The cup climbs: easy to hard, deterministic — the shuffle retires with its screen

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

PROJECT.md

@@ -491,6 +491,17 @@ zombie (now an occasional opponent, `TUNE.racketEvery`, not the every-game fixtu
   `RETURNED`, `DOUBLE KILL`) is a footnote to something you already watched happen. Sharing the loud
   FACE with the milestone cards is right; sharing their SIZE made every footnote read as a milestone.
 
+## Session log: THE CUP CLIMBS — the shuffle retires too (2026-08-29, same day, STAGING ONLY)
+
+Oliver, straight after the draw screen went: "warum sollten wir noch mischen? wäre es nicht gut
+von leicht nach schwer zu spielen?" — right again. Without the screen the shuffle was invisible
+novelty, and a bad roll paired the strongest challenger with the one-game round one, INVERTING
+the curve the whole game is tuned around ("starts easy, gets harder" is literally test-pinned).
+`cupRoundsFor` is deterministic now: one band position per round, ascending, the final the top —
+and the setup's league panel is thereby an exact preview of the tournament order. `cupDraw`
+collapsed to a read; `cup.draw`/`cup.played` are gone (startMatch keeps the dead `draw` parameter
+for call-site arity only). The old draw test became the climb-order pin.
+
 ## Session log: THE DRAW SCREEN RETIRES (2026-08-29, same day, STAGING ONLY)
 
 Oliver: "the draw ist doch jetzt eigentlich obsolet, oder?" — yes. The screen was built for the