Announcing the 2022 (Fourth) Online World 4 Player Chess FFA/Solo Championship (DISCUSSION)

I will post a new forum 2022 Online World 4 Player Chess FFA/Solo Championship (INFORMATION) in exactly a week from now. The purpose of this discussion is to gather feedback from the community before officially announcing it. The previous format will be adopted except unrated with Anonymous, 1pt Queen, 3|7, and FFA with a total of 16 people that qualify for the W4PCC unless the Director and Admins decide otherwise.

For previous format:
Announcing the 2021 (Third) Online World 4 Player Chess SOLO Championship! (DISCUSSION) - Chess Forums - Chess.com

Below, there will be some posts on options for this format, the results of which will be taken into consideration when finalizing our decision.

Starting Position | StrawPoll.com
Time Control | StrawPoll.com
Rated or Unrated? | StrawPoll.com
Rating Floor | StrawPoll.com
Format for Qualifying | StrawPoll.com

Good that Luke is letting us vote before the event happens; or else we would no doubt have a stampede boycotting the event after it's made 1|7 SFA New Standard

Has the server lag problem been solved yet?

No (hence the description for rated or unrated)

As for the last question: IT DEPENDS. If Arena format is chosen, the minimum access level is very important. We could see that it's pretty easy for a reasonably good player (let's say 2200/2300+) not to be qualified simply because by total unluck he happens to have several 1700/1800 players in front who often play nonsense. If in the same time some players accumulate successive victories with the bonuses, it becomes virtually impossible to catch them back.

It would be great to get some more discussion going on here in order to avoid jumping into a world championship with a lack of preparation/too early, and a fair amount of disagreement among the playerbase with regard to the format. 

In my opinion the games should surely be rated. You're playing for a world championship, participants ought to have the cojones to risk some rating. 

In a post that contains a poll for a time control, why would you announce 3|7? That encourages readers to just stick with that and not challenge it, because they'll think that the admins and experts have already come to that conclusion. Speaking of which, based on what has the control 3|7 ended up there? The polls are made by Radon (I guess he's assistant of world championship director now?), who's been pushing that control for a while now. 90%+ of players don't have experience playing 3|7 and it would need to be tested way more in order to be deemed a good fit for the event. Listening to Radon and a few others about 3|7 is fine, but this attempt to promote a time control desired by a small minority is a bit low. 

Better yet, don't have the world championship while the server could disconnect anyone at any moment. If it's not good enough for rated, it's not good enough for a world championship.

Yeah, I voted in 4 out of 5 polls. Similar to what @Indipendenza said, I considered ratings of people who regularly play in regular chess championships. On top of that, I also considered needed time for thinking (making gameplays cleaner). Being able to think of pros and cons of how a tournament play in certain presets is a better idea now.

Thank you Luke for launching the new World Cup. I voted, but I will briefly present a few suggestions, considering the good and bad of previous championships!

- bsrti setup - never old setup ( will be new for all; this is solo Championship not Teams - just ask Empty ( Michael ). last year finalist why- will say nothing about that )

- 3/7 is good for me - as I always said - less time ( to think ), less brain. More time...

Just imagine someone telling Carlsen that he will have 6 minutes and 14 seconds ( or less ) per move in the match for the world title! I think he would send everyone to ...

- Rated, of course

- best : 2500+ but for promotion 4pc maybe 2200+ will be good

( due to the persistent forcing of the ffa scoring system and playing for 2. place or not to be last, we have come to a situation where people have no idea to play this game even with a 2500 rating! Not to mention the inflation of points - rating over 3000?!? In normal games, that would never happen )

- Since it is now too late for some other, fairer, qualifications, keep the one from last year.

A few suggestions from someone who has participated in all previous Championships:

1. Arenas should last 24 hours (so they will be available to everyone);

2. limiting to 5 or 7 games per Arena (give priority to quality, not quantity);

3. points are not awarded as before - 2 for winning plus 2 for winning in a row - it is much better and fairer to give the winner points according to the formula: the sum of all 4 ratings divided by 4 = the number of points. (victory over 3 strong players and 3 beginners cannot be scored in the same way)

4. The semifinals must be based on 3 games won! No less !!! Finals on 4. Everything below that is not serious. Believe me, this is very important from several aspects (I don't want to bother you with explanations, the post is too long anyway).

All these suggestions are the product of long thinking ... I still have a lot of ideas about all this, but we are late this year for most of them. I hope you will consider at least some of these proposals.

