Advancement Rules state the number of team to advance to the next level of competition based on the number of teams competing against one another.


How do I specify an Advancement Rule?


We state an advancement rule as series of integers separated by commas. (eg 1,2,7,10)

  • the first integer stated the number of team competing that result in 1 team advancing
  • the second integer states the number of teams competing that result in 2 teams advancing
  • the third integer states the number of teams competing that result in 3 teams advancing
  • ...


Here are several examples:

  • 1,3,6
    • 1 team competing, 1 team advances
    • 3 teams competing, 2 teams advance
    • 6 or more teams competing, 3 teams advance
  • 0
    • no teams advance


Advancement Mode


So who is competing against on another?  Typical it is the set of teams that solve the same team challenge at the same level (ie Elementary, Middle or Secondary) (more here).  As DI offers 6 competitive challenges each year, that suggests there are potentially 18 (6 challenges X 3 levels) different competitions occurring at a tournament.  Each will advance teams.

Note: What about Early Learning and University level?  Most University teams advance to Global Finals whether they compete at regional or affiliate tournaments.  Early Learning teams are not competitive so they don't advance.


Each of these competitions needs an advancement rule.

  1. the rules might be the same for all competitions.
  2. if the distribution of teams across challenges is roughly the same but you have many more elementary teams, you might want advancement rules by level.
  3. if the distribution of teams across levels is roughly the same but the challenges vary widely in the number of teams, you might want advancement rules by challenge.
  4. if your challenge levels become so large that a single set of appraiser for team challenge or instant challenge cannot see all the teams, a tournament would need to introduce split rooms (more on splits).  Now individual splits might want specific advancement rules.


We try to accommodate each of these scenarios using Advancement Mode:


  • advancement mode level: specify the rules that apply to all levels (4 rules - one for each level)
  • advancement mode challenge: specify the rules that apply to challenges (6 rules - one for each challenge)
  • advancement mode challenge-level: specify the rules for each individual challenge-level (24 rules - one for each challenge level)


The screen shot below shows an example using advancement mode: level.  The advancement rule for each level is different. On the right side of the page, the advancement rule for the elementary level is explained. You can ask the page to explain any rule.  Note that the number following the rule (50 for Elementary) is the number of elementary teams at the tournament.


Click here for an example involving splits.




To add one more complication, lets say our tournament has splits.

  • A tournament might have splits because the it is actually more that one tournament.  A Maryland tournament is hosting Delaware teams.  The tournament might want different advancement rules for Maryland and Delaware.
  • A tournament needs to split the Elementary level of the Arts challenge at a regional tournament.  The tournament might want half of the advancing teams to come from each split.


Below is a screen shot of an affiliate tournament that is hosting more that one affiliate. The default-split is most of the teams. They get to advance the top 3 teams (according to the interpretation displayed).  We have 2 splits (P and D) outside of the affiliate that get to advance 1 team.