You want to see how your attack power compares with that of your opponent's defense power. If your attack power is generally larger, that probably means you'll be able to inflict worthwhile damage.

Compare this to how your defense power matches up against your opponent's attack power. If your opponent's attack power is generally larger, that probably means you'll sustain significant damage from his attacks.

What you want to do is figure out how you can raise your attack power and defense power such that you inflict more damage than gets inflicted upon you. If you can wound your opponents more severely than they can wound you, you'll win.

Targeting the correct opponents is an important strategy. It gets more complex as the tournament progresses, when there comes to be more and more elemental bonuses that affect who should be attacking whom. But one good idea is to pit two of your three guys against one opponent, in an attempt to dispatch one opponent early, so he's not picking away at you as you try to take care of the other two. This isn't always the way to go, but it's usually a reliable route.

The above is not a complete enough strategy to advance you far in the tournament, but most winning strategies are going to be based on these ideas. Hopefully the above will keep you alive long enough to experiment and find out what works. Above all, don't give up: you can lose every qualifying round and still make a strong showing in the elimination matches, where the game introduces an element of psychology to the mathematics.

None, really. It doesn't affect who your opponents choose to target. It's purely an aesthetic control.

Five gold for every knocked-out character, plus one gold piece per five hit points that need healing.

When you are logged into your account and hit the Current Standings button (available as of the second day of each tournament), you will be able to view other people's characters and battles up to the round you're currently working on.

The public results area, which is available when you click on the Game Results link on the main page, is a little more restrictive. For the duration of the qualifying phase of the tournament, other people's characters and battles are not viewable from the public results area so that late entrants won't benefit from knowing what opponents they will face and what strategies of other player's succeeded or failed. Once the elimination phase of the tournament begins, all characters and battles will become viewable in this area. In the meantime, you will find it more informative to view results from the Current Standings button after you have logged in.

No, and you don't see his, either. During the elimination phase, when you are paired up with another player, you will be able to see each other's characters as they were at the close of the previous night's match. Any changes you make after that point won't become visible until the match actually takes place.

Battles occur each night of the tournament at roughly 4am EST/EDT, which is 1am PST/PDT.

The time differences with other areas in the world can vary based on when different countries go on and off Daylight Savings Time. Generally speaking, however, battles will take place in the British Isles around 9am, and an hour or two later in the morning in most other parts of western Europe.

In Australia and New Zealand, the time difference varies by two hours between the summer and winter. In New Zealand, the battle time is typically going to be 8pm in the southern hemisphere's winter months and 10pm in its summer months. Times in Australia vary between the late afternoon and evening.

The three opponents -- Radebur, Aries21, and Liface -- are notorious personalities in RinkChat, the chat system used on RinkWorks. The battle text associated with each was designed to emulate (and sometimes quote) how these people presented themselves in the chat room, at least before they were booted out on self-explanatory grounds.