READ: Our First Run. Questions/Comments/Concerns

So, our first trial run went rather well. We got about 17/60 of the members to vote, which is pretty good considering the fact that we were still trying to get the word out and many members could not participate due to time differences. Of course, there is vast room for improvements. Hopefully, next turn's run will yield higher numbers.

I would like to hear everyone's opinion on this first trial. Any comments about what you liked or disliked would be greatly appreciated.

The following improvements were presented by our members. Please state if you agree with them or would rather keep things the way they are -

1) Stick all move discussions into one topic so we can compare advantages/disadvantage

2) Start discussion earlier and start voting earlier
What time is good for you guys? Should we start unofficial voting from 16 hours-14 hours in the Pogonina game?

I also want to create a graph of [votes vs time] so we get an idea of when it is too late to influence voting in the main game. Is there anyone willing to do this? You will have to record the time remaining (X hours and Y minutes) and the total vote count (one number) every 30 minutes if possible. I think we are good if we can get two people to cover the first 12 hours.

3) Several members are asking analyzers to use diagrams so it will be easier to follow. In my opinion, try not to have too many branches so it is more concise. Comments on the analysis are very helpful as well (which many have already done).

If anyone has any suggestions to add, please let me know. I thank everyone for their cooperate and support.

I thought this was a great way to quickly assess everyone's analysis of the board. There was not 10 pages of arguments and 3 pages of analysis. Only 2 pages of analysis, great work on everyone's part.

My suggestion is to start the discussion on the next move now. It's clear that our move will be Nxd5, and fairly clear that Natalija will take back with the knight.

My guess is that the drive-by voters are going to go for the "cool" move, which will be to keep exchanging on d5. If we want to make another move, we're going to have to get our analysis out there very early in the process.

My views on general procedure:

Definitely best to have separate threads for each candidate move. (Ideal would be a discussion tree, where each discussion branched into separate discussions where there was a branch in the move tree, but our forum has not got that feature). As well as the threads for each move, a single central thread for the purpose of comparing moves would be good, always giving just the current best lines for each move at the top. I think we got it about right on move 15: we need one thread to get a list of candidate moves, one to compare moves based on the separate analysis of each, and one for voting, perhaps.

Yes to discussing and voting as early as practical. Otherwise our efforts will be irrelevant to the move made. I am still concerned that such a small fraction of the total votes are within this group that we need to concentrate more on informing the wider group when a plausible move is not so good, or a less obvious one is good, which leverages our analysis to where it has a better chance of affecting the outcome.

Diagrams can only be a positive,especially where they combine analysis so anyone can flick between variations and compare their endpoints.

I think this was definitely a good start.  In addition to the suggestion I already made (to start discussing and, respectively, voting earlier -- by 8 hours into our time or earlier), I'd like to also suggest that we find a way (if possible) to archive old threads, so they don't clutter the discussion.

Especially for a new person joining the Alliance, it would be rather unnerving to see 100 threads and wondering which to look at and which are irrelevant. 

Are there ways to archive old threads (without necessarily deleting them altogether)? 

If not, are there ways to mark threads as old, so it's clear visually (color-coding?) which are the latest and important ones to look at?

val08's proposal of a time vs. total votes graph can probably be done already from existing information in the forum, thanks to those that often and regularly update us on the voting situation.  It won't be too precise, but I doubt we need precision here -- we need to get roughly oriented in the landscape, to get a sense at which point 40% of people have voted, 50%, etc.

I can look at that briefly and report here on whether that's easily doable from what we already have.

pretty well cionsidering we have just started, good idea val, hope we can get even better results.

I have some preliminary results on the distribution of votes over the past two moves.  (I posted this broadly in the general forum for the game too; I bet it will scare the types who fear math. )

From my cursory and informal observations, the same has been true for previous moves too, though that data is now lost (the timing in the forum is imprecise beyond 2 days in the past).  Here's the graph I generated:

It shows that the majority of teammates vote in the first 8 hours, and the last few hours contribute almost no votes at all. 

Interestingly, the same is true about the number of comments on the broader (non-Alliance) forum, something that isn't shown in the above graph.

16 hours looks like a good time to begin voting. We should tally at 14 hours. Does this sound good? (We did 12 hours voting and 10 hours tally in our trial run)

I agree especially with having every line shown on a diagram board.  I know for me at least its nearly impossible to follow a text line 10 moves long. 

Given the pattern of voting, I think it would be excellent for us to be a move ahead of the game where possible. On this move we know there are only two possibilities for white's next move (one is strongly expected), and we have the choice of analysing one or both of them. I find in vote chess games the opponents' move is predictable most of the time (obviously dependent on the type of position). The idea of us making our (conditional) decision for the next move before Pogonina moves is ideal in order to have the greatest influence on the progress of the game (and it's good to be ahead of the game anyway). I am sure many other people play individual games like me, where I carry the analysis tree over from one move to the next and extend it. We should do something similar, with much greater resources for analysis.

I agree with Elroch's suggestion.

In terms of val08's proposal to start voting at 16 hours, let me clarify: that would mean 16 hours before the official vote tally, i.e., 8 hours into the voting process for the team.  At that point, 50% of the people will already have voted; and by the time we tally our votes, 2 hours later, 60-65% of the team will already have voted, so that seems late to me.  I'd like to see us declare our recommendation at the point of 8 hours into the voting, or earier; this way we'll still have 50% or more of the people who may be influenced by our suggestion to the broader team.

My first thought is that you guys have way, way too much time on your hands...

But here is a suggestion - why doesn't this group of serious players challenge one of the chess.com GMs to a game - i.e. have a "No Drive By Allowed" match?  This might really give the GM a challenge!

 I don't think there are any GMs that do this. When they play, they generally play against ALL of chess.com

I agree - it is also not correct to deprive any member of the thrill of playing against a GM.

Let me point out that although only 17/60 voted here, probably more than that voted for the alliance move. I, for example, have been ridiculously busy recently; so I didn't analyze or contribute to the discussion, I just voted for the alliance move because I recognize the strength of players here and support the concept of an alliance. I will probably not really contribute to analysis again this move, but that doesn't mean people like me are ignoring the alliance they joined.

That is completely fine, Anatoly_Sergievsky. As long as you are voting the Alliance move, you are helping the cause :)