Gentlemen, CSS Dixieland announces that the November Nethack Tournament is about to begin. There have been rather few competitions in the forty-year History of Rogue, Hack and Nethack. Specifically for Nethack, there are or have been only these ones:

/dev/null/nethack Tournament: It existed every November from 1999 to 2016, based on Nethack version 3.4.3 with custom patches every year, except for the years 2011 and 2013, in which the version 3.4.3 was played without patches. In November 2017 a
Tribute Tournament was played using Nethack version 3.6.0 and organised by an independent group, then the /dev/null/nethack Tournament became history. The November Nethack Tournament uses the same calendar time.

June nethack.alt.org Tournament: It took place only in 2006 and 2007, and then it was discontinued. The Junethack Tournament in June uses the same calendar time.

Junethack Tournament (the official name 'Junethack' is a contraction of 'June Nethack'): It began in 2011 as a replacement for the old June nethack.alt.org Tournament, but with a lapse of three years, 2008 to 2010, in which there was no June Tournament
at all. Junethack differs from other contests in various ways. It accepts varieties of Nethack, and in stead of being played in dedicated servers belonging to Junethack, it is played in various servers that offer one or more varieties. That policy
facilitates the inclusion of many Nethack varieties in Junethack (about twenty varieties in 2023). For standard Nethack (at times called 'vanilla' Nethack) three servers offer version 3.7.0, which has not been officially released by the Dev Team yet, but
it is now available for testing purpose. The servers belong to the same organisation, Hardfought, but they are placed in different geographic locations (Australia, Europe, North America) in order to facilitate rapid server response to players worldwide.

November Nethack Tournament: It began in 2018 as a replacement for the old /dev/null/nethack Tournament. The November Nethack Tournament is played using public servers, as Junethack is, but the November Tournament is only for standard Nethack, not
recognising varieties of the game. As of 2023 the November Tournament can only be played in the three servers of Hardfought, one in Australia, another in Europe, and the other in North America. The Australian server usually has the smallest number of
players, the North American the biggest number, the European is in between.

Nethack Challenge: So far it has only happened in 2021. It is not for human players, but for robots (software for computers), made or adapted for playing Nethack. The Challenge of 2021 was played using Nethack version 3.6.6 and the Nethack Learning
Environment. Therefore there is software for playing Nethack as there is software for playing Chess, but while Chess executables (whether Alpha Beta programming approach, or Neural Networks approach) are currently much stronger than any human champion (
well over 3500 Elo for the strongest Chess software versus about 2800 Elo for the human Chess World Champion), until now NO NETHACK SOFTWARE has ever ascended the hero, but human players have successfully ascended the hero in different Nethack varieties
or versions.

Other contests may have been organised with a limited number of participants, but those of wide international scope and with a sizeable number of players have just been the ones listed above, and with the oldest beginning only in 1999, while Rogue-like
dungeon games began in the early 1980s.

Specifically for the coming November Nethack Tournament of 2023, information is given below.

Participants can play individually or as part of klans (groups of players that may receive collective awards). Score is given for ascensions, trophies and achievements (almost three hundred different achievements are available) using a complex scoring
system explained in detail in tournament rules:

https://tnnt.org/rules

The game is Nethack version 3.6.6 with a few modifications specifically made for the November Tournament, with some extra options added, but without significant alteration to the game itself. More details can be found at the Nethack Wiki and at the Web
document of the TNNT organisation:

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/The_November_NetHack_Tournament

https://tnnt.org

At present Nethack has only two tournaments regularly running every year, one in June, the other in November. All Nethack players are invited and strongly encouraged to participate in them. Whether beginner or expert, every Nethack player is sure to love
even more our unique game by interacting with other players. Please read carefully the rules, register in the tournament, and PLAY. Good luck !

Dixieland for ever !

CSS Dixieland

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