How the tournament works
The tournament is composed of three rounds of selective Science Fights, and one Finals. The NZYST combines features of round-robin matches and elimination tournaments.
Throughout three Science Fights, each team meets other contestants, and no team is eliminated. These competition rounds are played in parallel all-play-all Groups.
The teams are rotated after each science fight to ensure as far as possible that no two teams meet more than once.
Science fight 1 and science fight 2 are focused on main NZYST problems known to the teams in advance.
Science fight 3 is focused on additional problems that the teams are given immediately before the fight to solve during a 45 minutes preparation phase.
The chart gives an approximate overview of the tournament structure in case of 15 teams. Find more details in the NZYST Regulations
Teams accumulate points in each science fight, and ranking lists are released after each science fight.
Three teams with the best rank move on to the Grand Final and compete for Gold. In the Grand Final, the challenge procedure is omitted and the teams themselves select the problems to present from among the main problems.
