Slow tournaments
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Tournaments here can last years
vegma wrote:
... when I click on Tournaments in the menu it says that one of them is 82% finished, and the other is 45% finished. But these numbers have been the same for several weeks - or even months! - now. Why are the tournaments progressing so slow? Does anyone know?
...
The last games in any round of a tournament can appear to be never ending. This can be due to players going for a timeout win or simply because the players involved move really slowly.
Since your time per move average is currently less than 3 hours you can choose to join tournaments with a maximum 3 hours per move restriction and hope for the best.
It is now a month since I wrote the above. The percentages have now increased to 83 and 48. This should mean that the first round in both tournaments will be finshed in about 17 months. Probably it will happen much sooner than that,but still ...
Keep in mind that, once the second round starts, those numbers will once again go up much faster as the people that complete games reasonably quickly finally get a chance to play more games. However, some tournaments (especially the bigger ones) can hover at the 97-99% level for months or even over a year before they're finally completed.
Granted, you may still need to wait a long time before this happens. If you can, play more games or get into more tournaments while you're waiting. The official Chess.com tournaments don't count towards your limit and they start every month. Just make sure that you're aware of your own personal limit of how many games you can handle at a time. You don't want to join a lot of tournaments only to find that those two moved on to the next round and giving you more games than you can handle.
Here's an example tournament I entered, but have since been eliminated from. Notice that, with each succeeding round, the number of games played is greatly reduced. So while you're waiting for the last dozen or so games to finish in round one, the percentage won't go up very much. In the first few weeks of round two, most of the games would finish up and then you'll have to wait for the last few to finish once again. I should also point out that this particular tournament started on September 1, 2009.
| Tournament Stats | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Players: | 988 | Completed Games: | 5889 (tournament is 99% complete) |
| Eliminated Round 1: | 817 (82% of field) | Games in Round 1: | 4,930 |
| Eliminated Round 2: | 134 (13% of field) | Games in Round 2: | 820 |
| Eliminated Round 3: | 22 (2% of field) | Games in Round 3: | 140 (99% completed) |
| Players Withdrawn: | 40 (4%) | # Timeouts: | 1522 (25%) |
| Remaining Players: | 15 (1%) | Remaining Games: | 1 (current round) |
| Average Rating: | 1645 | Biggest Upset: | 1810 defeats 2248 |
In one of these tournaments, all the games in the first round are finished – except two. One player is involved in both these games. He is Queen down in one of them, and in the other he is two Knights and Bishop down.
Now he is on vacation, and he has one month and two days remaining of his vacation time (but he may be back sooner, of course).
So all the other players in this tournament must wait until this guy returns and finishes his games before we can start round 2.
vegma wrote:
In one of these tournaments, all the games in the first round are finished – except two. One player is involved in both these games. He is Queen down in one of them, and in the other he is two Knights and Bishop down.
Now he is on vacation, and he has one month and two days remaining of his vacation time (but he may be back sooner, of course).
So all the other players in this tournament must wait until this guy returns and finishes his games before we can start round 2.
In a situation like this the games should be adjudicated as losses for this guy so the next round of the tourney can begin. This is simply ridiculous imo.
Some people simply have no consideration for others. I'm also playing in a tournament (started in September!) with just 2 games left in the current round. Same player in both *cough* newworldworker *cough*. All but 5 games (4 involving him) finished at least 2 months ago
Here's his position (white) in one of the games :
He's had a lone king for the past 7 moves (ie. about 2-3 months 
)
The other game is barely out of the opening, so I don't hold any hope that it'll be finished soon.
What a joke. I'd thought about tournaments here some day but this has changed my mind, their system is ridiculous.
The solution is limited vacation tournaments. Have a maximum number, like 5-8, vacation days per round. No vacation is too restrictive. They are missing what most people prefer.
Reb: "In a situation like this the games should be adjudicated as losses for this guy so the next round of the tourney can begin. This is simply ridiculous imo."
I sort of agree with this, but not quite. I do not support changing the rules for a tournament while the tournament is being played.
But what about something like this: if say 95% of the games in a round are finished, the remaining games which are in a clearly won position for one of the players will be declared a win for him. The games that are not in a clearly won position for one of the players will go on.
I guess this will make tournaments several months shorter, which will be good.
And those players that will not accept this can avoid playing in tournaments altogether.
