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Title: Postal tournament? Post by mistre on Jul 23rd, 2014, 3:37pm This is a subject I have thought about a lot, but I have never openly asked about because we do have the postal mixer which seems to meet everyone's needs. However, I do think it would be a good idea to have a postal tournament that would determine the best postal player (at least on an every other year basis). I am thinking the tournament could be open for anyone to join, but only the Top 16 ranked postal players using WHP would get selected to play. Seed 1-16 based on WHP. The format is then basic knockout tournament style. Games would have to be at a faster pace than postal mixer matches to fit four rounds (1st round, quarters, semis, and finals) into 1 year. But everyone would only have 1 postal at a time, so I don't think the pace would be too demanding. Also have consolation matches for every round so everyone gets 4 matches. Final places from 1-16 could be determined. $20 to join tournament. $10 refunded to players that complete all matches without timeout. All remaining funds are distributed to the top finishers. A sponsorship could up the winning amounts. These are just some basic thoughts, could iron out more details if there is interest. |
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Title: Re: Postal tournament? Post by ChrisB on Jul 25th, 2014, 10:53pm Well, I do like the idea of an annual or biennial postal champion and I think a knockout postal tournament would be interesting and could have considerable drama. My first thoughts were wondering whether another tournament overlaying the postal mixer might be too time-consuming. But, hey, it's only one game at a time. And, I can even see the possibility of participating in this kind of tournament in a busy year as an alternative to signing up for only a few games in the postal mixer. So there's a pretty good chance that I would participate. Some thoughts: • Rather than trying to get all the rounds done in a fixed period, I would prefer more relaxed time controls and allow the tournaments to overlap. • If there's a lot of interest, instead of limiting participation to the top 16, we could have multiple divisions. • Four rounds would be the upper limit for me. I would be fine having three or even two rounds. With only two rounds, the top 4 rated players could be in the first division, the next four in the second, etc. A nice feature could be to allow the winner of a division to automatically qualify for the next higher division in the next tournament regardless of rating. • Since a long game could significantly hold up a round, I think resigning when clearly behind should be acceptable. |
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Title: Re: Postal tournament? Post by browni3141 on Jul 25th, 2014, 11:32pm I don't see a good reason to use any version of the refund rule on this sort of event. I'd prefer a registration fee where 100% went to prizes, or maybe 90% to prizes and 10% to the event organizer. Also, I think more than one game at a time is better. We can fit more games in, improving quality of the tournament. If someone is worried about having two (or slightly more) more postals to deal with, they likely wouldn't even want one more. Finally, I don't think it is worth it to try to keep a postal tournament short. You will make the tournament less accessible the shorter you make the time control. If this is supposed to be a "determine the best postal player" tournament, then I think it should remain highly accessible. In order for the tournament to be finished in under a year, a 1d/move using no starting reserve might be reasonable. A 91 ply game would fit into a quarter year. While some people will be able to move this quickly, it may be hard on those who can't move everyday or make multiple moves in one day. The PM time control is ALREADY quick for a postal. It is normal for chess postal tournaments to last a few years. The 2008 "Golden Knights" champion is not yet decided, although this is using "snail-mail:" https://www.uschess.org/content/view/7530/397/ |
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Title: Re: Postal tournament? Post by Fritzlein on Jul 26th, 2014, 5:15pm on 07/25/14 at 23:32:19, browni3141 wrote:
This issue with having multiple games at once is not the time burden, but rather the elimination format. If everyone has, say, three games at once, what happens to someone who wins two and loses one? (I'm genuinely curious about any way of running a tournament that is neither one game at a time nor all games at once.) A full round-robin is considered the most fair format by some, but that could limit participation to even fewer than sixteen, and has the drawback of collusion. Even unintentional collusion is a problem such as, for example, playing hard for a few months and then having a life event that causes timeouts in all remaining games. I tend to feel that an elimination format is best for anything that is supposed to be a championship, even though it could make a postal championship awkwardly long. |
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Title: Re: Postal tournament? Post by browni3141 on Jul 26th, 2014, 6:29pm on 07/26/14 at 17:15:04, Fritzlein wrote:
One way I can think of to solve this is to generalize the suggested format by setting a round score which is the minimum score required for a player to advance to the next round (the score could be set arbitrarily before the tournament, or after each round in a deterministic manner). The suggested single elimination would be one game per round with players scoring less than 1 for the round being cut. As an example, for the tournament we would have 6 games per round and cut players with a score <=4. Maybe the number of games could depend on the number of remaining players so that we don't end up with 6 games at once between the two finalists (or would that be acceptable? I suppose it is just a match with all games played simultaneously) I foresee a few problems with this method, but it may be further developed into a fun and competitive format. |
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