It's debatable if games should be rated in the preliminaries and further, probably rated, but qualifiers? 100% casual 

qualifiers should be 1/5 preliminaries and further 3|7 seems fine

I like the arena concept for qualifiers and divisions...definitely not a fan of last year's arrangement/organization 

The Old Standard should be the starting position, no need to create a poll about it since we already discussed that Oma Setup is not suitable for FFA/Solo and it puts players in a hard spot

Speaking of rating required the suggestions are silly to me, we should focus more on players' skill rather and not one's rating since rating doesn't mean anything. Priority should be participants of previous championships first, then best performance top (?) so the substitute should be the next player below the next player's performance list who didn't make it in. You should publish top 30 in the forum maybe now just to give players some information and in May again or only in May to keep it a secret. I think this is rather silly and will be filled with unskilled players who don't know how to play the game. If you think 1600+ qualifiers was bad, sure thang, but the idea of mixing really good players with a bunch of new talented players who definitely had the potential, that was a great idea and it brings a perfect balance to the so anyone has a chance of winning the qualifiers. Implementing the rating restriction is really really bad and random. I the rule of "accounts that are created after yada yada yada" and required games played were perfect in keeping the alt accounts out and 1600+ qualifiers again MAKES IT HARDER FOR THE TOP PLAYERS TO WIN first of all that's a good thing and if you think it's bad get outta there. Sure go with your rating restriction and bring the farmers in, but keep in mind that we should focus on win/loss ratio and performance instead. Thank you very much

the absolute maximum should be 1900+ but I like 1600+ more since you actually get the games going no matter what time UTC Everyone should be given a chance to participate, the more games we get going the hardest it gets (competition/more tense)

If it was made 1600+ for a blitz/rapid arena where a better player cannot at least dirty flag a teamer, then there’s no point in playing.

And plus, flagging is not what W4PCC is about, that should be saved for the Speed Chess Champs...

The top players should not be in the World Championship? Why?

1600+ sincerely is BS, it makes the games fully lottery. Not only because you happen to have total clowns in front far too often (and they ruin the game for you and for themselves), but also because BS games make you lose TIME. I found the last year championship quite frustrating because too often I spent some time to build something and then an idiot destroyed it and I spent too much time like that, whereas some other players by simple lack had 3-5 min. victories and could thus switch faster to the next game (+ get extrapoints very often thanks to series of victories).

I agree that to make it harder for top players to qualify could make sense, BUT it should be based on skills, not on lack. And I maintain that having a 1600 threshold (or even 1900) would make all that a vast joke. For me 2000+ is the minimal possible requirement (but 2200 or 2300 would be better). Otherwise most games would be boring, with players who throw games to other players.

I don't see why anyone thinks the world championships should be open qualification. If you are 2200 you aren't good enough to play in the qualifiers and it isn't even close, forget 1600.

Am I wrong in thinking that a world championship is about pitting the best players against each other in order to figure out which player is the best of the best?

Exactly this, the world championships is for the best players. If you are a 1500 and you feel entitled to being able to play in the qualifiers that is a you problem.

In a world championship only the best go, and I also don't think you're the best person to ask that you not be isolated with the history you have.

Thank you all for your feedback.

Votes so far say the following:
Arenas Only 14-10, Old Standard 21-9, 1|7 (7) > 1|5 (6) = 2|7 (6) > 3|7 (5), Rated 15-10, 2400 (10) > 2200 (8) > everything else (2 each).

2400-if-rated, 2200-if-unrated makes sense to me, but please consider that the server is having disconnect issues. I'm leaning towards 2200 @ unrated here. If you guys recall during the first world championship of teams, games were unrated and the server was having lots of issues after the 08/07/2018 major update and we lived through that. Let's save 2400 @ rated for next year!

In conclusion, I will be writing this year's format for 4 weeks of arenas at 16/20 utc saturdays, 2200+, unrated, 1|7, Old Standard.

Arenas: 2 hours each
0 UTC Saturday June 4, 12 UTC Saturday June 4,
16 UTC Saturday June 4, 20 UTC Saturday June 4,
0 UTC Sunday June 5, 12 UTC Sunday June 5,
16 UTC Sunday June 5, 20 UTC Sunday June 5,
0 UTC Satuday June 11, 12 UTC Saturday June 11,
16 UTC Saturday June 11, 20 UTC Saturday June 11.
*0 UTC Sunday June 12, *12 UTC Sunday June 12,
*16 UTC Sunday June 12, *20 UTC Sunday June 12.

Prelims: 0 UTC Saturday June 18 (0 UTC winners), 12 UTC Saturday June 18 (12 UTC winners),
16 UTC Saturday June 18 (16 UTC winners), 20 UTC Saturday June 18 (20 UTC winners). First to 1.25.

Finals: 18 UTC Saturday June 25 and Sunday June 26, first to 2.25.

*Should Lars Johan Brodtkorb, the defending world champion, choose to return on these conditions, he can "reserve" a Preliminary round spot during one of the times listed, and the last day of the arenas taking place at that exact time will be cancelled, and should Lars withdraw afterwards, the second place of the June 11 arena during that time will be his replacement.

Final format will be posted tomorrow.