Ahead of their Annual New Year’s Banquet, the XMädn Board has announced substantial changes for the upcoming 2024 Season.

“The inaugural season was highly experimental,” XMädn Chairman and Board spokesman Harry said. “That’s why the schedule lacked structure and the season spanned almost one-and-a-half years. This must and will change.”

Starting in 2024, annual seasons shall consist of three sub-seasons which will be “Masters” followed by “Grand Prix Series” and finally “Championship”. Each will culminate in a “Major” with a trophy at stake. In preparation for its “Major”, each sub-season shall have a level-1 tournament followed by a level-2 tournament.

In order to fit the nine ranking triple-threat tournaments and the XLeague plus, possibly, one or two double-threat tournament into a 12-month schedule, some playing distances will be cut short.

Masters (3T-XL) and Championship (3T) tournaments played at levels 1 and 2 will be cut by one required win compared to the 2022-23 Season. This means that level-1 tournaments will be played at first-to-2, level-2 tournaments at first-to-3 wins.

The distance for the World Masters (3T-XL) at level 3 will be cut by one required win to a first-to-6 series while the distance for the only level-4 “Major”, the World Championship (3T), shall remain first-to-10 wins for the time being.

Grand Prix Series (GP) tournaments at level 2 will remain scheduled for 8 games. Level-1 tournaments will even go up from 3 to 4 scheduled games. The distance for the GP World Series (GP) at level 3, however, will be cut from 20 to 16 scheduled games.

The tournaments of the GP Series will undergo another substantial change with regard to the distribution of Grand Prix Points (GPP), targeting to put more emphasize on GP rules being a hybrid between 3T and 3T+ rules.

Starting in 2024, the colour finishing in first place will earn its player 10 GPP instead of 9 GPP. Second to sixth place continue to score 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1 GPP but the first player to bring home both of his allied colours will earn a bonus of 2 GPP and 1 winner point (WP) for the rankings, regardless the finishing place of his/her second colour.

Due to its great success in the past few weeks, the XLeague will stay and their rules remain unchanged. However, unlike its inaugural edition, the 2024 XLeague will span the entire year with the Double Round-Robins to be played on weekends between two preparatory ranking tournaments and before each “Major” tournaments. The Playoff Series shall again be held at the end of December.

Furthermore, another non-ranking double-threat event shall be added to the schedule, a Challengers tournament to be played in late July and early August. However, this will continue to be subject to confirmation for quite a while.

The 2024 Season is scheduled to begin on 6 January with the first at-board of the 2024 Winter Masters. The top half of the first DRR of the 2024 XLeague shall be played on 20 January.

15 December has been projected as the date for Game 28 of the 2024 World Championship, if required. 30 December has been projected as the date for a potential decider of the XLeague Final Series.