🪓 2023 Original Solo (FFA) World 4 Player Chess Championships, 🏆 Season 5 ⚔️ DISCUSSION

@fourplayerchess

10|0 is leading the voting at the moment, but there are 3 modes with 7 sec increment. Please take into consideration that those modes are quite similar, while 10|0 has no similiar mode. So to compare those you should compare the sum of the increment modes with the 10|0 mode.

For Real Luke?

2/3 is an abitrary line. And it is basically fullfilled. Please follow the call of the community.
Make it New Standard.

I think we need to make a difference between qualification and Finals.
While qualification need shorter time control to ensure enough games to have decisive results Finals need to have longer time control to ensure the quality of the games.

My thoughts what would be best:

Qualification:

I'd prefer if a few players would be handpicked, but I am fine with only arenas as well.

Arenas:

Minimum rating has to be high enough to ensure the quality of the games, but low enough so that there are enough players in each arena. Somewhere between 2400 and 2600 elo should be fine.

There should not be a streak bonus. The Amount of wins should be the only thing that counts.

Time Control:

I highly prefer Increment. I'd suggest 1|7 for qualifiers and 3|7 for finals.

Rating:

I think unrated would be better to motivate the players to only make their desicions for the tournament and not for their elo. If it has to be rated, it should be solo rated.

Setup:

It has to be Omatamix. We are playing it for more than a year now. And there are almost 2/3 of those who voted pro New Standard. It just makes absolutely no sense to stick with Old Standard.

Ps.: If Old Standard is the Setup for the world championship I want 10|0 or an even longer format for the finals so I can let you wait 10 min live on stream before I timeout.

PPs.: @fourplayerchess 
Luke, please make it Omatamix. The championship is the highlight of my year. And last year I was really disappointed by the Old Standard choice, after I was training Oma for months, you ruined my championship last year, please don't do it again.

Don't you wanna see the Pegasus in the world championship? It's a running theme in all 4PC streams for months now... You wanna see the inventor of the Pegasus play it live on the championship stage, or do you want me to boycott and just timeout because I can't play the Pegasus?

If it’s rated then it’s definitely solo - I think that having it being rated is conversely better for encouraging players to play for 1st not only because of the championship but also because of rating (unless of course they drop below the minimum, but that’s a different issue). Interested to hear what other people think though, since I might not be factoring in everything.

Thanks Luke for organizing everything once again.

Just wanted to ask how people feel about the defending champion joining the final directly instead of making him play the semis. As an spectator i would rather see him defending the title in the final, in this case Icy.

He’s doing Semi again, Jose.

Okkk

We would very much like to see W4PCC with the standard setup and time control, and all games being rated. (2+7 or 3+7 for the final stages seems fine though).
As @BabYagun has pointed out, we are fine with having championships and leagues with the old setup and other time controls alongside, but we need a "standard" championship.

Likewise please feel free to have a "standard" championship alongside the W4PCC. Thanks for being fine with us running leagues without your express consent though.

It doesn't make sense to offer qualifying arenas where most participants are confronted with a setup they are unfamiliar with, giving a large edge to a minority.

For and old setup W4PCC, a small hand picked group of candidates makes much more sense.

It is a great stupidity to organize the Championship according to a starting position that has not been played for more than a year (and which is the most unbalanced of all starting positions), but... after the fifth move, it doesn't matter what the starting position was...

A much bigger problem is that the participants of the most important 4pc event of the year will be chosen by pure luck.

The problem is that the semifinals are played on 2 won games, which, also, someone can use very easily due to insufficient preparation or a participant who takes the Championship not seriously and gives a second victory to the one who already has one. (The final on 3 wins is also frivolous) ( just look at how Radon and Losches solved the league final and let that be your role model.)

Many other problems, not just starting position but...

I believe that such an important and unique yearly event can't be organised that lightly, with insufficient consensus, analysis and preparation.

There are clearly very precise problems, mentioned above by several participants.

