The Dark Knight Rises 1b (Open)

The Dark Knight Rises
Custom Trophy Tournament Series

The epic conclusion to the best Batman trilogy ever deserves the most epic Dark Knight Tournament ever!!  In 2008, Batman learned that he does in fact have limitations after all.  Likewise, in our first Dark Knight Tournament, we learned many lessons regarding what kind of limitations we have.  Our first tournament saw a plethora of Jokers defying the rules and/or timing out without making a single move.  So this time around the standard tournament minimums (# of games and timeout percentage) will be in place.  Also, 8 of the 9 tournaments will be thematic which means that the game will start with a pre-determined position in which black has already opened with their DARK KNIGHT.  This will eliminate all of the forfeits that happened last time when some Joker would open with their black pawn instead of their DARK KNIGHT.  Since we learned how incredibly long a tournament can last at 7-days per move, or even 5-days, the new tournaments will all be set for 3-day time controls.  It is the third movie after all, so it only seems appropriate.  For this same reason, we will have groups of four with one simultaneous game so that everyone will be playing in 3 games at a time.  And finally, just so that the big brains in The 2K Club don’t have all the fun, there will be 3 separate rating levels so that everyone has a chance at getting one of those awesome Dark Knight Custom Trophies!!!

The Dark Knight Rises – Open Tournament (1a, 1b, 1c) is different from the other 8 in 3 ways.  First of all, it's not set up as thematic.  For this tournament, you must send me a message acknowledging that you agree to open with your DARK KNIGHT as black regardless of how white opens.  With 20 possible first moves for white, and 4 possible first moves for black, this means there is a total of 80 possible variations that these games could take.  Anyone who does not open with their DARK KNIGHT agrees to resign that game as forfeit.  YOU MUST AGREE TO THIS RULE TO PLAY IN THE OPEN TOURNAMENT!!!

Secondly, the other 8 tournaments will all start as soon as registration is full.  The Open Tournament, however, will not start until I have heard from each  player that they agree to the rules.  If I don't get a response from someone, they will be removed before it begins.

And finally, in the Open Tournament, both games will start immediately rather than only 1 game at a time.  This is so that we can make sure everyone opens with their DARK KNIGHT at the beginning of each round.  If we only played one concurrent game, it would be too easy for people to forget the DARK KNIGHT rule, so both must be played simultaneously.

The other 8 tournaments will start from the 4 most common white openings (1.e4, 1.d4, 1.Nf3, and 1.c4) with the two most common DARK KNIGHT responses (1.Nf6 and 1.Nc6).  The 3 rating levels will be: A) 2000 and over, B) 1400-1999, C) 1399 and below.