Author: James Swafford
Date: 20:49:11 11/13/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 13, 1999 at 18:39:07, Peter Kappler wrote: I'm hoping that if this is successful, we can do this on a semi-regular schedule. A couple times a year, maybe? > >Thanks to all of you who responded to my previous post. I'm pleasantly >surprised by the positive reaction so far. Based on the responses, a few >guidelines for this tournament seem clear: > >1) Only one entry per program. The operator must be the author, or a person >directly appointed by the author. I agree - one entry per program. I think it's acceptable for the author to designate another party to operate. I personally don't care why. There are enough authors interested to keep this from being a bunch of operators with no interest or accountability. > >2) Open platform. There is simply no way to enforce uniform hardware. Definitely. > >3) A time control somewhere between G/60 and G/90, with a small (<10 sec) time >increment per move. I vote for 90 10. > >4) A Swiss pairing system. Looks like there will be too many participants for >any form of round robin. > >One of the more complex issues is how many rounds, and what time of day to play. > One drawback of holding a tournament online is that the participants are >scattered across different time zones. This means the rounds must be timed >carefully, so we aren't playing games at the crack of dawn in the West, or late >at night in the East. > >Almost all of the participants live between GMT-8 and GMT+1. This spans the >west coast of the USA to Germany, I think. I'm only aware of two potential >participants who fall outside of this windows: Amir Ban, in Israel, and Peter >McKenzie in New Zealand. (Peter has already said he can handle a few late >nights for a good tourney...) > >If we played 60+10, then each round would easily finish in under 3 hours, and we >could play two games per day without much trouble. The early round could start >at 1700 GMT, and the late round would start at 2000 GMT, finishing at around >2300 GMT. A bit late in Europe, but not too bad. A 90+10 time control is also >doable, it just means starting at 1600 GMT, and finishing around midnight GMT. > >The bottom line is that we can probably only manage 2 rounds per day, so I think >we'd need to play for two weekends, which would be 8 total rounds. > >I'd like to hear some discussion on the issues of time controls and start times. > It might be useful to compile a list of the time zones where we all live. (I'm >in US Pacific: GMT-8) > I'm in PST now (GMT-8), but I'm moving to EST (GMT-5). Either way, I'm okay. > >On to other issues: > >It seems likely that we can get ICC to promote this event. Peter McKenzie and I >had a conversation with an ICC admin this morning - he's interested in this >idea. ICC would probably want to call it the "ICC Computer Championship", which >seems appropriate. ICC could also probably supply one or two admins to act as >tournament directors. It's possible that we could use one of the automated ICC >"tomato" bots to generate pairings, but I'm not sure how we'd deal with first >round seedings... Why worry about it? Just alphabetize the entries, and seed from from that. > >Another question is when should event should take place? I don't have strong >feelings about this, except that I think we need to allow enough time for people >to free up two weekends, plus it would be nice to give time for word to spread >about the tournament. Finally, many of us would want time to prepare for such an >event. My feeling is that it shouldn't take place before the end of December. >Christmas Day and New Years Day both fall on a Saturday this year - those >weekends are probably out of the question. The ICC admin I spoke with said he >would prefer not to have this coincide with the Wijk aan Zee super-GM >tournament, which he thought was sometime in January. I'd rather do it Dec. 11/18. If not, we'd almost have to wait until January. > >The timing of the event isn't too important to me, except that I wouldn't want >to rush it. What do others think? > >I can think of some other technical issues, like how to handle the case where >someone loses their internet connection in the middle of the round. How has >this been handled at computer events in the past? This can get ugly, but I think it appropriate to forfeit the program if the operator can't reconnect within an hour. If somebody is *that* worried about it, they could send a copy of there program to a third party, ready to resume a game if connection problems occur. I personally won't bother. > >A final note: A few of you posted that you'd prefer an event that was held over >a longer period of time, where the round times weren't necessarily fixed, and >the participants could schedule games on their own. My experience is that these >events lose their appeal after a few weeks. It's hard to keep the interest >level high over a longer period of time. Yeah, let's not drag it out. Two weekends is good. > >As always, I welcome feedback. I'm sure I've missed some issues, too. When we >think we have everything worked out, we can start serious discussions with the >people at ICC. > >--Peter I think you hit the major issues, Pete. 1. When? 2. Based on #1, who? 3. who is the td? do we take nominations and vote, or do you want to appoint someone? Since you got this started, I don't have a problem with the latter. 4. time control - we should vote between 60 10 and 90 10 I'm ready, let's do this. :-) -- James
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