Friday Night Live at The Ice Box

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NOTICE:

For the weeks of Christmas and New Year's Eve, the weekly Ice Box tournament will happen on Wednesday due to the holidays on Friday.

March of the Penguins Series Structure

Summary

Play at least 10 weeks total. We'll take 28 A and 16 B players to playoffs, tentatively scheduled on Friday 1/22/2027. Everyone who qualifies for A or B is in the money.

Details

Each Friday Night Live tournament is a standalone tournament with all entry fees being paid out as prizes that night. The results of each Friday Night Live tournament count towards series standings for the March of the Penguins.

$1.25 per player in each Friday Night Live tournament goes into the series prize pool from Jan-Dec, sponsored 100% by The Ice Box.

Players must play a minimum of 10 Friday Night Live tournaments to qualify for series playoffs.

Each player's 15 best tournaments count toward their total points.

Playoffs

Date

The playoffs will take place on a Friday in January 2027. The date will be decided by November 2026 and selected to avoid scheduling conflicts. Tentatively this will be Friday, January 22nd, with a backup date of Friday, January 29th.

Qualification

• 44 qualifiers: 28 in A division, 16 in B division
• A: 27 top players + 1 wild card spot for player who played the most tournaments but did not qualify
• B: Next 15 players with IPR 3 or Lower (by the final fall MNP IPR update in November) + 1 wild card spot for next IPR-3-or-lower player with the most tournaments played who did not otherwise qualify.
• Auto tiebreakers into playoffs using the following criteria (in order):
• Total series points
• Number of first-place finishes
• Number of second-place finishes (and so on)

A Finals

• Format: 2-strike knockout playoff tournament (estimated 5 rounds), with the top 6 moving on to join seeds 1 and 2 in the semifinals.
  • 3rd and 4th seed get -1 strikes in the qualifying, effectively making it a 3-strike playoff round for these two players.
  • Top 2 overall series qualifiers skip the strikes phase and go straight through to semifinals.
• Semifinals and finals will both be Match Multiplay games of 4, with the top 2 from each semifinals group advancing to the finals.
• #1 series qualifier gets bank selection in semifinals and finals. #2 series qualifier may pick their semifinals bank from those remaining after seed #1 makes their selection. If seed #1 does not advance through to finals, the finals bank will default to the classics bank.

B Finals

• Format: All 16 qualifiers will participate in a 3-strike knockout until 4 remain, and move into a match multiplay finals.
• Finals bank will be selected from the banks not in use by A. The top seed in B from the 3-strike knockout phase of the finals will have bank choice. If all four players have 2 strikes, it will default to the classics bank.

2-Strike Side Tournament

• For those who didn’t qualify in the March of the Penguins, there will be a 2-strike knockout side tournament that will begin as soon as the strikes phase of playoffs is over. Players who are knocked out of playoffs may join as well, but players who move through to the match multiplay finals rounds may not play in the side tournament concurrently.
• This side tournament will have no entry fee and will use $100 from the overall prize pool as prizes for the top 4 finishers.