What’s you gonna do, when Chess-mania runs over you?
I’ll join also, if it’s not too late.
Sure, what the heck.
For everybody worrying about getting their heads handed to them in an early round, eet’s no big thang. I’m sure I’m going to get beaten rather early too, it’s just about fun.
To others, no, ‘registration’ for this isn’t closed yet. I’d like to see us get at least a couple dozen people before we get going on this, maybe wait a little longer so we can make sure that the optimal number of Dopers join up.
As for round robin vs. single elimination, or what have you, what’re people’s ideas on this? If more people want one particular format than another, we’ll go with it. I’ve been rather busy this weekend with work for my classes so I haven’t researched them, but I’ll get on it.
Also, glee and BK, I’m sure we can find a way to work out matches between time zones. As for playing games on this thread, I think that’d take up way too much time. We’d be here till 2007 playing these games out. Maybe we’ll have the last match or three played on in this thread, but my hunch is that it’d still be better to play a game in an off-site forum like Yahoo and then post the results to here.
As for how the games will be run, personally I’d go with Yahoo. They have a program that’s very easy to use, and free.
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I play most of my Internet chess on Yahoo. It is a good place to play because the interface is simple. But the reporting could present a problem. Yahoo uses coordinate notation (just the names of the squares–no identification of the pieces moved). This is probably the most confusing of all notation systems. We are likely to get a lot of questions about the notation when we report results if we use Yahoo. Unless someone knows of a good conversion engine.
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Probably single elimination. I suspect we will have some drop outs if we expect too much from people.
Ahhhh, a good point. I didn’t realize that about yahoo. I’ve never had a problem understanding their notation though, maybe it’s just me? Then again, I never really learned ‘proper’ notation, so this might just be the one I’m comfy with.
And yeah, I am currently leaning more towards single elimination… playing regardless of victory can be fun, but even I would probably start to get a bit frustrated if I had to play a dozen matches and got my ass kicked in each and every one.
There are 3 main ways to run chess tournaments.
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All-play-all: - takes the longest, but guarantees the clearest final ranking.
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Knock-out: - you’ll need a bye round if the entries are not a power of 2, but it uses the least time. On the other hand, half the players only get one game.
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Swiss system: - you set a number of rounds and everybody plays that number of games. The first round can be random pairings, but after that you play someone who’s doing as well as you are.
Here’s an example:
Round 1
(White) (Black)
Arthur 1-0 Bill
Carmen draw Dave
Eric 0-1 Fiona
George draw Harry
So Arthur + Fiona have 1 point; Carmen, Dave, George and Harry have 0.5; Bill and Eric have 0.
Round 2 pairings would be:
(White) (Black)
Fiona v Arthur (colours alternate whenever possible)
Harry v Carmen
Dave v George
Bill v Eric
I can usually see the first four or five moves in my head with notation that includes the piece names. Much worse with coordinates. But maybe that is just me.
Also, as I said before, if you can come up with a way of converting the results, then the point is moot.
Chess tournaments are simply not played in a single elimination format. I have never heard of one before, and I have certainly never played in one before.
It would make far more sense to play in a round robin quad system, or, ideally, a modified Swiss pairing system. Depending on how many people play, we could easily have a five round Swiss tournament and wrap it up in less than a week.
I am a USCF tournament director, as well as a tournament player. I have TD’ed in lots of club level and USCF tournaments, including large national events. I could easily throw together pairings for a five round Swiss, and I’ve got a website to post pairings, results, and notated games.
I hope I’m not stepping on your toes, FinnAgain, I’m just offering my services. I would love to help.
Not a problem at all RayMan, I need to run to class now, but I’ll definitely consider all the proposals on the table.
Although, personally, I’d wager that a five round swiss style tourney would take closer to a month than a week, what with people having varying schedules and all… But of course, a month wouldn’t be bad for this to play out over… Hrm. I’ll get in touch with you either through this thread of via email if I have any eureka moments.
I’m in. Don’t care about the format, although I’d rather a round robin so that I can play more than one game…
Is there a misunderstanding here?
'FIDE held the second World Championship Knockout tournament in Las Vegas July 30-August 29 at Caesar’s Palace.
Invited were 100 of the top players in the world. Accepting invitations were all nine invited Americans - including Gata Kamsky! The other U.S. players were U.S. Champion Nick de Firmian, Joel Benjamin, Dmitry Gurevich, Tal Shaked, Boris Gulko, Alex Yermolinsky, Sergey Kudrin, and Alexander Ivanov. All nine are Grandmasters. Shaked, Gulko, Yermolinsky, and Kamsky played in Round 2, but all were eliminated. USCF coverage continued throughout the event.’
http://www.uschess.org/news/world99/
For years now the FIDE World Championship has been a knockout.
glee, you have said in the past that you are a tournament player. How many single elimination tournaments have you played in? I am guessing not very many. That’s because there aren’t very many of them. I am guessing that the vast majority of tournaments that you have played in have been Swiss, because that’s the format for almost every chess tournament ever played. I am a TD, and I have never even heard of a single elimination chess tournament.
The example you cited was the invitation World Championshiop Knockout Tournament. This type of tournament, made up entirely of grandmasters, is hardly representative of chess tournaments in general.
Firstly I think it’s great that you have offered to help run the event. That’s important and useful. 
I was just trying to point out a slip in your post. I thought a US TD would have heard of the Las Vegas event!
But since you ask, I have indeed played in only a few KO events. The vast majority have been Swiss, or at international level, all-play-all.
If you need to fill another seat, count me in.
What say ye all to four swiss style round, one a week, and then a ‘championship’ round the fifth week between those who’re ranked highest?
(If anybody would like to help me organize this, please feel free to get in touch with me. I’m rather tech-ignorant, and I can’t quite seem to make my email visible. So I give permission for any Admin to give out my email addy if someone refrences this post and asks to communicate with me about the tourney)
Mind if I join in if you’ve got the space?
If the schedule and all the organizational stuff can be done via email, I’d love to play. I just don’t check this board often enough to keep up if it’s organized on here…
Of course there’s still room for people, I wouldn’t mind having 100 people play.
And, yes, we can work scheduling via email. I can do this all myself, but I’m also very busy with my grad work right now, anybody who wants to help me coordinate things would be greatly appreciated.
Before you can begin setting anything up, you have to know how many you have playing. Also, you have to decide if you want to just throw people together in matches without considering experience or rank (if applicable), or if you want to try and appropriately match players based on experience and rank (if applicable).
The former really is messy and, well, unfair–not to put too fine a point on it. The latter requires time to set up and honesty from the players in order to go off without someone getting destroyed in the first match because of poor pairing.
Rankings and chess tournament systems such as the Swiss system are the norm for these specific reasons.
It’s up to you.
Euth