First off, I just wanted to say how much I enjoy the site. I just have a suggestion about tournaments with more than one round. As it stands now, a new round will start in a tournament, after all games in the previous round have finished.

Right now, I'm in a tournament where there is one game left, and that one game has no bearing on who advances to the next round. No matter the outcome, neither player can advance. 

My suggestion would be, in a case like this, to start the second round and allow the two players to finish their game in the first round. Now obviously, this could be difficult (or pointless) to implement, but it's just a thought I had. Thanks for having such a great site. Cheers.

I would second that request.  If you could determine when someone has "clinched" a bracket, i.e. the winner(s) of the bracket are guaranteed regardless of the following outcomes then it would be great if the tournament could move on to the next round while the previous round games continue on to their natural end.

I would like this suggestion, but it dosen't really matter to me as I am a premium member, I can participate in as many tournaments as I want. and just let the other ones run. I would like the moves that are forced in games/vote chess just to be made automatically. 

I do not agree with the forced move. It should be left to the player to find the legal move, even if it is only one move.

 This is the reason that Erik has said in the past that this isn't being done. 

I beg to differ- it shouldn't be too difficult to implement!  Where has Erik said this is not going to happen furtiveking?

erik is not supportive here.

He says  : this is surely the right way to go. but when we make this calculation? it is certainly a large query to execute for the server, so when do we do it? only when a TD clicks on "advance rounds" or something? we can't just have queries like this running all the time... :) at post 46

Yes TDs can request this option when needed. Its a start at the right direction. Why was the conversation just left there, and never proceed implementing it?

 OF course this same suggestion comes up every couple months.  Tournaments take a long time and always will.

Hi guys,

I agree wholeheartedly.  This (of course) is possible and should be done.

Watch your back rank.

It's possible, but basically you have to check every group and calculate the winner for all possible outcomes of the remaining games. With as much as 100 groups in the official tournaments, and many combinations of the remaining games, can you imagine the computing power.

Perhaps it would be wise to allow users to nominate a group, where the winner is determined, and have the program only check their claim.

I guess everyone understands the complexity involved in calculating all possible combination. The timing of checking seems to be the key. The simplest thing is manual intervention by Tournament Director (TD) or group of people. Sophisticated algorithms may also be possible.

What is important is start a step on this direction. Even if we end-up in "not the best" but "very good", I'm sure people appreciate that.

It doesn't matter whether someone is free member or premium member, once someone is eligle for the next round, he/she needs to wait for long time for the next round, currently.

 Is it important to start in this direction?  Does it really need shortening, speeding or whatever?  Might not a better step be player education? perhaps patience?  The second round starts when the first round ends.  Is it really that difficult a concept?  Or is the problem; correspondence/online chess is slower than blitz/bullet and one can reasonably expect it to take months to finish a game?

obvious solution is to give the tournament director the discretion and power to start the next round when the candidates are all qualified - I'm in a tournament at the moment - there are three games outstanding and not one of them will affect who goes through to the next round, there are 8 of us left and we all know it

In a group of 12 people, there are 132 games and if we take a case of 67 games completed and 65 games are remaining, the combination would run for 3^65 which is really really very very large number. There should be a limit on number of remaining games for exhaustive checks or simpler checks (works for 80-90%) needs to be used.

I personally would love to see both. In case large number of games are left, do simple check and if the simple check reveals the group leaders, mark it. Do the exhaustive check only when a small number of matches are left.