Dear SSL Teams,

I'm excited for this years competition, starting in a few hours from now.

I wanted to write some lines regarding the schedule and friendly matches. Firstly, please keep a close eye on the tournament overview, found https://scheduling.virtual.ssl.robocup.org/tournament_overview, especially for your referee assignments (but also for your matches). The schedule has to be dynamic this year to allow everyone to play in daytime, so it updates automatically when results are entered.

In this years complicated schedule it is very important to avoid unnecessary delays. Make sure your team is ready to play at the required time (and not half an hour late). Make also sure to wake up early to check if new matches for your team or new referee assignments were scheduled during your local night. If matches do run over, try to start the next match on time by switching to a different field. Please be prepared to switch fields on relatively short notice.

Also, if you are the referee, please insert (and check to insert the result correctly (!)) the results into https://scheduling.virtual.ssl.robocup.org/results. As the schedule is highly dynamic, we need you to insert these results to continue planning and searching for a fair schedule for everyone. There will be issues if results are not inserted within a few hours, so please insert them directly after the game ended.

Just like in a normal Robocup, we also provide you with time on the official fields for testing purposes. You can request friendly matches (or just time on the official fields) via https://scheduling.virtual.ssl.robocup.org/request_friendly. To log in, just use your teams login for the vnc. If you'd like to use an already taken slot, and there's just one team playing against themselves at that time, try to ask them if you can share the field. Most of the time teams don't actually need the full field :)

Friendlies during the first half group stage are simple: if there are fields still open, the scheduler will give that field to you. If your request is denied and there are still open fields, it is most likely conflicting with an official event like the opening ceremony.

As soon as one group finishes, there will be no friendly matches until all groups have finished. This may sound overly restrictive, but is necessary. If you schedule a friendly for after the group stage, but the group stage results aren't in yet, the decision is postponed until we know the results for each group. Please be patient in a case like this where your request might be pending for hours, it most likely is this very case where we just cannot guess the results of the group stage and multiply the already large search-tree by 4! ** 4.

As soon as the group staged is completely over, the scheduler runs through all of the remaining ~2**26 possible schedules to verify your request. So if your request is denied, you can try a different time, or you can try again later - especially if there is still some time until your booked time slot - when more results are in and some of the schedules have become no longer relevant.

See you, Tobias Heineken Organizing Committee