Tournament Rules
An overview of the rules for participation and player seeding
Information for tournament organisers and club captains
Play the Cat, my friend, and you’ll live to see the future!
The Smoking Cat 2026 season features 10 ranked tournaments and 1 unranked newcomers’ tournament.
At individual tournaments the top ten players score points, and the season standings also count collective success at the Team Championship — all you need is to have your dream team and to play the Cat.
The Player of the Year and Team of the Year are announced and honoured during the gala evening of the prestigious Masters tournament.
Tournament tiers / Season standings scoring
Seeding players into tournaments
Participation in the Smoking Cat Masters
As the season’s top tournament, the Masters is reserved for the 10 best players of the season.
- The 7 highest-scoring players of the season
- 1 SC World Series champion
- 1 winner: GreenHorn Cat
- 1 member of the winning team in the Team Championship
Participation in other Smoking Cat tournaments
Every player is entitled to take part in only one tournament of each tier! Once at the Nationals, once at the Classics.
A player is entitled to play two tournaments of the same tier only if no other player is interested in the seat at the table!
Priority for seeding into Nationals tournaments: by final placement in the previous season’s standings (8), wild cards (4)
Priority for seeding into Classics tournaments: half the players by the current season standings (8), wild cards (7)
Seeding for the SCWS: the best players of the season (25), wild cards (5)
Seeding for the GreenHorn Cat: the current season standings and players without points by how quickly they register—the thirteenth and any further newcomer are guaranteed a spot the following year
Wild cards
Wild cards are assigned by the tournament organiser to players they arrange with, and the only thing they must watch out for is whether the invited players have not already played a tournament of the same tier.
Organiser seeding of players into tournaments in detail
Before the end of the calendar year (in a normal season), the complete tournament calendar is usually announced, and it may be supplemented depending on interest in further tournament(s).
Nationals
The Nationals organisers approach the players they want to give a wild card to, and players register for the individual tournaments according to the dates and their own will.
You can register for the Nationals tournaments from 1 January to 25 January, that is, during the cat-players’ quiet season.
Players have priority by their placement in the previous season.
8 players have priority spots by their placement in the previous season, 4 are invited by the organiser (wild cards).
Team Championship
Up to 10 teams of 3 players each can register for the Team Championship. The Team Championship runs with an even number of teams: 6–8–10 teams.
Seeding into the TCh in each season is set by the current standing of the teams in the rankings after the SC National Tour.
Classics (Card Game Challengers)
Players register for the Classics tournaments from the day after the Team Championship. So just a minute past midnight, right then and there.
From the current season standings, 10 players have priority, and the organiser adds 5 players.
(In the Classic Tour 20xx we are opening up, for capacity reasons, the option to raise the number of participants to as many as 18 players. Such an increase is, however, only possible once all the tournaments have been filled with 15 players.)
Smoking Cat World Series
The Smoking Cat World Series is open to 30 players. For this 4-round major tournament, 25 players will be invited on the basis of their season results, and a further 5 players will be invited on a wild card.
