Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Count me in, Greg!

Great idea, Greg!  Count me in with lower time controls until I get into a good routine withe the new baby

I do have one small question about the 8th category.  Will each participant submit, or be allowed to submit, a variant they invented or will it be a list of user created variants that is preselected?  Regardless, I suggest a consideration that the matches played from that category are not with variants invented by those players.  For instance, if one of my variants (let's say Mimic Chess) is in that category, in order to avoid any unfair advantages during the tournament, that variant cannot be played by myself in the tournament.  Not sure how the reception on that idea will be, since I know I'd love to play some of my variants in a tournament and I bet that sentiment is shared amongst other inventors - especially those with more prestigious reputations than my own. 

I am willing to participate in a tournament regardless of its format, as long as it be possible that the own variant that one proposes does not have to be necessarily with reinforced rules.

It is important and worthwhile for Game Courier to permanently have at least one annual tournament [say "by default"], so I really appreciate the effort and dedication you, Greg, are undertaking.

I'm all for a new tournament. Have you confirmed that all the games you have listed are actually supported by Game Courier?

@Nick:

Congratulations on your new baby girl!  Regarding time controls, my thought is that the default will be the "Correspondance - Tournament" time control (14 days spare time, 24 hours grace period, 8 hours bonus time) but that any pair of players that mutually agree to do something different are free to do so as long as the game finishes in some reasonable amount of time.  Regarding the 8th category, I deliberately left that open but the basic idea is that each participant can bring a game of his choosing.  I like your suggestion that inventors can't play their own games in the 8th category.  I think that makes things more fair and resolves another problem - since each participant would only play one game from the 8th category, both players in a match would want to play their game but only one could.  It is more fair that neither can.  Also, I think this restriction should only apply to the 8th category (participant's invention.)

@Fergus:

I didn't establish that there is an existing preset for all of these, but I don't think that any are unplayable.  I'm guessing you are asking because of Diamond Chess.  Game Courier doesn't draw the board rotated 45 degrees, but you could certainly play it anyway.  Or we could just drop it or replace with something else.  I was just looking for a fifth game to round out the category.  I should also say that it is not my intent to dictate with this game list.  While I hope that we don't have to change it too much, since I want to avoid long, drawn-out debates or having to host formal polls, it is certainly subject to chage.  And since you've done the most work of anyone to keep this website going all these years, and I think everyone respects your opinion, if you'd like to swap out any games from that list, just say the word.

@Carlos:

While I think rule-enforcement is certainly desirable, I do not think it should be required.

My thought on game selection is as follows. I'm trying to balance (A) giving flexibility so players play games they like, (B) selecting games from a reasonable list so we don't play a hundred different games, (C) we are playing, although not exclusively, established variants so we, as a community, continue to promote and study those games, (D) everyone plays a variety of different games to challenge them, and (E) no one is forced to play something too radical or complicated. 

These are all good goals, but I would add to this that tournament results are more meaningful when participants play the same games as each other. With this in mind, there are alternate ways of achieving consensus on the games before the tournament begins. Instead of giving players a bunch of choices during the tournament, you could get feedback on what games people are most interested in before the tournament. Then, before the tournament begins, you could post the list of games to be played in the tournament, and participants would express their satisfaction with the list by entering the tournament with this foreknowledge of which games will actually be played.

I agree with Fergus.

Given that we all have certain favorite games, I think the easiest way to reconcile everyone's interests is to adopt a Potluck Single Round Robin format, in which each player choose and brings a unique game. Let's see with an example how it would work. Right now we are 5 participants: Fergus, Greg, Nick, Aurelian and Carlos. Let's suppose that the choice of each one is thus:

Fergus(F): Eurasian Chess(EC)

Greg(G): Opulent Chess(OC)

Nick(N): Mimic Chess(MC)

Aurelian(A): Apothecary Chess 1(AC1)

Carlos(C): Symmetric Chess(SC)

Then

F [driving Black side] would play EC vs G, N, A, C 

G [driving Black side] would play OC vs F, N, A, C

N [driving Black side] would play MC vs F, G, A, C

A [driving Black side] would play AC1 vs F, G, N, C

C [driving Black side] would play SC vs F, G, N, A

If the total number of participants were greater than or equal to 10, then we could form 2 groups, and the winners of each group would face a final second stage.

