One Change to Save Thousands of Members Months of Time
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If u don't like waiting 3 days for a move, then don't join such tournamnets. Same goes for vacation. Just join a no vacation tourney instead.
-Blackburne- wrote:
The Problem: Literally thousands of participants in Chess.com tournaments are needlessly delayed from proceeding to the next round due to unfinished games that have absolutely no impact on that next round’s bracket.
For Example: The 14th Chess.com Tournament (1401-1600) has 222 players waiting for the completion of nine remaining round one games so that the second round can begin. This tournament started over five months ago! One player hasn’t made a move in either of his two remaining games in 27 days! None of the 13 different players in these nine games has any chance of advancing to round two - or of influencing who does advance - regardless of the outcome of the games. Why not let the 222 players that won their brackets begin round two while these 13 players finish their round one games?
Is it right to have a system where so few can affect so many so drastically? The situation invites the possibility of abuse. One sore loser can delay hundreds of participants for as long as his vacation time holds out - at a minimum! (Dragging out a hopeless game for a mere ten additional moves can add another thirty days.)
The Solution: Begin the next round of a tournament once all pertinent games have been played.
Some might say, “So what if you have to wait. You can play other games in the meantime.” I would ask these people to consider that the idea behind the Chess.com official (and most other) tournaments is to allow people of similar playing strength to face off against one another. The longer a tournament runs, the more “drift” there will be in the ratings of the contestants and the less the tournament resembles the original rating range. Even if the length of the tournament is only one reason that ratings change over the course of a tournament, isn’t it worthwhile to minimize this effect and run the tournaments as efficiently as possible?
Consider this: The 9th Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400) has been in progress for over 620 days! I’d guess that most people who join a tournament think of the possibility of winning it. How many think that they may have to be available for the next twenty months to see it through?
What do you think? Please respond with a “Yea” or “Nay”.
Nay.
1.) The site's owners profit from longer tournaments (what's in it for them, to come up with ways to shortcut conventional tournament pairing practices for rounds?).
2.) Most players will compensate for such delays by entering more than one tournament. Indeed, many participants are in dozens of tournaments (if not hundreds), but I think the site limits non-premium members to ten tournaments.
3.) There's more to entering tournaments then just an urge to 'proceed to the next bracket'. There's the aspect of entering an event where you're assured you'll be matched up and given an opportunity to play all the possible matches with suitable opponents appropriate to that round, given the site's rules about pace and vacation time.
4.) Total tournament time is not especially relevant, other than teaching organizers and participants that larger events are not so practical. So, an obvious solution would be to 'cap' the size of such events to say, 20 participants (over 200's too many imo).
5.) There's no percentage in penalizing participants for merely following site rules and guidelines. If someone turns out to be unavailable to complete their rounds, eventually, the site will eliminate them (right?).
sftac
I joined an under 1600 tournament a while ago. That tournament is still going on, and I don't think some of my opponents are very happy to be playing an 1850 player.
Good point -- your rating increasing during the years that the tournament is running.
An 'established' rating achieved over say, two years, might be made a pre-qualification of entering online tournaments.
sftac
Sep 16, 2011
0
#45
mattattack99 wrote:
I joined an under 1600 tournament a while ago. That tournament is still going on, and I don't think some of my opponents are very happy to be playing an 1850 player.
This is stupid. If all the games were sped up you'd still become an 1850 player after the same number of games, it would just happen sooner. They'd play an 1850 player either way.
Cystem_Phailure wrote:
mattattack99 wrote:
I joined an under 1600 tournament a while ago. That tournament is still going on, and I don't think some of my opponents are very happy to be playing an 1850 player.
This is stupid. If all the games were sped up you'd still become an 1850 player after the same number of games, it would just happen sooner. They'd play an 1850 player either way.
That's only assuming the only games I'm playing are in that one tournament.
IMDeviate wrote: When entering a correspondence-type chess tournament, think of time in geological terms not 5 minute blitz.
Excellent point!
And, designating a beneficiary on registration for the tournament would be prudent in case you die before the end of the event. That way, your heir can take over and finish your games.
sftac
Sep 16, 2011
0
#48
Here's to chess.com adding heir support in their next update!
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Sep 17, 2011
0
#50
DramaticExit wrote:
I get the time arguement.. but I think there are probably enough of us who just enjoy the game and the idea of tournaments so much (since many will never actually play in a live one) that we might enjoy a quicker tournament with eachother. Maybe they can set some up separately, and see how popular they prove.
You're in luck! At this very moment there are 109 upcoming one-day-per-move tournaments still accepting registrants.
The "solution" to all the complaints in this thread already exists. There are already short-interval tournaments. There are already no-vacation tournaments. The whining is just from people who enter tournaments with parameters they don't like, and instead of changing which tournaments they enter, they want the tournaments they do enter to change to their demands.
YEA!
sftac wrote:
I think the site limits non-premium members to ten tournaments.
I think the site limits non-premium members to ten tournaments.
IIRC, it limits them to one. A gold membership isn't that expensive, if you want to play more (so your point stands).
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Sep 17, 2011
0
#54
There is scope for making it easier to find exactly the desired tournament - by implementing a tournament-filter--selection-wizard.
Sep 17, 2011
0
#55
artfizz wrote:
There is scope for making it easier to find exactly the desired tournament -
That does seem to be a recurring theme on chess.com, doesn't it? So many wonderful things are implemented here, but no matter whether it's member lists, tournaments, groups/teams, forums/posts, or help topics, the search and filter features are crap.
Throughout too. I know that new chess related features top the priority list, but a good, thorough revamp of the search capabilities really is needed.
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