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Match format

Every match consists of 5 games. Each game is played on a different map with a different random seed. The team that wins more games wins the match.

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Win conditions per game

A game ends when:

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Ladder

The ladder ranks all teams by Glicko-2 rating. New teams start unrated and are seeded to 1500 when they upload their first ready submission.

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Scheduling

Every 10 minutes, the scheduler:
  1. Pairs each team with one similarly-rated opponent (greedy nearest-rating matching with small random jitter to avoid repetitive matchups)
  2. Avoids rematches from the last hour
  3. Submits matches to the runner infrastructure
With N teams, each cycle creates floor(N/2) matches — one match per team.

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Rating updates

Ratings are updated using Glicko-2 after each scheduler cycle. Match outcomes use fractional scoring based on the game score (e.g., a 5-0 win counts more than a 3-2 win). Each team has three rating components:
  • Rating — skill estimate (starts at 1500)
  • Uncertainty (RD) — confidence in the rating (starts high, decreases with more matches)
  • Volatility — expected rating fluctuation

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Unrated matches

You can challenge any team to an unrated match that doesn’t affect ratings:
Unrated matches use the same infrastructure and time limits as ladder matches but are prioritised for faster execution.

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Test runs

Test runs let you upload two local bots and run them against each other on the same hardware as ladder matches:
This is the best way to verify your bot works within the 2ms CPU time limit before submitting to the ladder.
Rate limits: max 10 test/unrated matches per 5 minutes. Unrated matches also have a 5-minute cooldown per specific matchup.