DHLC Slow Chess - It's All About Timing

Hello fellow DHLC members!

Firstly, thank you to all who responded to the survey about our Daily 30|30 and 45|45 tournaments, with extra thanks to those that also engaged in conversations through the comments section.

Now, on to the results.

Question 1 – Have you ever participated in a DHLC Slow Chess Live Tournament?

Question 2 – If you have NOT participated, why not?

Question 3 – What are your top 3 WEEKDAY time ranges?

Question 4 – What are your top 3 WEEKEND time ranges?

Questions 5 and 6 were around preferred time controls and the overwhelming majority chose the current 30|30 time control for weekday games and 45|45 for weekends (although 60|5 received a number of votes for the weekend).

Question 7 asked for any additional suggestions. The most popular answers were variations on these two themes:

• Difficult to play two consecutive long games, is one game an option?
• Too many tournaments. Reduce to 2-3x per week to make each more of an event.

Now that we have this information, where does it leave us?

The number one reason people answered that they did not play was due to the time slot (although, as I did not have an option for too many games, that could have also been included in these responses). However, when we look at the top three time-slots for weekday games, our previous times were #2 - #4 (12pm, 6pm and 12am UTC). For the weekends, our previous times were #1 and #2 (12pm and 6pm UTC). While the timeslots were a problem, they were also the best options. As I think we have all seen during the DHLC Classical Tournament, people simply like to (can) play at wildly different times.

The top write-in comment goes to the same point – many people cannot play two slow games in a row.

All things considered, the major issue is timing. This is exacerbated by the chess.com live tournament system. The two options are a Swiss tournament, minimum of 2 rounds (4 people) and an Arena tournament, minimum of 5 people for the tournament to start. We could get around this with some type of manual system, but we do have something similar (for longer games) with the DHLC Classical Tournament run by @rsava and I believe a live manual system would be a challenge to operate.

I have a few ideas and would love to hear more.

• A Slow Chess League. We could set-up a series of “seasons” for 30|30 and/or 45|45 games. This would be akin to our Classical Tournament, but played over many months. (Personally, I'm partial to this one)

• Arena tournaments. We could try 2-3 weekly Arena tournaments that run for 24-hours. The trick would be five people must be there at the start or it will cancel. I am also afraid it may cancel if at some point everyone exits the tournament, but there isn’t any harm in trying!
• Stick with the Swiss, but reduce the frequency to make them more of a "don't miss" event instead of 21 per week. Another suggestion I liked was to sweeten the pot a bit, perhaps see if Dan would analyze one of the winner's games. What do you think, @Eternal_Patzer?

• The manual option. This one is the most challenging, but the idea would be to create a way for people to show up and feel confident they can get a 30|30 or 45|45 game in with another DHLC member. This was suggested by @fhunfi and he ran something similar in his own club. It requires an admin to be there at the start to pair people that show up to play. I see this one as a bit tricky to manage, but perhaps we could do something similar.

There have been multiple discussions in the comments to the prior post and also in the DHLC Notes about how we can make this work. I’d ask that everyone feel free to engage in the comments to this post about the above suggestions and/or add your own.