If we want it to be fully professional, pleasant and enjoyable,

a) it can't be anything else but current official standard,

b) the timing has to be the most consensual possible (I hate slow games, but I know that most players wouldn't like a 1 5D for instance!),

c) the leaders shouldn't be obliged to lose their time in order to qualify for access to the final stages (and also making it more frustrating for less experienced players),

d) the base of "admissible players" as for arenas shouldn't be too narrow (in order to have enough participants), but shouldn't be too open neither, otherwise the quality of the games would suffer a lot,

e) as for the Arenas, it doesn't make any sense to just take one player per Arena, and I've already told why, above,

f) and it is critical to remove the bonus for victories in a row, it doesn't make sense and adds a huge luck factor; the order of the victories doesn't reflect anything but luck,

g) as for the final, at least 3 victories should be required, as it is too much about luck otherwise.

Hence my proposal:

1. The top 20 players from the Rapid leaderboard on the beginning day are taken automatically and are not allowed to join any arena (even inadvertently), if they do, they are disqualified. Also, any of these players may declare that he doesn't want to participate in the final stage. Same for the last year champion, if he is not on the leaderboard for any reason.

2. 10 Arenas are organised, with 1 5I or with 1 7D games, with no bonus for victories in a row. At the end of the Arena, we look into the final ranking: the 1st player gets 5 points, the 2nd player gets 3 points, the 3rd player gets 1 points. Then after 10 Arenas, we shall have the list of the 20 best players, as per sum of their points. Of these 20 players, the necessary number (11 or more if needed) are added to the previous 20-21 players (handpicked as explained above), with makes 32 players for the final stage, plus some players who are the only one official subs. NO OTHER SUBS WOULD BE ABLE TO JOIN.

3. That will make 8 tables, where we shall select 2 players per table (no more luck involved...), once there are two players who reach 2 victories. Hence 16 players.

4. That will make 4 tables, where we shall again take 2 players per table, once there are two players who reach 2 victories. Hence 8 players.

5. That will make 2 tables, where we shall again take 2 players per table, once there are two players who reach 3 victories. Hence 4 players for the great Final.

6. As for the final, again 3 victories will be required in order to be declared the winner.

As for threshold: it should be 2400 I believe. Under this threshold, the level of the games is too low. But to make it 2500 for instance would mean that only 200 (!) players could access the even, from 8929 active players. Not very fair probably for the 8700 other players (98% of the base!).

At this point I understand that decisions have been made according to popular vote and so there's no changing of anything by now, but I agree with Indipendenza and others especially on the all-arenas-for-qualification approach that it's more than unsatisfactory. I had hoped that we learned this lesson last year. I think even if the top 10 were hand-picked that would be a good start, but the arenas grossly favor those with lower ratings and is extremely luck-based with who can manage to get the longest unbroken streak going etc.

I predict a rerun of what we had last year where several matches between the supposed "top 32 qualifiers" are going to be lamentable in quality because of the lucky yet unqualified who will get eliminated early anyway. In my opinion there should be a balance between "giving opportunity for everyone" and the need for players with competency at the highest level of play which should be the essence of championship performance.

It's absolutely Ok to make mistakes. But I definitely don't understand when mistakes are being made AGAIN, despite of several participants alerting.

Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum!!!

>At this point I understand that decisions have been made according to popular vote 
no, for some reason a 2/3 majority was required, and the vote for new setup was just under that, but way over 50%.

I still very much hope the tournament director will reconsider.

As for arenas, I agree and I think having the top 10 or so handpicked, and the rest of the candidates qualify via arenas is a good idea. I will also add an option to disable the streak bonus for arenas. Or perhaps that alone is then good enough for arena-only qualification?
A big factor to me seems the duration of the arenas. The average 1+7 2400+ game takes 24 minutes. If the arenas lasts only 2 hours, this makes for 4 games, which is too much luck imo. Making it 1+5 would be nice but the issue is that is blitz, and we can't use blitz ratings. So imo the arenas should be 3 or even 4 hours. or 3.5?

YES, a very good point Space. Either the arenas have to be 3 hours at least, or 1+5D has to be played... Because under at least 6-7 games the results are not statistically relevant.

OR we let it 2 hours, but make a point system giving points to the first 3 players as explained above. That would correct most of the discrepancies.

We can't use a blitz time control, because the 2400+ criteria is for rapid ratings.