Vote Chess Tips

Have you ever seen the drummer on dragon boats that help the team keep pace? I want to do something similar and help our vote chess team.

I really like the concept of chess calculations and I've come up with a formula (pardon the pun) that I hope will work. Well... it's not so much my formula. Rather it's a method known to work and why vote chess can be fun for everyone. Some players may be great at the opening while others are better with tactics or end games. When we discuss candidate moves before voting we avoid random moves and get to learn from each other.

Stronger players get to practice their coaching/teaching skills while others learn how to calculate candidate moves (and hopefully avoid blunders).

For those that know me, you might know how much I like infographics so I created a few that I hope explains it (I have more in the series but wont flood you). Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions.

I'm specifically interested in formalizing how we share candidate moves and discuss/analyze them.

As in "our" vote chess team, are you referring to this club or a club of your own?

hm

Our = "Strategy Savants" Vote Chess Team.

I'm interested in the practices used by different teams to facilitate candidate move submissions and discussions.

I've seen some games where a member just mentions a single move and thats it. No further discussion about if it's good or bad and others just vote. Not much learning by others.

I've seen some clubs have a bit more discussion. Mention a move and a bit of commentary why they think it's good.

Is it overkill to embed a PGN of the position with candidate moves and annotate with comments, arrows and potential variations?

No, we had two coordinators who were coordinators a while ago. They both posted intricate diagrams and positions, and I think they helped a lot.

I think the implementing of captains helped, as those were often the people willing to post a paragraph or two about the game.

Can you share some games they coordinated? I'd love to review how they did this.

I'll look at our past games. Might be difficult to find them because these games were played a while ago.

Is posting a paragraph or two overkill... do others think it's too much noise? I don't think so if people are their to learn.

Frankly, I want to practice some coaching/teaching skills AND learn from others that I know are stronger players. I am interested in coordinating/facilitating a game if others are interested. I am not trying to take over something someone may already be doing (or do something no one is interested in).

I think most of the players are interested in the game and in learning more, which is brilliant. They're willing to learn, and others are willing to coach. Our best players are in the 1800 rated zone, but we've been trying to recruit higher elo players and titled players for a while now.

The games that we corroborated on are missing in the archive, and even if I could access them, the chat are lost.

The only reason we don't do much vote chess anymore is because we were losing games on time, which isn't amazing. If you can find a way to spark the club again, I think we might have a good VC team.

I'll just jump in a game and start facilitating discussions. Others can say whether they like it or not (I'll never take offense). I'll start off a bit slow so I don't overwhelm the game chat. This will give me a chance to test out a few ideas.

Should I create a few more matches? I think highlighting the new ones will give the newer community a chance to play.

Let's start with one new match... if you want to do a short blurb with it I can help draft something about what I plan. By no means am I a "coach"... I like to think of this as a facilitator and anyone can participate in the discussion. Like I said, my goal is to practice this facilitator role AND learn from others.

Sure, maybe you can make the match so you can draft the description.

Let me check it out.

I like it when someone suggests a move to be eliminated first, or identifies a feature of the position without suggesting a move right away. I also like it when there's a high-rated player on the team who just posts their moves without further comment. I think it's funny when someone says, "How did this position ever get put on the board in the first place?"

A long chat!

Long chats are good? I'll kick-off a match with a preamble like this:

Welcome to another vote chess game! I’m AwesomeAtti and I want to help everyone have fun and hopefully learn something new regardless of your skill level.

If you’re a stronger player you can practice your coaching and training skills by helping analyze candidate moves. No need to ask or wait for others… just jump in and offer suggestions.

If you’re new and still learning about candidate moves don’t stress. Just think of it as a move that might look good to you.

The steps are simple:

1. Submit your candidate move(s) in the game’s private team chat for the team to discuss.
2. Discuss the pro’s and con’s of the candidate moves. Checks, captures, attacks and threats.
3. Vote on one of the candidate moves.

Vote Chess Etiquette:

• Please try to suggest a candidate move
• Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts about a candidate move. Please do this constructively (for example, if you don’t like one move suggest another and explain why it may be better than other moves).
• Although you can vote on any move, the team REALLY prefers you vote on one of the candidate moves after it has been discussed rather than a random move not discussed.
• Have fun

the tribe has spoken!

I like the idea of comments bout the position first... what sticks out to you. I used to stream doing puzzles and this is exactly what i would do first.

Brilliant. Let's try it!