Author: Will Singleton
Date: 23:31:08 11/13/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 13, 1999 at 18:39:07, Peter Kappler wrote: Hi Pete, Sounds good, though I'll have to get that cpu upgrade I've been eyeing. And I might have to add that wrong-color bishop with a/h pawn too. As to your guidelines, I like the G/60 with a 10 sec increment. It's a shame to have to limit it to 8 rounds, but I understand the fatigue factor. It might be good to do it this way for the first time. As for the timing, I would think in order to get a good turnout you'd have to schedule it for January at the earliest. I, for example, don't have much time between now and new year's. And I don't think you need an ICC TD, you could just do it yourself. Not too hard. You might also want to consider billing this as a prelim to a human/computer tourney. Say, the top 5 or 6 finishers play a like number of human volunteers. You'd have to get a few folks signed on first, of course. I'm on the west coast. Will p.s. I tried to get the ICC people into this about a year ago without success. I think they weren't into the amateur program idea, I don't know. I'm glad you got somebody interested. However, now you get to organize it. :) > >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. > >2) Open platform. There is simply no way to enforce uniform hardware. > >3) A time control somewhere between G/60 and G/90, with a small (<10 sec) time >increment per move. > >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) > > >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... > >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. > >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? > >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. > >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
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.