What is this tournament?

• This is a monthly tournament wherein players use the delayed auto shift (DAS) feature of NES Tetris as their primary method of piece of movement. Only the top 16 players make it into the tournament, and for now, there are no other tiers. 
•  The tournament is played across five different broadcasts, just like CTM Masters, at times mutually agreeable to the players and the streamer. It is streamed on our main MonthlyTetris channels and is considered a top-tier tournament. vandweller hosts it.
•  This is a trial run and I’m committing to at least 3 consecutive months. If there’s poor turnout, poor prizepool support, or excessive hassle, it may be cancelled.
•  Anyone is invited to qualify so long as they can follow the rules and not cause a ruckus.
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• Oh cool, so as long as I tap or roll pieces within DAS limits, I’m good right?
• No. The tournament holds closely to “The Spirit of DAS”. Players are not looking for workarounds and technicalities to actually hypertap or roll but call it DAS.
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• LOL “The Spirit of DAS”?  What is that?
• Look at the players in the attached piece of artwork.  They are legends of the game, who all primarily use the DAS playstyle. This tournament adheres firmly to the playstyle that these players would basically recognize as DAS.
•  They almost never 5-tap a piece. They might slowtap a given piece 3 or 4 times after losing DAS charge, though never on consecutive pieces, and probably not more than a couple times a game. They 1-tap all the time and 2-tap often. Some of them might use a single quicktap after a DAS movement, but a double quicktap would be a world-historical event (don’t do it).
• They are wallcharging, skillstopping, and maybe even red-fireballing. They’re constantly trying to maintain and regain DAS charge.  Keeping their stacks below the next box is the norm, and being forced to play well above it is usually an emergency, not an aspiration.
  
•  Nearly all of them use their thumbs only, holding the controller horizontally between two hands(which keeps them from hypertapping), though it would be fine, but weird, if they don’t. And they’re certainly not using a rolling grip. They might wear a glove (or an Adam Mitten), but their lotion budget is minimal. They don’t need to be double-jointed or involve feet to hold the controller.
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• …okay. So who decides if I’m adhering to this alleged “Spirit of DAS”, and what happens if I don’t?
•  CTM DAS Masters is a test to see if a regular monthly DAS tournament can happen with minimal controversy. Rules and norms might evolve, but to start off with, I can’t define any hard-and-fast mechanistic rules about this and that. The streamer / organizer / referee (right now, your old pal vandweller) will have sole and total discretion and judgement over whether a given qualifying game, match game, entire match, or whatever is within The Spirit of DAS (“SOD”).
•  An individual game within a qualifier found to be repeatedly or flagrantly violating the SOD  or will be considered topped out at the time of the violation or will be stricken from the qualifier, with the next lowest score factored into the qualifying ranking.
•  An individual game within a match will be forfeited to the opponent, who was nice and didn’t violate the SOD.
•  Players who continually violate the SOD will have their eligibility for DAS MASTERS reevaluated. There are no hard and fast rules about how many violations or how flagrant they have to be for any of this to happen. So just play actually play DAS, and you won’t have to worry about it.
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• You’re not really giving me exact hard-and-fast rules here about how to navigate the rules. How should I be expected to know what I can get away with?
•  This is what we are trying to avoid. You should not be trying to push the limits of what you can get away with and still call it “DAS” in quotation marks and hope no one notices. You should just play DAS. Everyone knows what it is. And that is what this tournament is about. If you are trying to find all the technicalities of what you can get away with, this isn’t the tournament for you. Please don’t join.
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• That’s not fair! I’m malding now, and you caused it!
•  Okay. You are welcome to play in other DAS tournaments, wherever they may be. Or start your own. No hard feelings.
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• Do these games count for Elo?
•  I don’t know.  I don’t run Elo. It’s up to Tetris Elo International Corporation, LLC or whatever. But this is considered a Masters-level competition, so if there’s DAS Elo that is separate, then probably yeah.
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• Okay, even though you are a horrible, draconian dictator, I want to play. What do I need?
• The tournament will use same piece sets, an input display,  DAS mode, and a Hz counter, which means you need a version of Tetris Gym that has all those things. Pretty sure v5 and v6 have those, but I dunno about any other versions yet
  
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• So how do I qualify?
•  It’s the same one-hour, average-of-two scheme as the regular CTM qualifying, except, ya know, you’re qualifying for a different tournament.  You can do and submit separate qualifers for CTM and for DAS Masters. Or, you can actually qualify for both tournaments simultaneously if you want to. But you’ll have to enter both auth codes on the scoreboard, so play two scoreboard games before starting your timer.  If you declare that your qualifier is for both, no take-backsies if you don’t like your qualifying score. And you can’t retroactively decide that you should have qualified for both because you got a really good score, but you forgot to declare it for both or something.
•  *And, you must turn ON four things: the input display, DAS mode, qual mode, and the Hz counter.*
• Also, you will have to have your facecam and handcam on the screen, because it’s a Masters-level event with prizepool. No exceptions. If this isn’t some you can do or want to do, you can play the other monthly DAS tournaments, but then again there aren’t any, so ha ha, gotcha.
  
• Oh. And be sure to turn on VOD-saving on Twitch. And, it would be super helpful if you highlighted your VOD so Twitch doesn’t delete it, because when that happens, CzarJordan gets upset, and I don’t like to see good people feel bad.
  
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• What if I have questions?
• Read all this again. But if you still have questions ask in #das-masters in the CTM discord