Thank you for the synopsis and shoutout, JAD80. Congratulations to all those who participated, especially JAD80, who was the adhesive compound that bonded our Vote Chess team together.
The Intellectuals 9 game win streak in vote chess
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Jan 27, 2015
0
#3
But anyone reading this should not get the impression that we only want strong players in our vote chess games. We want ALL who want to play to join and play.
At that time I only invited strong players because of the situation at that time. Right now we want EVERYONE to play vote chess.
Just remember to read others' comments before you vote!
Jan 27, 2015
0
#5
No W-Luke, you did not join because i invited you. If I said that it was a mistake. You were already playing when i came along.
JAD80, thank you for this! What a great example of implementing Leadership on a chess site. I'm still working on the "read for understanding" part.
This is difficut to write because I need to recognize so many I know I can't do it and not leave out some important people. But in spite of that I will write a short note about how this group went from losing the first three vote chess (vc) games they played to winning the next 9 in a row.
I like to play vote chess. I was invited to join this group and joined, so I quickly looked at the vote chess games. We had lost the first two (the group was new only two had been completed) and a third was hopelessly a few moves away from another loss. There were 8 other games under way. All were 24 hours per moves games.
None of the games had very much discussion between players - no comments, just moves. The typical game had only 8 to 10 players for us and most moves had only 4 or 5 or 6 votes. What was happening was that a strong players were suggesting good moves, but not necessarily explaining why they were good moves, and most players weren't reading or understanding. The strong players were getting out voted by bad moves and getting frustrated and then quitting the games. Some even quite the group.
So I launced a campaign based on begging. First I begged people to talk to each other. Then I begged them to stop voting before they talked to each other. Then I went to group main page members list and, through messaging, started begging strong players to join and play. I did NOT ask any weak players to join.
We were lucky that Awesomechess had already started a forum about vote chess. That gave us a place to explain good practices. You can look back in the vote chess forum and read most of this stuff.
LongIslandMark was one of the first strong players to jump in a game. He also pushed people to talk andread before you vote. PortugaltheMan, SpiritLancer, Computo200, and Zobral came along soon. FiveOfSwords was a strong player here before I came along and he stayed and led the way on a lot of comlicated positions. Same for W-Luke and Arildto. We got help from f_babee_a and MindWalk.
Then we had two or three strong players who helped a lot before their accounts were closed - cheaters. Of course we didn't know they were cheating. We were just looking at the moves they suggested.
Other early players were Doktor_Oleg, ProfessorFacepalm, Camberfoil, asknotax, Cavatine, and others too many to name.
Once we established the culture of talking before you vote and once the strong players led the way, we won our first game, then the second. Before you know it we were having 30 to 40 players in each game. Some moves started to have more than 30 commments - some almost 50. That is almost 50 comments for a single move in less than 24 hours!
So we won and won again and won 9 in a row after losing the first 3. That is a real brief look at how it happened.