This guide will list tips to help save a few seconds as well as everything you need to know about when to forfeit. If you're only interested in the little tips and tricks, scroll to the bottom of the guide.

WHEN TO SURRENDER Note: This guide assumes that you will win every game that you don't forfeit. The rules will be slightly different for normal cups versus super cups.

Normal Cups:
	In order to know when giving up is an option, it's important to remember that you only play each team once and you will be ranked higher than a computer with the same amount of points as you. Always win the first match, or the other team could go undefeated. Then the rule to follow is this: You can forfeit as long as no team has more points than you and you haven't played any team that could surpass you. For instance, if the points look like this:

You 6 points Waluigi 6 Yoshi 4 Daisy 3 Etc....................

You can surrender if you haven't played Waluigi OR Yoshi yet. If you forfeit and Yoshi wins a game, he will have 7 points (more than your 6) and you may never catch up unless you can force him to lose (by playing him). This example shows how deadly a computer sudden death can be for you - 1 sudden death loss for them is the same as a win as far as you're concerned. Note that I didn't need to make up more scores because anyone 3 or more points behind you can be ignored. For the Bowser Cup, ignore the top 3 computers since you only need to be in fourth to go to the finals. Defend your fourth place position instead of first place. Once again: pretend the top 3 computers do not exist in the Bowser Cup.

If you're at least 3 points ahead, you can always forfeit, but if any computer has even one more point than you, you can never forfeit. A small tip is to try and surrender to the computers with the fewest points, since they're unlikely to catch up to you. (If you want to play it safe and make sure you don't lose the cup if you mess up one game, just pretend you always have 3 fewer points than you actually do.)

Super Cups:
	The idea is very much the same, but now the fact that you play each computer twice needs to be factored in. You can surrender if no team that you haven't played is more than 3 points ahead of you, and if no team that you've played once has more points than you (like for normal cups). Keep in mind that you can't forfeit to the teams in those positions because you need to beat them. Only surrender to teams that can't catch up to you. That's a little confusing, so here's another example:

Luigi: 9 points You: 6 Wario: 6 Peach: 3 Etc.....................

You can surrender if you haven't played Luigi at all yet, but remember you can't surrender TO Luigi. You can also surrender to Wario if it's your first game against him, but it's much better to beat him and instead forfeit against an opponent with fewer points. If someone is more than 3 points ahead of you, you can't forfeit any games until you get sufficiently ahead of them. With the Super Bowser Cup, once again ignore the top 3 computers and defend fourth place.

TIME SAVING TIPS AND TRICKS

Change your game settings in the Grudge Match mode and you won't have to fix them before every cup.

Set the match time as low as you can handle - the lowest is 2 minutes.

Turn off super strikes - each attempt wastes a lot of time and could allow the computer to make a comeback. If you can only win consistently with Super Team's super strikes, you'll have to deal with a lot of time loss.

Since powerups don't waste time, you can have them on or off - whichever helps you win.

Always win your first one or two games so you have a better idea of who to forfeit against (the weaklings).

Avoid the slow motion of perfect passes. If a computer does a perfect pass, try to take out the recipient ASAP. If you do a perfect pass, wait until the ball hits your feet to shoot it, but don't wait too long or it will lose power.

Score as few goals as possible. Try not to let the computer score any goals, and don't score more than you need. I like to stay 2 goals ahead of my opponent, but you could get risky and be only one point ahead to save a few seconds, or play it even safer and score more. Once you are ahead, just play keep-away with the ball and run out the timer.

Remember which cup you're on - this sounds stupid, but I started to play the Super Flower Cup twice in my run.

Do the Star Cup first; it will save you from having to change cups twice while the timer is running. Also, it tends to be the hardest (besides the Bowser Cup, which must be done last), so it's nice to get it out of the way. This only saves about a second, so don't bother if you don't want to.

Consider playing as Mario since the cursor always starts on him; however, it doesn't make much of a difference as long as you're quick about choosing your captain. Personally I always use Luigi just because I like him as a character.

Avoid sudden death if you can, but there's usually nothing that can be done about it. Certainly don't forfeit to avoid playing sudden death unless you have reason to believe it will go on for minutes.

Spam the A button to skip all cutscenes and match highlights.

I hope this helps! Feel free to ask questions, and good luck on your runs!