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For those of you that have been keeping up with the ladder or recent content, you know that we have been hosting events for ladder every weekend to increase activity. While things are looking fairly decent, we can always do better, and a little fun never hurts anyone. To add an extra spark to ladder, I wanted to introduce a new event: Perfect Week!

The Perfect Week is based on an episode of How I Met Your Mother, where Barney Stinson, the ladies man of the series, accepts the challenge of taking home a new woman every night of the week. If you're not understanding what I'm getting at, the idea of this event is to take one of your fellow smashers home every night of the week. The idea of this event is to defeat at least one new opponent every night of the week. To make this event special, it will only take place during official seasons (ones where badges count and playoffs occur.) In addition, there will be two different weeks for the ladders. For this season, the Perfect Week schedule is as follows:

Singles: July 16th - 22nd
Doubles: July 23rd - 29th

Your matches can be played any time throughout the day as long as they are submitted by midnight (EST) of that day. To be clear you can play the same opponent as many times as you want in that one week, but they will only count towards one day of your Perfect Week. The new opponents don't have to be someone you've never played in your ladder history; just someone you haven't played during the Perfect Week. The Perfect Weeks have been scheduled to match the appropriate weekend events. This means the weekend of Singles Perfect Week is Singles Weekend, and the weekend of Doubles Perfect Week is Doubles Weekend. We do realize that acquiring these badges may be difficult, especially for doubles, but that's the point. The badges will be worth at least 500 points (the doubles one might be more than singles due to the difficulty of finding matches), and have a Barney Stinson theme to it. A week before the first Perfect Week, I will be posting a blog to remind everyone.

P.S. Don't forget that this weekend is Doubles Weekend! If you need a refresher on the ladder schedule, click here.

As Enrish stated in his latest ladder article, one of the changes we plan to implement is more ladder weekends. Ever since the match requirements for playoffs were introduced during the Road to Apex ladder, the brackets never met their intended quotas. My goal is to try to restore the brackets to their former glory, give you all more chances to play, and liven up those ladder chats by means of two sub-changes:

1. In addition to Doubles Weekends, there will be Singles Weekends. While not as bad as doubles, singles brackets have been a few players short...even though it should be fairly easy for everyone to meet the requirement of thirty matches. (Just look at all of the players who played at least a hundred matches in the past!) Regardless, the timespan is the same as Doubles Weekends, and shall remain like this unless stated otherwise in a blog. Here are the days and times (based on Eastern Standard Time):

-Friday: 3 pm - midnight (12 am)
-Saturday: noon (12 pm) - midnight (12 am)
-Sunday: 1 pm - 10 pm

The badges, however, are a different story. With respect to the event itself, only one is being made for playing at least two matches on Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday. For those badge connoisseurs out there (using the non-vulgar version of the badge name for the article's sake) who are curious as to why this is, keep in mind that there used to be only one badge for Doubles Nights. The only two reasons that badge is still given out in addition to the actual Doubles Weekend badge is because doubles ladder isn't usually crowded, and...well, badges can't be deleted, so no point in neglecting it. Back on topic, if there seems to be a decline in attendance as the weekend goes by, then I'll consider a second badge.

2. There will be ladder events every weekend, and they will alternate between singles and doubles. This weekend (June 8 - 10) will be Singles Weekend, next weekend (June 15 - 17) will be Doubles Weekend (SUNDAY WILL GO FROM 12 AM TO 12 AM (24 HOURS) FOR FATHER'S DAY), and all future weeks will switch in that fashion. Keep in mind that the last weekend an event will take place before the ladder ends is July 27 - 29, which will be a Doubles Weekend.

That's about all you need to know when it comes to the schedule. I'll close this article by listing all of the badges you can earn for these events:

Singles: wifi warrior, staff slayer, and singles weekend warrior.

Doubles: double dater, doubles weekend warrior, and double danger.

As always, if you qualify for any of these, let Enrish or I know. Happy laddering!