Have you got any ideas as to changes of the rules of this league?

Post them here!

OG

A simple question does it have to be british teams?

Time control? Please 3 - 7 days (preferably 3), else I may have a little difficulty with my team - most of them normally play games set at 3 days per move.

Only English? I personally don't think it needs to be limited to English teams, British teams, etc. Maybe there would be an advantage to allowing teams from elsewhere in the world. However, it was listed as an English team league originally, so I fully respect OG's decision if he wants to keep it that way.

5-a-side? IMO this should not be changed.

What happens if a team does not achieve 5 players? I have come across this problem in the team match league. My suggestion would be to select 'auto start - on' and 'max players - 5' when sending the challenges, if a team does not register 5 players by the deadline day, they forfeit. It is bound to happen at least once, probably several times. In light of that people may prefer that a team does not forfeit the whole team match, just the 2 games that they do not provide a player for;

i.e. Team A vs Team B, Team A has 5 players, but Team B only has 3...award wins for black and white to Team A which gives them a 4-0 lead before any of the other games are even played.

Updates/League? I have seen OG's tournament within his Checkmate Group and I think this is a very good, easy to read format.

One league, multiple groups, knockout? In addition to the teams registered here there are unlikely to be many others join; Everton, Liverpool, Reading, Bolton, Leeds, Chelsea have groups on the site, about half of them have at least 5 players. I took the liberty of sending them a link for this group, but maybe a proper invite from the admins would be appropriate. In any case, there will probably not be enough teams to warrant anything other than a simple league format.

Flexibility on starting games on time? How much flexibility will be allowed? Will there be a fixed deadline for matches to be started? What happens if they are not started on time? In my experience I have found that competent admins will normally have little problem with setting up the matches on time. However there are sure to be others who will fail to do so and are the kind of people that would test the patience of a saint. Unfortunately we will know soon enough who they are!  Maybe a good idea is to set an initial deadline, but also have a secondary deadline set before they actually forfeit the whole match. Overall I think giving people too many chances, leads to a low value tournament and then the more competent members lose interest. Plus it is not fair to expect OG to be babying admins/super admins that are failing to issue game challenges or set their teams to 'ready'.

MUFC receive a bye and automatically win the league? Well Fergie joked we should get a bye for the Champions League Final and just get the trophy, because he didn't want to have to play against Chelsea or Barca!

Time Control: 3 days/move.

Only English teams, sorry.

5-a-side, yes.  Some teams struggle even with that.

Yes, they forfeit just that match.

Yep, as you say.

A simple league format, I think.  I have invited every team from the Premier League and Championship, and will hopefully do the others soon.

I think I will give people 5 days to get their team together, otherwise they will forfeit.  People will be kindly asked to set it up in 3, but no action will be taken before they take a full 5 days.

And...hmmmm...not so sure on that score!

Thanks for forcing me to make everything clearer!

OG

this is league is for only english teams, so if you have a team that is not english, I have two league group one for team matches and other for vote chess, it is between any team(fc)s in the world....

Yes - if that is the case, then join that one.

OG

I forgot to ask one important question. Football points used to be comparable to chess; 2 points for a win and 1 for a draw, obviously being the equivalent of 1 and 0.5. Are we sticking with that, or to encourage attacking play to the final whistle are we going to award 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw?

Do you mean within the team match (we can't actually do that; it's up to chess.com) or for the Team Match as a whole (as in - 5-5 in a Team Match means 1 point each for the league).

OG

By the way, make sure it's a rule in your 'Manchester United' group that you can only be in one group or the other.

Thanks,

OG

Yes, for the team match on the whole; my opinion is that it encourages players not to accept draws in games that they have a chance of winning; 3 points for a win and the individual scores tallied up for 'goal difference'?

Good idea!

OG

Just to confirm, when you say English, you mean specifically English and not UK. The old argument of whether Rangers and Celtic should be allowed to play in England as the 'top' Welsh teams do - there is a Celtic group on the site.

Man City have started a group, as have Bolton, but realistically they probably will not have enough players for the start of the league. Leeds and Reading are both only a player short, and have expressed an interest; trying to get to 5 members at present.

No interest shown yet from Liverpool (can't face losing to the Mancs at yet another game!), Chelsea (looks like a dormant group), or Everton.

English not British.  The team must be English.

OG

Sheff Utd (blades) invited to participate. Awaiting a response.

Maybe we should draw up the rules clearly ahead of the league starting? Later entrants will still be able to join the league (providing they hurry), but will be too late to contribute any suggestions to the league rules/format.

Updates from other teams; Reading, Bolton, Man City are all interested but are well short of the min 5 players. I have sent them the link for the England group; as an option for acquiring new members, that seems the more likely route to success.

I do!...make a better group!

 Sorry, I missed the constructive element of your post.

Anyway gooner, thanks for coming to Old Trafford to celebrate with us today

Thanks Manchero!  You're being a great help!

OG