DO YOU GET A SECOND CHANCE IN LEAGUES!!!!!!!!!????????


Yeah, it's going to be around forever. Wood league will always exist every week. Stone league will always exist every week, etc.
Every Sunday some are promoted to one league higher, and some stay where they're at. Everyone enters a new division with zero trophies.
(edit, if you join a division late in the week, Friday or later, it wont end on Sunday. In that case you'll have to wait until the Sunday after that... so my statement about everyone resetting to zero trophies on every Sunday is not perfectly accurate)

Everyone will eventually reach a point where it's very-very hard to increase their league, so you can still be happy with whatever league you get to.

You cannot be relegated from any league you are in; you either earn promotion or stay in the same league. So your friend, having failed to reach the stone league, continues with the wood league, and will be playing in a division of the wood league every week until she qualifies for the stone league. If she qualifies for the stone league, she will be playing in that one every week until she qualifies for the bronze league - she can never be relegated from a league once she qualifies to be in it. Does this answer your question?
while we are on the league topic, is there any chance of doing ok in the prize competition if you didn't make it into stone league in the first place.

while we are on the league topic, is there any chance of doing ok in the prize competition if you didn't make it into stone league in the first place.
Yeah, there were only ~2.5 million in the first week of wood, so one division in champion won't be able to fill (50 players) in the first week. Estimate is somewhere around 20-30.
(The reason you can't calculate it exactly is there are ties where more than the usual number of people are promoted, and there are also people who will stop playing for whatever reason, including having their account closed for cheating)

https://support.chess.com/article/2813-what-are-leagues-how-do-i-join-one
"The week will not begin until there are 50 people in your league group, so some of the higher leagues may take a while to fill. Your games played will not count toward your league score until the ‘week’ has started for that group."

aight, time to up my play time to 5 hours a day /jk.
Since trophies don't carry over into the next week it wont matter.
But also... 5 hours a day for 7 days will probably not be enough to get promoted out of elite and into champion anyway.
I don't really care about the leagues but I am pretty obsessive at heart so will try and advance past the first couple just out of that tendency. But I have noticed my games getting lower and lower quality (as reflected in a rapid rating decline) as I have increased my playing time. I think I will revert back to advice I got from John Bartholomew to play a set number of games a day, especially since there is no chance I will advance to the top leagues anyway

"Yeah, it's going to be around forever. Wood league will always exist every week. Stone league will always exist every week, etc."
Every Sunday some are promoted to one league higher, and some stay where they're at. Everyone enters a new division with zero trophies.
(edit, if you join a division late in the week, Friday or later, it wont end on Sunday. In that case you'll have to wait until the Sunday after that... so my statement about everyone resetting to zero trophies on every Sunday is not perfectly accurate)
Duh...