> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://walkingman.gitbook.io/the-walking-man/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://walkingman.gitbook.io/the-walking-man/tournaments.md).

# Tournaments & leaderboards

Walking alone gets you up the tiers. Walking with a **group** gets you bonus steps every 24 hours.

## The cycle

Each tournament cycle is **24 hours**, split into:

* **20 hours active** — every step your group accumulates inside this window counts toward the tournament leaderboard.
* **4 hours cooldown** — leaderboard freezes, awards settle, next window opens.

The dashboard and leaderboard show a live countdown to whichever phase you're in.

## Group tiers

Groups are bracketed by their **total tournament-window steps**:

| Bracket         | Group steps     | Bonus per member |
| --------------- | --------------- | ---------------- |
| **Drifters**    | 0 – 10,000      | +500             |
| **Striders**    | 10,000 – 20,000 | +1,000           |
| **Marathoners** | 20,000 – 30,000 | +2,000           |
| **Legends**     | 30,000+         | +5,000           |

Every group that reaches a bracket awards the bonus to *every member*. There is no winner-takes-all — the bracket itself is the reward.

> Example: Your 8-person group accumulates 22,000 steps during the active window → Marathoners → each of the 8 members gets +2,000 bonus steps at settlement. That's 16,000 group-distributed steps in one cycle.

## Settlement

Settlement is idempotent and runs the moment any walker loads the leaderboard after a cycle ends. Each (window, group, walker) tuple can be credited exactly once — there's a database-level unique constraint preventing double awards.

## Individual leaderboard

A parallel individual leaderboard tracks all-time step totals. It is for bragging rights and admin oversight; it does not award bonuses.