A challenge is a micro tournament between up to five anglers: everyone pays the same entry fee, the entry fees make the prize pool, and the winner takes the prize. These are the rules every one of them agrees to. They are linked from the challenge itself in the app, and emailed to everybody when a challenge locks in.
Paid-entry challenges are not switched on yet. Nothing can be charged, because no challenge can carry an entry fee at all. The rules below about entry fees describe how it will work when they are — they are here so nothing about the money arrives as a surprise.
Who wins depends on what you catch and measure. There is no house, no odds and no element of chance — every angler is competing on their own fishing, the same way an entry-fee tournament has always worked.
It is an ordinary fishing tournament with a small field. FishCoin runs it and takes a fee for doing so; the anglers put up the prize themselves, out of the entry fees they pay to join. The only thing that makes it different from a tournament you would drive to is that the person who sent the first challenge is the one who created it.
Whoever sets the challenge up picks one of three. Biggest fish: the longest single fish anyone lands takes it. Most fish: every measured fish counts as one and size is ignored. Best five: tournament scoring, and the one most challenges use.
Your five longest fish, added together. Biggest total wins. That is the whole rule, and it is the same one tournaments have used for decades. Catch more than five and only your best five count towards the total — but every extra fish is another chance to replace the weakest one in your bag, so fishing on is always worth it. Catch fewer than five and you are scored on what you landed. To beat someone who caught more fish than you, your five have to add up to more than their best five.
The angler who sets up a challenge picks one entry fee. Everybody who joins pays that same entry fee — including them. Nobody can be in for more or less than anyone else.
A challenge does not wait for everybody to answer. The moment one person accepts, it is on between the two of you and it runs. Anyone else who was invited can still join, right up until the fishing starts.
Every angler who joins adds their entry fee to the prize pool. Your own entry fee is fixed at the moment you lock in and never changes, so somebody joining later can only mean more to win — never more to pay.
Your card is held when you are invited and charged when you accept. If you never accept, the hold lapses and you are never charged at all. The person who set the challenge up is charged at the same moment the first angler accepts.
Accepting a paid challenge takes you to fishcoin.ai to enter your card. Payments are not handled inside the app, and FishCoin never sees or stores your card details — the payment provider does.
Fifteen percent of each entry fee is FishCoin's tournament fee, taken when that angler locks in. If the challenge is later called off, everyone who had paid in is refunded their entry fee LESS that tournament fee. You will get back less than you put in. That is what covers the cost of taking and returning the payment.
Only the angler who set the challenge up can call it off, and only before the fishing starts. Once the window opens it cannot be cancelled by anyone — there are measured catches riding on it by then.
An invitation you ignore costs you nothing. The hold on your card expires by itself and no money moves.
A challenge can be set to start at most seven days ahead. That is a limit of how long a card can be held for, not a preference.
Only fish measured in the FishCoin app, with a FishCoin token in the shot, inside the challenge window. If the challenge names a species, anything else you land does not count.
The start and end are set in the timezone of whoever created the challenge, and everyone fishes the same hours. If you are in a different timezone the app shows you both.