Poison Tournament Rules and Policies

Poison tournaments are a form of "Baseball Darwinism." The strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. Owners must manage changing rosters as players come and go.

Definitions

Player Exchange: An exchange of personnel (usually position for position, e.g., SP for SP) initiated by the winning team, which seeks to grow stronger by sending off a player of lesser-quality in exchange for a player of higher-quality. We can think of the exchange as a form of theft, i.e., stealing a player of better quality and shipping out the player of lesser quality. Player exchanges are sim-determined based on the sim's understanding of player quality (specifically it is based on the PV, or player value, for the random season assigned to a player when the tournament begins, not on current sim statistics/performance). 

Poison Pitcher: Anytime a poison team sends away a pitcher, that pitcher has poison status such that. Any subsequent win by that pitcher results in a player exchange benefitting his team.  

Poison Team: refers to the status of a given team, specifically, the granted authority to a a team to initiate a player exchange every time they win a game. 

Non-Poison Team: refers to the status of a team without poison status. Non poison teams initiate player exchanges only when they either (a) shut out the opposition, or (b) when a poison pitcher (if they own one) gets a win.  

Rules

  1. Each tournament has either 2 or 4 "poison" teams at the start of the tournament. These teams are run by the sim, without owners, and carry a special cross symbol to identify themselves.  
  2. Poison teams will exchange a player with you if you lose to them.
  3. If you beat a poison team no exchange takes place, unless you shut them out, in which case your team initiates an exchange AND steals their poison status.
  4. Shutouts always initiate a player exchange.
  5. Poison teams can initiate player exchanges simply by beating the opposition. Non-poison teams must shut out the opposition to initiate an exchange.
  6. The winning team will forego an exchange if they conclude that they cannot improve themselves by an exchange.
  7. If your team receives a pitcher from a poison team, that pitcher becomes poison. If subsequently credited with a win, that initiates a player exchange.
  8. Teams can become double and triple poison. This does not add to their power. Rather it simply insulates their poison status. 
  9. Tournaments last only 30 games: two divisions of eight teams each with a 7-game championship between division winners.
  10. Games last no more than 11 innings. A tie is declared if teams are still tied after 11 innings.
  11. For competitive challenge, rosters are small - usually 14 batters and 13 pitchers. 13. Exchanges carry over into the championship series.