Very good idea, count me in!
Live Chess Tournaments
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We are organizing our first live tournament. It will be four players mini tournament for now We will see how it goes, make the necessary adjustments and open it to more players in the future. Players are the current tournament are Maxamilion, StrategyKing,Thell, and myself.
I was thinking of having two knockout games (White & Black) with G/60 time control. Maxamilion suggested round robin, Thell suggested G/90 time controls. I thought knock out style tournament would be completed faster, but then there is the question of what to do when there is a tie. Playing 2 more rapid games? Or we can forget about the knock out, and have a round robin tournament all together.
And what do you think about the time control? Lets decide the tournaments format together.
I suppose the idea of G/60 knockout tournament is better for a start. Yes, I suggested round robin, but after giving it a thought I think knockout will actually work better for the first time, just to check things out and see how it works. As for the speed, I would also vote for G/90, although some players might prefer the shorter option cause the longer one might create some difficulties for them (you need to have 3 hours free time to focus on the game entirely), so I'll let others decide about that. I think it doesn't really matter what and how we play at the beginning, it's important to get started first (weekend starts tomorrow and it would be great if we could kick off then), see how it goes and then make changes :)
I am fine with G/90 too. In our last game two hours was barely enough. If Strategyking also agrees we can go with it. And in case both games are a draw, are we going to schedule two more rapid games, or do you have other suggestions?
Hermes3 wrote:
And in case both games are a draw, are we going to schedule two more rapid games, or do you have other suggestions?
Is there any other option? I'm fine with rapid games, unless someone has any other idea.
Im down for 90 minuets and rapid game tie breaks.
Alright then. Now the last question before starting the tournament is: How are we pairing the players? Normally the computer does it randomly, but we do not have online tools for live tournaments available to us. We need a manual way of doing it. One of the solutions come to my mind is that you all can assign yourself a number between 1-10 and send them to me in private message. I'll then match the players from top the bottom. If two players select same number , then I'll pair them with each other. Kind of clumsy way of doing it, but at least it will be random. If you have got more efficient / healthy ways of doing it let me know so we can implement it.
Thinking about it, it doesn't really matter, I think you Hermes as Tournament Director should take a piece of paper, make little cards with our handles, put them in the jar and just draw them with your eyes closed :) I don't mind, anything you come up with guys, is good enough for me. We might also use something like this: http://www.northbyte.com/ but until our tournament involves more players I don't think it's really necessary.
Dear Friends,
Our first live tournament is starting. This is experimental, more like a beta, and it did not have an open call, but upcoming tournaments will be open to all.
Current tournament format is :
4 players knock out games. Main rounds are G/90 . If there is a tie 15/10 rapid games follows. If tie is not broken, then 5/5 blitz games.
We are planing to complete the tournament in two weeks, but if anything comes up and some players can't complete their games in the given time period, we will evaluate the situation and possibly give more time.
Current pairs are:
Maxamilion-Hermes3
Thell_Schmuch-StrategyKing420
Once players talk with their opponent and arrange their game schedule we will also announce it here. If you would like to watch any of the games, you are welcome to do so.
I am wishing good games to all contenders , and lets enjoy it..
Thell and I have agreed to our first match to take place tonight 5/15/2010 at 8pm PST. 2 hours from now. Sorry for the short notice but with both of us in the same time zone we came to this agreement quickly. As of now but not guaranteed we are also looking at tomorrow 8 pm PST. for game two.
I like everything except for the speed chess tiebreakers. But what the heck! We have to do something for a tiebreaker. The only other thing I could see working would be a round robin with a tiebreaker in the points earned. In other words, we could play mini-tournaments with round robin mini-brackets made up of small numbers of players. The players would all be rank ordered on the basis of their ratings, and would be placed in the mini-brackets to assure that all levels of play were represented in each bracket. Whether by Suisse or some other point system, the winner of each bracket would proceed to the next higher bracket to play in another round robin which would be won on a point system. After two or three brief round robin tournaments, we'd have an overall winner. We could allow a week or two to finish each level of the tournament, and everyone would be defaulted for missing their scheduled match. They wouldn't have to be kicked out, but the loss of a game or two in their bracket would probably eliminate them from winning and advancing. There will always be inequities caused by no-shows and walkaways, but that can't be avoided. In any case, it seems like we could handle more players and still have round robins; but they would be partial round robins. Not every entrant would play against every other entrant. Please contribute your ideas also. One thing for sure: It is really nice to play live chess.
Dear Friends,
As you know chess.com doesn't support creating live chess tournaments. I understand the difficulties of it, but with small number of people I believe we can start such an activity in this group, and perhaps it can encourage chess.com to provide more tools for it.
The biggest difficulty of arranging live chess tournaments seems like bringing people that lives in different time zones together. But giving it a second thought asking all tournament players being present at the same time may not be a necessity.
The tournament model I suggest is as follows: All players registers the tournament is declared in the group tournament page. It will be players responsibility to arrange the time for their games with other tournament players. Players will complete two G/60 games with other tournament players. The results of the first two G/60 games against their opponents after tournaments start date will bring players tournament points. A time frame for completing all tournament games can be set, such as a week or a month. When there are problems Tournament Director can make the final decision. If players can post time/date of their games beforehand, other players can also watch their game.
I know if there was too many players joining the tournaments, this would be too difficult to implement, but if we start with 4-6 players it may work.
This is just an idea at this stage. All suggestions and contributions are welcome.