Rich Hutnik wrote on Mon, Nov 30, 2009 07:04 AM UTC:
Hello again Fergus.
Please understand the position I am coming from. As much as I would like
chess variants to be light and casual things, I am involved with a
non-profit who is trying to not only represent the interest of players and
designers, but also publishers, schools, and everyone else. The interest
is to get increased interest by the media, so that we can get more
resources so we can do more, and get more of the world to notice, and get
variants here greater attention. I do have an interest to get a magazine on
the newsstands that would promote chess variants. Throw in also a TV show,
or cable network that has room for variants, and I believe we could be onto
something.
Anyhow, on the note for a tournament format to promote chess variants, I
will propose the following as a starting point:
* How about having a tournament where the winner then picks what game will
be played the following year, and players compete, and the player returns
the following year to defend their title? A proviso would be the player
can't pick one of their own designs as the game to defend their title
against. I believe this format would touch on a lot of what was discussed
in this thread. Of course, we should look towards refining the concept,
and take it from there.
A variant on this last point is, rather than it be an annual tournament,
you run an ongoing series of tournaments, and keep playing the same game
until someone different wins. They then would end up picking a different
game, and is one they didn't design. I would recommend here that the
winner of the prior tournament doesn't have to play in the qualifier
Please let me know your thoughts on this (This goes to everyone, not just
Fergus).