 fee, sending the decklist, and playing at least the first round. That's it. No asterisk.

Those 10 points are not multiplied by anything. An 8-player stage and a 200-player stage pay the same 10.

2. Swiss-round wins: +10 each.

Each Swiss win adds 10 points. Went 4-2, that's 40. Went 6-0, that's 60.

Pay attention here, because this is the part that generates the most questions: only Swiss pays per win. A top-cut win does not add 10. Top cut pays you another way, and that's the third piece.

And those +10 are not multiplied either.

3. Placement bonus, and this one is multiplied.

Anyone who reaches the elimination rounds gets a single bonus, the one for their final placement. It does not stack: the champion does not take the champion bonus plus the runner-up bonus plus the top 4 bonus. They take the champion bonus, period.

An example added up on paper

Let's take a real mid-size stage, 39 players. At that size the multiplier is 2.0 and the tournament is 6 Swiss rounds plus top 8.

Look at the champion closely. Of those 300 points, 240 came from the multiplied bonus. The six Swiss rounds they played added 50. Participation, 10.

That's why winning a big stage is so valuable. And that's why the multiplier is the part that matters most to understand.

The multiplier: why a bigger stage is worth more

The placement bonus is multiplied by a factor that depends on how many people registered for the stage.

Two things that table hides, and you need to know both.

The first: the multiplier is set by the official player count at registration close. If three people pay and never show, the multiplier does not drop. If four drop in round two, the multiplier does not drop. It locks when the stage starts and it does not move again.

The second: in a stage of 8 players or fewer there is no elimination round. It's 3 rounds and that's it. And because the bonus is for whoever reaches elimination, nobody gets a placement bonus in a stage that size. Win all 3 rounds and you take 10 for participation plus 30 from the wins, so 40 points.

I know that looks small for someone who won everything. It's the written rule of the circuit, and it's there because the bonus is exactly what separates a contested stage from an afternoon among friends.

Same kind of detail: in a 9-to-16 player stage the cut is top 4, so the Top 8 +30 bonus never shows up. The bonuses that exist there are champion, runner-up, and the two semifinalists.

Showing up already scores, and this is where the circuit is decided

Now I go back to the question from the start, and I'll answer it with the math.

Picture two people across the whole season.

The first is the peak player. They show up to one 39-player stage, play great, take the trophy, take the 300 points. And they don't show up to any of the other seven.

The second is the consistent player. She shows up to all eight stages. Wins none of them. Goes 3-3 every time, never makes the cut, never lifts anything. Each of her stages is worth 40 points.

The consistent player passes the champion. Without winning a single stage, without making the cut even once.

And if she makes top 8 in all eight stages, she doesn't pass by a little. She passes by almost three times.

That's not a speech, that's the circuit's design. The 10 for showing up and the +10 per Swiss win are small and they are not multiplied, and that's exactly why they decide the top 16: they stack eight times, and the big bonus only happens when you lift a trophy.

So yes: it is worth showing up to a stage you know you won't win. It's worth a lot.

Swiss wins count, top-cut wins don't

Repeating this because it's question number one: the wins that add +10 are the Swiss-round wins.

If you won two top-cut series and finished runner-up, those two series do not add +20. What you get from top cut is the runner-up bonus, multiplied.

It's not there to take anything from you. It's because the placement bonus already pays for what you did in elimination, and paying twice for the same thing would make a stage champion impossible to catch.

There is no drop: all eight stages add up

It's worth repeating because this is what changes the strategy the most for anyone who has already played a circuit with a drop.

Here there isn't one. All eight stages count in full. There is no I drop my worst.

The practical effect is simple: missing is the worst possible result. An 0-6 gives you 10 points. An absence gives you zero. The difference between playing badly and not playing is always in favor of playing.

Double loss, and why it exists in this format

24h has something a live tournament doesn't: each pair of players has 24 hours to play the match. You agree on a time between yourselves.

That's freedom, and freedom has a price. If the match doesn't happen in time, staff looks at both players' communication and availability.

If both were equally responsible for the match not happening, it's a double loss. Nobody wins, both take the loss, and neither one adds the +10.

If one showed reasonable availability and the other made the match impossible, staff can give an administrative win to whoever was available. And that win counts as a win, including in the tiebreakers.

The practical rule so you never fall into this: send the first message with a time proposal. If your opponent doesn't reply within 8 hours of that contact, call staff. That's what protects you.

And you can't agree to a draw. Intentional draws are not allowed, and matches are MD3 on Live with the timer on, so if your timer runs out the game counts as a loss.

How ranking ties are broken

Two players with the same score at the end of the eight stages are separated in this order:

1. Most stage titles. 2. Most runner-up finishes. 3. Most Top 4 finishes. 4. Most Top 8 finishes. 5. Most Swiss wins across the circuit, including administrative wins. 6. Highest score in a single stage.

If it's still tied after all of that, staff picks the method.

Look at the logic: the first four criteria reward whoever went deep, and the fifth rewards whoever showed up and won a lot. Meaning even in the tiebreak, both ways of building a score still matter.

The 16 who go to the Invitational

At the end of the eight stages, the top 16 in the ranking are invited to the 24h Circuit Invitational.

The Invitational format, whether it's groups into elimination or double elimination, is announced to the 16 qualified players before the event.

Sixteen invites is the number that makes the consistency math worth it. Not 4, not 8. There's room for someone who showed up to all eight stages and never won one.

How the prize pool stacks

From each stage, 10% of the money collected is reserved for the Invitational. The other 90% is paid out to that stage's top 8:

And here's the nice part: the amount stacked across the eight stages makes up 100% of the Invitational prize pool. Meaning every stage you play fattens the final event's prize, including the stages where you missed the cut.

Common myths

If I can't win, it's not worth going. I already answered that with the math: eight 3-3 stages pass a single isolated title. It's worth going.

A top-cut win adds 10 the same way Swiss does. No. Top cut pays through the placement bonus, not per win.

If a lot of people drop, the multiplier falls. It doesn't. It locks at registration close.

I won all 3 rounds in a small stage, so I take 120. In a stage of 8 or fewer there is no elimination round, and the bonus is for whoever reaches elimination. You take 40.

The bonuses stack if I go through several rounds. No. It's one bonus, the one for your final placement.

Missing is the same as playing badly. No. Playing badly gives 10. Missing gives 0.

Quick recap

To close

If you remember only one thing from this article, make it this: the 24h Circuit rewards whoever shows up.

The champion bonus is big and it's supposed to be big, because winning eight rounds against forty people is hard and it deserves it. But the circuit has eight stages and no drop, and that changes everything. The 10 points for showing up and the +10 from each Swiss win are small eight times, and small eight times is large.

So play all eight. Even the stage you think isn't yours, even the week your deck is bad, even the day you only want to play two rounds and sleep. Every appearance is points in the pocket, and at the end of the season there are 16 invites waiting, not 4.

See you at the Invitational.