Unfortunately, I do not think that it can be feasible for me to continue running tournaments without putting my studies or my social life in jeopardy, a risk I will not take. Already over this past year, as work has become a little more arduous at school, I noticed that it was becoming more difficult to keep up with my commitments on webdiplomacy properly, the effects of which some of you will have noticed some of the time. I simply haven’t done as full and complete a job as I once did in directing tournaments, and it’s time for me to move on from taking the active role I have.

This will not have any effect on tournaments in progress. I intend to continue to update the Masters page on my website until that tournament is complete; I shall see the current league season through to completion; I shall finish my Champions’ Trophy tournament that is running for some of the high-fliers from 2009; and I shall continue to update the tournament website for the World Cup competition.

Nor does this mean that I will be stopping my work as a moderator, which has become gradually more intensive as other mods move on themselves, nor that I will be leaving the site or the forums, both of which I love dearly. I will continue to update the Ghost-Rating lists, and will also repeat my “Player of the Year Awards” that I premiered this year.

I will take some time now to explain precisely what I intend to do with my various tournaments in the more distant future.

The phpLeague has been very strong from its first full season, and in my opinion has every reason to continue. I will be asking various members who I know well and think could manage such a tournament if they would take over the reins, and will gladly offer them assistance in doing so. I am quietly confident that we haven’t seen the end of it yet, and so your league places should not be considered defunct by any means.

The Masters tournament will be completing its first iteration before long. In common with the leagues, I will conduct a survey at the completion of this tournament, and if I would have re-run the tournament on the basis of said survey I shall try to find someone who can take over the running of this tournament. It has been easier to run than most, so I should hope that I will be able to find someone able to run it.

My Champions’ Trophy I intend to continue running in future years, since it is very low maintenance indeed, and I can fit running it into my breaks from university.

Throughout the running of these tournaments, I have witness increased enthusiasm for them, with players showing an almost insatiable demand for competitive diplomacy. This year, I have also seen more people keen to get involved in running the tournaments. When I started, in 2008, apart from thewonderllama’s single GFDT, there had been no tournament diplomacy on phpdiplomacy (as it was then). Since that time, this community has been able to produce, with almost no official support, an excellent set of opportunities for tournament diplomacy.

Further improvements are possible, and I am sure that they will be made. To help that, I am and will continue to be totally available to people to talk to me about setting up diplomacy tournaments. I am available through Google chat, facebook, MSN and Skype using the e-mail address in my profile. There are difficulties in setting up a good tournament, and I like to think that I could help anyone interested in setting one up avoid mistakes and controversies that I have at times suffered from through the necessarily experimental approach I have had to take. Please, if you intend to start up a tournament, talk to me about it first.



Running these tournaments- and please indulge me as I reminisce a little- has been a labour of love for me. At times, it was difficult to motivate myself to keep them going, particularly when people showed the unique ways in which they can fail to follow instructions (endearingly irksome in hindsight, at least), but I’m really glad I managed to keep it up for as long as I have. Playing in the tournaments has been really great fun most of the time, and has given me the opportunity to get to know some of you well, and to get to like you too. I am currently only in one niche tournament (indeed only one game) as I let off some steam over this summer (as well as the world cup, which is presently ‘on hold’), but if I can successfully pass on the tournaments, that will change again, and I look forward to being able to get properly involved in tournament diplomacy where I have been somewhat an outsider as a player recently.

Throughout the whole thing, however, having other people enjoy the tournaments, getting to know and play each other has been a bonus that I haven’t much experienced before. It affirms one thing- that the tournaments are, essentially, good and worthwhile. Without you guys being generally helpful, all of it would have been an uphill struggle. Each tournament, several players go AWOL and create work unnecessarily, but those of you who are reading this- you’ve stuck around and been the majority that matters, the majority that makes the tournaments work.

I have had a small dream with these tournaments, and lived it too; I know how lucky I am to have done something that I really regret leaving behind. I don’t intend to feel sorry because it is changing and I won’t be part of it in quite the same way again- I am just glad that it happened in the first place.

Ultimately, however, there has been one thing to keep me going from one season to next- and this is my fourth league season-; one thing to encourage me to make new tournaments; one thing that stopped me from throwing in the towel at those infuriating times in the early hours of the morning after a heavy load of other work. It was when people, people who I didn’t know from places I’ve never been with lives I know virtually nothing about, when those people said two simple words: “Thank you”.

And now it is my turn, because you’ve played a part and kept my dream alive, helping it to flourish.

Thank You; Thank You All. Without you, it couldn’t have been worth it.