Welcome to the FIU's 2015 Online Student Open!

It starts 6.15.15 at midnight and could last up to 6 months. Applicants must be active students at FIU and ought to be members of the FIU chess.com group.

(http://www.chess.com/groups/home/florida-international-university-fiu-chess-club)

When registering for the tournament, please register to only ONE available tournament group. The WINNERS of each group will be put into a FINAL group which will determine first and second place.

The first Groups will consist up to 12 players and each player will play each other player twice - once as white, once as black. Players have 3 days to move, but may move much quicker than that and often will.

In spite of there being NO entry fee, REAL (expensive) TROPHIES will be mailed to 1st place, 2nd place, and best checkmate (as evaluated by Andrew Smith, the tournament director, who will use a democratic process via voting on anonymous checkmates on Facebook).

Any ties effecting trophies will be settled by automatic built-in tiebreaks. If these fail, then any ties will be settled by: head to head score first, score against winner second, score against loser third. If there are still significant ties, a best two out of three blitz match will solve the issue.

Cheating will not be tolerated! Many players online can feel tempted to try it. Chess.com has both algorithms and a dedicated team for sniffing out cheating. It is actually easy to spot cheaters using statistics, so please don't try it. Cheating includes using any computer AI to inform your move or a response to your opponents' moves. However, you are permitted to use the Analysis Board to try out lines, and you may use chess theory - found in books and online - in deciding your opening moves. If you suspect a cheater, please privately message the tournament director. Try NOT to make a public outcry and witchhunt as it will cause the cheater to dig in, continue lying, and not apologize. Remember that ratings don't guarantee victory and some players will be massively underrated due to not playing many games. Play your best against every opponent, and assume they'll be making strong moves, too!

Finally, be warned that there is no vacation time for this tournament, so that it doesn't get held up by one vacant participant. A 72 hours maximum for each move is plenty of time.

Good luck, pawnthers!

Preliminary Groups: (Please register for only 1)

http://www.chess.com/tournament/fius-2015-online-student-open---group-1

http://www.chess.com/tournament/fius-2015-online-student-open---group-2

http://www.chess.com/tournament/fius-2015-online-student-open---group-3

Final Group:

http://www.chess.com/tournament/fius-2015-online-student-open---final-group

Florida International University Chess Club

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