Revised Summer Schedule

Ok, after some discussion in these forums and group notes, it was agreed upon that instead of trying to make everyone play their games within a 96-hour window, we would allow a full 2 weeks (14 days) in which to complete each scheduled game.  This will allow each team more time to coordinate a match with their opponent, and give them the option of playing on weekdays rather than just the weekend.  I will be updating the official rules thread soon, but in summary:

Each Fortnight will begin and end at Midnight (Universal Time), and will run from Monday thru Sunday.  There is a maximum of 5 days to issue a challenge, and a maximum of 3 days to accept it, or agree on an alternate start time.  The game may take place at any time during the 2 weeks (you do NOT need to wait 5+3 days to begin).

The teams will now be broken into 4 conferences of 5 teams, and the regular season will be only 4 games (1 game every 2 weeks) instead of 9 (1 game every week).  Here is the schedule for each conference:

And here are the conferences:

So this week's schedule is unchanged, but there is a week-long extension on actually getting these games played.

Nice, I think it will work much better... :)

BTW, which criteria have you used to feed the conferences? Is the vote chess leaderboard... I say this because I see North conference really powerful.... I am happy none of my groups is there.. :)

It was a little trickier this time around cuz the 1st week's matchups had already been posted.  So everybody was automatically assigned to the same conference as whomever they were already scheduled to play this week.  Then it was a matter of which pair of teams was added to which pair of teams.  I actually didn't look at the leaderboard stats at all this time.  I just went on number of members and average rating, and tried to get things as even as I could on both counts.

hmm, I just saw this & already have arranged my vote match with the Wizards of Oz that's set to begin in half-an-hour.  This sucks.

Can I maybe switch with Team Holland & play them when we're supposed to play the Wizards?

IMO, team captins should have gotten PM's about this change.

hmm, well the Wiz's of Oz accepted our challenge (they must've not noticed the update either) so lets just count this as our vote game vs. each other.  We can probably still manage to play Team Holland sometime during this two week block.

Sorry about that Narz!! 

Obviously your game with Wizards will count, and we'll figure out some way of ironing the rest out.  You're right that I should have posted this in a news/bulletin rather than a forum thread.  My fault.  I'll go write up a news item now and send it out.

SORRY!!!

No worries.  We should still be able to play Team Holland sometime in these next couple of weeks & the Wizards technically have off this week so they're not under any additional pressure.  Looks like our team with have 7/20 - 8/2 and 8/17 - 8/30 off.

I'm just glad that after I had to break the conferences down in half again, that you and the Wizards still landed in the same conference!!  That would have sucked if you landed in different divisions and we needed to change something again.  As it stands, it will all work out just as you said.    Congrats on your win.

Thanks!  I didn't even notice the divisions were different but now I do.  Yikes, the Power of Chess are in ours now!

Actually they were in your conference before too.  Most of the teams that are paired up now were paired up before.  There's only a couple that changed in order to try and keep things as even as possible.  The only team you're playing on the new schedule that you weren't playing before is Chess Team Holland, who came in as the 19th team (along with Animal Lovers as the 20th) to help round out the new conference sizes.

http://www.chess.com/votechess/game.html?id=23570913

ROUND 2: Team Antarctica vs Chess Unlimited (3 - 0) Win on time again on the first move!

It was agreed with Alex to start at this time, however, nobody has moved! (I think that we have to start a way to avoid this... for the good of the tournament....)

Wow!!!    It must be REALLY cold down in Antartica!!  They're freezing EVERYBODY in their tracks!!    Not a single move has been made against them yet!!

I really don't understand how someone can be online to accept the challenge, and not be online to even make the first move.    Not pointing fingers at anyone, cuz it's happened 3 different times now with 3 different teams.  I'm not even sure what could be done to prevent it.  Any ideas anyone?

It's gotta feel anti-climatic to be ready to play and not have the other team show up, but at least you've got a lock on the #1 spot.