Current championship

I don't know who decided about the championship formula, but it cannot be someone familiar with 4p chess.

a) to put together total beginners (1500) and pros (let's say 2500+) was a very poor decision. It makes games irrelevant; and it's pretty easy for a decent player to finish 3rd or 4th in this configuration (example, Sakthi, one of the world best players, here 4th: https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/80599188) simply because other players attack him together and don't have a clue about how normal FFA games are played. As a result, strong players often lose rating in a very unfair manner. For instance, ARAARA (2nd world player) passed from 3103 to 3038 pts. Silly and unfair.

b) if you are stuck in a 2300+ game (there were some), it will be long, whereas other players were lucky enough to get mostly 3 1500+ players in their games and therefore could play more games and earn more points.

c) only ONE player per arena qualifies, it's not really fair nor very interesting for other strong players because the luck factor (whom you have in your games) has like this a huge importance.

d) the fact that the games are semi-anon makes it unfair as well, and I won't even explain why, those who know the game will understand why to see for instance 2 1500-1600 players and one 2500 makes your decisions quite different from having for example 3 2100 players in front.

e) often (example: Radon) you know where he is because they stream, and you know that he is in the game as it's not anon. Also makes it unfair.

The overall result (Eye of the Tiger winning) is quite correct, BUT it was mainly time waste for other players, and no real pleasure as most of the games were low level.

The motto of the community championships is essentially that everyone can compete; that doesn’t really mix super well with 4PC, which I can agree with you on. I think the overall goal is to increase exposure to 4PC, rather than have a super rigorous championship, and there’s no obligation to play

Indeed. But I'm not quite sure that it attracts really new players nor improves the image of 4p chess. I heard a lot of (low level) criticism about 4p chess by total beginners (and/or noobs) who fail to understand the beauty and subtleness of our hobby, and because of their ignorance say nonsense about it (very typically, do not understand the 3 FFA phases and the opposite cooperation that they tend to consider "cheating"). And such a championship (where 95% of the games are largely crap) doesn't help on that chapter, IMHO.

1500 tournaments are completely fine with me, it gives viewers the opportunity to connect / engage with some real 4PC pr0 players. It makes 4PC more popular, especially when there are multiple ppl streaming. If you're top 3 FFA player from the leaderboard (this time it was blitz, it's not even rapid) and you're scared of losing rating, then don't participate. There was a high chance of getting at least one 2300+ player in your game and yes, some players get 3 1500s, but the game duration is not really a problem, I played like 4 games and maybe 1 game was kinda slow because in 1vs1 I managed to get the stalemate and get the 2nd otherwise everyone would simply resign. The goal (what ppl are longing for) for this tournament (blitz) is to finish games quickly, checkmate quickly or sth, start another game, because technically it's a race for 1st. In Jonas's case, playing against 3 1500s was not slow, it got to a queenless endgame. You're talking about having 3 1500s in your game is so lucky and good as if 2 players get checkmated in a split second which is not the case. I had a new player as my opposite around 1533-1600 and he enjoyed the game, he was attacking the whole time. I'm players who actually play chess and who can see threats, who can defend, attack etc. We also had WIM, CM another CM, so the experience overall should be positive. If your games were bad, you can always join the next arena. Some players were convicted they're gonna win the tournament, rage about one game and they end up in 6th place. Again, play for fun, if anything...

Indi the pros of letting everyone play outweigh the cons. More people playing 4pc is always good, and so far the top players have won. Those things are both good and are the only things that matter.

Also promaster doesnt care one iota about losing 70 ratings points lmao

Hi

The first mentioned player in the op just won the seventh qualifier. I had honor to be participating.

btw @ARAARA111_back and @Neo2020_v are both now banned for multi-accounting, so there goes the world #2 lol

what?!

iirc they were banned for the same reason ~1-2 years ago, and successfully appealed, but now it’s confirmed

Are they the same person or different people

Maybe we could have championships for different rating levels, such as <1500, 1500-1700, 1700-1900, 1900-2100 and so on, up to 2500+ or 2700+, granted that there will be complications for rating changes between boundaries

Or we could try to host a 4pc swiss tournament, where players pre-enter and face everyone else.

I should also suggest to stagger timing for qualification rounds, to accommodate for people who can only play at certain times of day.

I didn’t know that

Nice fact

The problem with <1500 and 1900-2100, what if have to wait for an eternity just to even get a game let alone the number of participants in that exact tournament overall being 0 or maybe 5-10

4pc swiss? How would developers even make that? Currently, we have one matchmaking player 1 player 2 player 3 player 4, queue is filled up, the game starts. Creating a whole another matchmaking system is hard work + unnecessary at the moment. There are other things (problems) to worry about

Also, I wanna add something when it comes to DC in R1 R2 QF SF Finals. When DC happens I think Luke should spam the server message or should I say 2 short server messages like 3 times at least. For example:

a player has disconnected

Muppet Radon jbolea GS your game does not count

DC = restart the game as before

Yes, I forgot that admins can stop the game even though the game is still going. It's just about switching the scene while streaming. Not showing the admin options on stream. Maybe it's good to have a staff member present

some admins here ARE staff - super admins

@BabYagun, @qilp

@pepe also, a staff. An active staff I should say