To the Daily Kos community:
I am writing to discuss a proposal for a second Daily Kos Chess Tournament. Last year, we held a successful inaugural tourney that I had suggested one day on a whim, only to find out that 140+ Kossacks would soon express interest in playing. Several well known Kossacks got involved -- front page writer Dante Atkins was a player, and Meteor Blades was kind enough to advertise the final matches in various open threads. The tournament ended after many weeks of competitive play, culminating in a championship win by chess master and author Eric Schiller.
This diary will be a platform for discussing the prospects for running another tournament this year. However, this will not be a call for registering players. You are free to express interest in participating, but I will not be gathering a user list for the tournament until all the details are finalized.
Last year's tournament was a fun and enjoyable experience for me -- I learned a lot about moderating and even improved my game and strategy somewhat (though I've been sorely out of practice since then). Still, given the way I was unprepared for running a tournament of the magnitude it eventually became, it was a heavy and arduous task for me as well. Thankfully, I received a lot of assistance from others in the Daily Kos community for whose work I'm quite appreciative.
The first and most important question is, do we want to hold another tournament? If yes, then there are numerous issues that will need to be worked out before it can begin. Please feel free to add your own ideas in the comment section below.
1. The schedule.
One of the problems last year was that the tournament started only one week after I wrote the first diary advertising for it. We'll need more time than that to ensure that enough Kossacks are aware of the tournament, and to make the appropriate administrative and technological preparations.
My strong opinion is that any future tournament should take place over the course of one or (at most) two weekends, not 10+ weeks like the inaugural tourney in 2009. I also think the matches should be held at set times so that there won't be any hassles that always occur with self-scheduling between players. Depending on the number of entrants, we could potentially set up the tourney by holding two or more matches per day for each round on a Saturday and Sunday, and then do the same on the following weekend if necessary.
As for the actual date of the tourney....given that it's a midterm election year, and many Kossacks will be working quite hard on local and national politicking for the next several months, I'd propose holding a tourney after the elections are over. Perhaps it can start in mid November or in December, so as not to conflict with Thanksgiving.
2. The website.
Last year, we used four separate websites where players could meet and record their chess matches: Chess.com, Chess Cube, the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), and Yahoo! Games. While this provided users with the option of experiencing several different kinds of interfaces for gameplay, there were various technological issues and disconnections that occurred at each website for several players.
For the purposes of setting a consistent standard, I'm of the opinion that there should be a single, unified chess website for all matches in the tournament. That way, there would be an easy method for keeping track of all users at the same time in the same place. Some players would no doubt have to get used to an interface to which they're not currently accustomed, but I think having uniformity in the location of the chess matches might reduce whatever technological hassles that might arise.
Chess.com was the most frequently used website for the 2009 tournament, and is my personal preference. However, that does not mean it has to be the choice for this year.
3. Skill levels.
There's a wide range of chess skill levels among Daily Kos users. This would depend on the number of people who sign up, but I'm wondering if, instead of an all-comers tournament as we had done in 2009, it would be better to have two different tournaments: A beginner one, and an advanced one, with players choosing whichever skill level they think suits them best. Two separate tournaments might create a different set of administrative burdens, but it might also cut down on the amount of time required to run them (due to the smaller number of players in each one).
4. Time Limits.
30 minutes seemed to work decently well last year, though I'd actually be all in favor of a 5- or 10-second bonus time clip per move. Perhaps if there are different tournaments for separate skill levels, there can be different time limits too.
5. Pairing.
Lst year I did the match pairing without the help of any software. I just took people's records and reported skill rating (as best that they could estimate), then paired people off accordingly using Microsoft Excel -- and when I couldn't get a skill rating, I just randomized things. For a future tourney, to make things run more efficiently and smoothly, there should be an automatic pairing program that does all of this for the moderator(s). Does anyone know of such programs, or better yet, does anyone have one?
6. Scoring.
You will recall that the user papicek did a great job at setting up a beta website where players could enter their match information and record the match results. It would be nice if whichever chess-playing website the tournament was using could do all of that (plus pairing) automatically -- and maybe there are websites that can -- but if not, I think it would be of great value to maintain an independent website like papicek's from last year, and perhaps have neutral volunteers and moderators record the results after each match is completed (rather than relying on the players themselves). It would also make the pairing easier. Or, maybe there's some feature of a chess-pairing program that can do those things?
7. Mailing List.
In 2009, I had to rely on an e-mail list so I could remind users to schedule and play their matches for each round -- which proved to be a rather burdensome task. It's possible that DK4 would have some enhanced networking and messaging capability to help better connect community groups. But, it's not clear when that will be released. So, we may have to just rely on e-mail again. Maybe we could use an independent website to store people's contact info, just in case -- though obviously we would need to take special care to protect user privacy.
8. Forfeits.
Even if we get a set schedule and time for all of the matches and a uniform website for playing them, I'm almost certain there will be issues that always occur with online tournaments such as technological blips, last-minute dropouts, etc. Any organizational website or software that we use for pairing people and running the tournament will need to take these problems into account and fix them in order to get things back on track as quickly as possible.
9. Prizes
Last year we were fortunate to receive a couple of prizes from Mig Greengard, an assistant to Garry Kasparov, as incentives for competing in the tourney. He was generous enough to donate a series of chess training newsletters and a book written by and autographed by Kasparov himself. I have no idea if there will be any prizes this year (and if so, what variety), but that's certainly an item up for discussion.
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Anyway, these are just a few of my proposals for a 2010 tournament. Again, this diary is not a call for officially registering players, but rather to discuss how the tournament can be administered and run most effectively and efficiently.
However, if you are interested in participating and perhaps assisting in tournament moderation, you may feel free to let me know in the comment section or by e-mail. You are also welcome to add any suggestions you might have about the issues listed above or others that I did not address.
Thanks, and have a good weekend, all.