What do you all think of this idea?
 

I don't really like this because it people don't have any choice in what they play - they either accept and enter, or not.  Mimic Chess, for example, is beyond my ability.

It doesn't seem to matter, though, since we don't have enough people to make it worth while, at least so far.

I'm impartial.  I just like competitive play, so I'll be in no matter what format the tournament takes.

I'm in. I don't know how tournaments are played here, but this sounds fun. I agree with Cetina that we should probably have people pick a game and everyone plays against them that way, or we find a way to randomly select what game we all play. 

But I'll go with pretty much any format. Half the fun of chess variants is leaving your comfort zone and trying new and different games, so I don't have any pet game I wanna play or care which ones are selected.

Actually, Carlos, you disagree with me, since you just described what I do not want. I consider it important to settle on what the games will be before anyone signs up for the tournament. I had started writing an addendum on why I oppose the potluck method, but I assumed it would already be clear from what I already wrote that I did not intend any such thing. When I said that the list of games should be prepared before anyone signs up for the tournament, I understood this to preclude the potluck method you describe. I favor two steps. One is to get a general consensus on which games should be played, and the other is to decide on the games to be played BEFORE anyone signs up for the tournament. The potluck method reverses this order. While I favor making signing up for the tournament the last step in the process, your potluck method would make it the first step in the process. And while I favor doing game selection first, the potluck method would do it last. Besides this, the potluck method does not build any consensus on which games will be played. Instead, it asks people to join without any foreknowledge of the games to be played and runs the risk of foisting undesired games on people who have already signed up for it.

Deep down I do not disagree with you, Fergus, what happened is that my mind stayed fixed only in the part where you said "...tournament results are more meaningful when participants play the same games as each other", but for nothing I am against a process of selection of variants to play; I only suggested a possibility.

Now Greg has the floor. What's next?

It's good news that with Jarid we are 6 now!

Greg,

Why do you say there are not enough participants yet, what would be a minimum?

Ok, I think we're up to 8 players.  Erik expressed interest during one of our games, and John Davis emailed me.

Regarding format, I thought allowing each pair of players to decide on games without requiring everyone to play the same thing would increase the chances of players playing games that they liked.  But two people have spoken against this idea, and none have spoken in favor, so scratch that.  We will still play one game from each category, but everyone will be playing the same games.  Also, I think this change basically means there's no fair way to do category 8, so that's gone also.  But since we have 8 players, I think 7 categories works out well - each player plays one game in each category and plays against every other player in exactly one game.

Now, to select the game from each category ...  I'd like everyone to rank the games in each category from most preferred to least preferred.  I will assign points accordingly, and add up the results.  You can post here, or you can email me if you prefer not to rank them publicly ([email protected].)

Here are my rankings (starting with game I'd most like to the game I'd least like):

1. FRC, Switching, Berolina, Extinction, Marseillais

2. Shogi, Xiangqi, Makruk, Jangii

3. Victorian, Embassy, Grotesque, Capablanca, Janus

4. Opulent, Unicorn Great, Eurasian, Grand, Omega

5. Cylindrical, Glinski's, McCooey's, Diamond, Circular

6. Grande Acedrex, Courier Chess, Shatranj, Chu Shogi, Los Alamos

7. Pocket Mutation, CwDA, Wildebeest, Alice, Ultima

OK, these are the mine:

1. FRC, Berolina, Switching, Extintion,, Marseillais

2. Xianqgqi, Jangii, Makruk, Shogi

3. Capablanca, Janus, Victorian, Embassy, Grotesque

4. Unicorn Great Chess, Opulent, Grand, Omega, Eurasian

5. Cylindrical, Circular, McCooey, Glinski

6. Shatranj, Courier, Los Alamos, Grande Acedrex, Chu Shogi

7. Pocket Mutation, Alice, CwdA, Wildebeest, Ultima

Sorry, I forgot to include Diamond in the 5th category.

5. Cylindrical, Circular, McCooey, Glinski, Diamond

[A bug in the text editor prevented me from editing my previous comment.]

Thanks, Carlos!

