Trading tournament glossary
- Buy-in
- The entry fee for a tournament. Sivex Play tournaments use a ladder of buy-in levels from free up to $500; a higher buy-in means a larger prize pool, not a different game.
- Community Pool
- A rake-funded prize pool distributed by a provably fair draw among qualifying Grinders (the most active ranked players) and Climbers (the biggest rating gainers). Winners claim their share within 7 days.
- Deposit commission
- What a creator earns on the players they bring: 2% of every deposit those players make, paid in Free Cash, plus a per-player bounty once the player deposits and plays a cash match. Replaced the old rake-share on 25 September 2026.
- Drawdown
- How far your account falls below its highest balance during a session — balance being your starting capital plus profit from closed trades. Unrealised profit you give back does not count; only real losses do (a closed loss, or an open position currently underwater). Maximum drawdown is the largest such drop, and it measures the risk taken to reach a result.
- Drawdown threshold
- The level of maximum drawdown above which the scoring penalty begins. Every scheduled tournament uses 10%, with a 1.5× penalty multiplier on the excess. Risk within the threshold carries no penalty.
- Haste penalty
- A scoring penalty applied to trades closed too quickly to be a real decision. Every trade closed under 30 seconds adds 0.5 times its absolute PnL% to the penalty, discouraging coin-flip scalping.
- Lobby
- The set of traders entered in the same tournament. On Sivex Play you compete against the lobby — the other traders — not against the market.
- Merkle tree
- A cryptographic structure that reduces a large dataset to one short fingerprint, the root. Sivex Play uses it to make tournament results verifiable.
- Notional capital
- The simulated starting capital every entrant trades with. On Sivex Play, every tournament entrant starts with the same $10,000 notional.
- Paper trading
- Trading on real, live price feeds without routing any order to a real exchange. Sivex Play tournaments are paper trading — the prices are real, the trades are simulated.
- Provably fair
- A property meaning anyone can independently verify a result was not tampered with. Sivex Play commits tournament data to Solana so results can be checked cryptographically.
- Rake
- The platform fee taken from paid tournament entries. Hosted lobbies pay the host 15% of it.
- Rating Drop
- The bi-weekly rating reward: every two weeks, the platform pays $5,000 to the top 1% of the Sivex Rating among Sivex Pass members with at least 10 ranked matches in the window. Paid straight to the wallet — no separate entry or buy-in.
- Reward coupon
- A one-time prize coupon earned by a referred trader when they play their first paid tournament. Every coupon wins something — free TradeLab Pro time or Tournament Credit. It expires 14 days after it is earned.
- Risk-adjusted return
- A measure of return that accounts for the risk taken to achieve it. Sivex Play scores tournaments on risk-adjusted return rather than raw profit.
- Sivex Rating
- A trader’s overall skill rank. TradeLab practice sets your starting rating (up to about 1,200); once you start competing, your tournament results are your rating.
- Sponsored ticket
- A single-use, no-cost tournament entry funded by a sponsor — for example through the referral program. A ticket enters a tournament of its own tier only; a prize won with it is shared 70/30 between the player and the sponsor.
- Tournament
- A timed, head-to-head competition in which entrants trade the same market with the same capital and are ranked against the lobby.
- Tournament Credit
- A non-withdrawable balance spent on tournament entry fees. Referral rewards are paid in Tournament Credit; it is never combined with cash balance.
- Tournament Rating
- The competitive skill rating earned from tournament finishes. Once you start competing, it is your Sivex Rating.
- TradeLab
- Sivex Play’s free practice mode. You trade hidden-outcome historical scenarios to build skill without an entry fee or risk.
- TradeScore
- The skill rating earned in TradeLab practice. Every session updates it, it has its own leaderboard, and for new traders it sets your starting Sivex Rating.
◆ Keep learning
What a skill-based trading tournament is, how a session runs from registration to payout, and how competing against the lobby differs from trading the market.
What a hosted tournament is, why the host has no advantage, and how the Creator Clash, Interval Kings and crews work for players who join one.
How a creator’s community enters a Sivex Play tournament together, how a crew is scored on its top 10 rather than its size, and how the winning crew’s 2% is shared with the people who showed up.
How Sivex Play ranks traders on risk-adjusted return, why drawdown is penalised, and why the scoring model rewards skill over luck.
How every tournament result is hashed into a Merkle tree, committed to Solana, and made independently verifiable by anyone.
A direct, evidence-based answer to whether a skill-based trading tournament is gambling — explained through the scoring design.
How a skill-based trading tournament compares with a prop firm challenge — cost structure, time commitment, and what each one actually measures.
How a skill-based trading tournament compares with trading your own money on an exchange — bounded risk, asymmetric reward, and why a market crash does not break your plan.
How TradeLab lets you practise trading free on hidden-outcome historical scenarios, and how each session builds your skill rating.
How the Sivex Rating works — TradeLab practice sets your starting rating, tournaments are how you climb — why it is worth climbing, and what a high rating unlocks as the platform grows.
How the Rating Drop works — a cash pool split every two weeks among the top of the Sivex Rating, who qualifies, how the banded payouts work, and why the pool only goes up.
How the Sivex Play referral program works — 15 days of Sivex Pass for the trader you bring, a freeroll pass for both of you on their first deposit, a Shield per qualified referral, and for creators 2% of what their players deposit plus a per-player bounty, in Free Cash.
A plain-language guide to the Sivex Pass — the Run, the Table and the Sivex Playdesk, what else the Pass carries, how billing works against your wallet, what happens at renewal, and how to cancel.
The answer-first guide to trading tournaments — what they are, every format that exists (exchange contests, demo contests, fantasy apps, skill tournaments), how prize pools work, and what separates skill-based scoring from gambling.
Why most trading-competition entrants blow up, the scoring math that actually decides rankings, and the risk-discipline playbook that wins skill-scored tournaments.
Every kind of crypto trading competition compared — exchange volume contests, demo contests, and skill tournaments — and why identical capital with risk-adjusted scoring levels the field.
Where to compete on gold, silver, and crude oil — how commodity trading contests work, the market hours that shape them, and why XAU is a competition staple.
An honest map of the alternatives to FTMO — other prop firms, free broker contests, and skill-based trading tournaments — with the trade-offs of each model spelled out.
The consistency rules, drawdown technicalities, and discretionary reviews that commonly sit between a passed challenge and a paid trader — and what a no-review payout model looks like.
The 2026 field guide to paper trading competitions — free brand-funded contests, broker arenas, and entry-fee skill tournaments — and how prize density differs across them.
How fantasy stock-picking apps differ from live trading tournaments — drafting a portfolio is not trading, and only one of the two scores execution and risk management.