Vote Chess

This thread is specifically devoted to discussing vote chess.

We now have 8 current vote chess games in progress. Our opponents are Chess School, The Power of Chess, and Phillipines' finest chess club. Eight games seems overwhelming enough, so do the rest of you think that there should be a limit to how many simultaneous vote chess games Intellectual Chess Players should be playing? There's also another concern- Chess School almost always plays as white and favors the Sicillian, so do we want to play Sicillian variations against them, or should we play a move other than e4 as white?

I think 8 games is too many. But that is speaking only for me. 

What do the rest of you think? What should be the limit on how many vote chess games we have at a given time?

Here are a couple of other thoughts. We need lots of people to participate in vote chess. We need people to discuss different moves and to take time to read those comments from others. I play vote chess (vc) with other groups. I can tell you that the teams who talk a lot and work together win more games - AND have more fun.

There is another member, ac-dc-fan, who has regularly conributed ideas for vote chess moves, but I think they are the only member who has done this. I agree that we need more discussion regarding vote chess.

When we start a vote chess (vc) game we need to use the Explorere tool right there on the game screen on the right beside the list of moves. It will tell you what moves Grandmasters have played in that position.

At the beginning of the game the list will be pretty long, say 10 moves. If there are 10 Grandmaster moves made from that position we don't need to play a move that is not on the list. The more moves we make the shorter the list gets. When it gets down to 2 or 3 moves we might find another good move. Looking at vc games now that list disappears almost after the 3rd or 4th move because we are making terrible moves from the start and getting positions that Grandmasters never play.

This is a good tool to use, but I don't think your description of it is entirely accurate- there are so many different opening combinations and chess.com has only so many master games recorded. You wouldn't expect an entire recorded grandmaster game to be played out move for move, even if the players are grandmasters themselves. There are so many variations and I think Game Explorer would be better if they were explained a little more than just shown move for move.

The term for still being on the list is called "in book" or when you get to an odd postion that is not in the Grandmaster's database that is called "out of book.

In a vc game we should still be in book after move 10 or 12, probably up to move 15 or 16. In our new game against The Power of Chess we went out of book on move 5. That is very bad.

Which game are you referring to? I think we have several against The Power of Chess.

This one.

http://www.chess.com/votechess/game?id=67210

Great comments Mark !! 

The more I look at it, the more I see that we struggle because of most of the games being 24 hours per move. Since I am involved in more than one game, having to make a move every 48 hours is more than I would like, and I suspect more than what others want.

We need good players to help with vote chess.  

We don't need good players to log in to tell us that we have it wrong and then leave without helping.  

We need good players to help with vote chess. That doesn't mean that if a good player sees a good move the vote will go that way, especially if it is late on the clock and most players have alredy voted. 

I don't like to see good players become unhappy because their suggestion, which might be the best move, doesn't get voted in. As long as everybody is trying to win the game we have to expect people to make mistakes sometimes.

It is better to wait till the clock is less than 10 hours and we can read all the suggestions before we vote, but sometimes people are too busy to come back later to vote.

In the future if we play games that are 2 days or 3 days per move, it will be easier for everybody to talk it over and arrive at a consensus. 

Vote chess continues to go well. We are clearly winning in four of our eight games. In the next couple of weeks we should have two victories completed! 

Question for the group. 

I n many of our vc games, we see one or two people voted for really really  bad moves. It happends over and over. They never comment to tell why they vote that way.

Does anybody know why that happens?

I suspect that they are weak players that either don't take the time to read our comments from stronger players - or maybe they are weak players who don't speak English so they CAN'T read the comments.

What do you think?

We have officially won our first vote chess game!

Yeeesss !!  ^5^ for everyone !!    

Interesting about using Explorer.  I have also seen it used in some vote chess games in another group but I'm never sure how to use it.  I prefer to try to get out of book pretty quickly, and that is what my team did there.  The other team will get confused more quickly that way and then we can use our superior brainpower and smartness to defeat them.  Except that is not a good way to think.  They are probably just as smart as we are, or smarter, so we have to think clearly and carefully at the chess pieces that are in front of us in the game in order to make good moves. One thing I have never seen yet is a team leader announcing a whole team approach to a game before the game starts.  I usually don't have much time to look at a vote chess position and it is not a huge priority so I am often more of a follower. I try not to disrupt the process or suggest moves or vote if I don't feel clear about what move is best. I do try to discuss the game in a helpful way and ask questions if I'm not sure.