Since we are running, there are a couple of other things that should probably be specified at this point:

Chess with Different Armies: If this game is included, each participant will tell me (privately) at the start which army he or she will play.  To ensure that I do not cheat, I will publicly say that, if CwDA is selected, I will play the Fabulous FIDEs.  While there is disagreement about which army is best, I think it is clear that it is not the Fabulous FIDEs.

Grande Acedrex: There has been a variety of interpretations of the rules over the years due to the scarcity of sources.  I believe the best, most current, source is that of Jean-Louis Cazaux, with the modification of H. G. Muller and agreed to by Jean-Louis Cazaux, located here: http://history.chess.free.fr/acedrex.htm. The one difference involves the rhino/unicorn. It moves outward, as one would expect, and J. L. Cazaux hasn't yet updated his webpage, although he agrees with this intrepretation.

I've been away from my computer all day - rankings to come when I wake up!

You are welcome, Greg, and thanks to you too for staying firm in leading of this enterprise.

I would like to clarify that the fact that I agree with Fergus's idea of carrying out a pre-selection of variants does not necessarily imply that I am against your proposal, because this last is already a selection; I consider that the choice you have made is quite general and serves well to the goal of consolidating a tournament format that in the future will become the main here in Game Courier. For me the important thing is that your initiative goes ahead and I fervently hope that the 8 people who have expressed their interest in participating remain united and bring the event to a successful conclusion.

The problem that prevents editing any previous comment is in the process of registering to the website, since [being fully registered] this message appears on the screen when you click on the edit button: "You must sign in before you can edit this comment. Please go back and try again."
 

Fergus,

I created a web page for this tournament, but I can't get it to show in the index.  The page is here (same location as previous tournaments):

/play/tournaments/gamecourier2017.html

I think the issue may be that when I try to use the index edit functions, it decides the URL is 'naments/gamecourier2017.html'.  For some reason it's chopping off part of the name.  Adding the extra in doesn't seem to help.

Thanks,
Greg

Sorry for the delay - house renovations.  Here are my rankings from highest to lowest, by category:

Switching, FRC, Berolina, Marseillais, Extinction

Shogi, Jangii, Makruk, Xiangqi

Victorian Capablanca, Embassy, Grotesque, Janus

Eurasian, Opulant, Omega, Unicorn, Grand

Cylindrical, Glinski, McCooey, Circular, Diamond

Courier, Chu, Grand Acedrex, Shatranj, Los Alamos

Wildebeest, Alice, CWDA, Pocket, Ultima

Hello everybody,

I'm interested to participate in this tournament. I would thank Greg for organizing this, and for offering me to join in.

Just a few questions:

- Is the game list definitively adopted, or may be subject to other propositions? (I don't speak of obscure or too experimental games, of course, but games, without being necessarily widely recognized, which are at least popular or recognized on this website.) It's just a question; the games proposed by Greg are okay for me.

- for Chess with Different Armies (if we are led to play this one), is there a list of armies from which we must choose? For example, could we take one that is not Betza's?

In all cases, here is my preference order for the mentioned games:

Chess with a small modification:
Berolina Chess - Marseillais Chess - Extinction Chess - Switching Chess - Fischer Random Chess

Regional variant:
Xiangqi - Janggi - Makruk - Shogi

Capablanca variant:
Janus Chess - Embassy Chess - Grotesque Chess - Victorian Chess - Capablanca Chess

Decimal variant:
Eurasian Chess - Omega Chess - Grand Chess - Opulent Chess - Unicorn Great Chess

Alternate geometry:
Glinski's Hexagonal Chess - Diamond Chess - McCooey's Hexagonal Chess - Cylindrical Chess - Circular Chess

Historical game:
Grande Acedrex - Courier Chess - Shatranj - Los Alamos Chess - Chu Shogi

Recognized variant grab-bag:
Ultima - Wildebeest Chess - Alice Chess - Chess with Different Armies - Pocket Mutation Chess

Hi Erik,

Thanks for your interest.  Regarding game selection, it is possible to swap out a game so long as the replacement fits in the category and there is broad concensus.  Four people have already provided rankings, though, so I wouldn't want to do any swapping at this point unless there is broad concensus.

Regarding Chess with Different Armies, for fairness, we should stick with the four official armies.  The others may not be as balanced.  The Meticulous Mashers, for example, is definitely too powerful.