I'm not sure that the 'newcomer vs. veteran' thing is that important, but if you guys feel strongly about it, I'm not going to argue too strenuously about it. While I don't have time to be a full fledged judge, I am willing to give my input as a veteran CV designer on the judging process, so that it will be handled fairly and equitably. I am also willing to play-test my own two entries in the contest against any judge by email (see earlier comment). I have a few more ideas: Perhaps you should break the judging into groups of four rather than three: three with eight games each and one with nine. Eleven games apiece seems like an awful lot to me, and depending on how many judges you can get you may be able to distribute things a little easier this way. (Just how many games should come out of each group into the second round of judging is something you can all decide for yourselves.) I am assuming that you will have more than one judge giving their input on a particular group. For example, if you have 12 preliminary round judges to cover the four groups, you have three judges per group. (Another advantage of going with four inital groups rather than three is, as I have already pointed out, there are four different games using 7 files and 12 ranks, four different games using a 10 by 10 board with the middle 16 squares as a 'no-entry zone', and four games submitted by members of the Newton family, and each of the four games for each of the aforementioned subsets could be put into the four different preliminary round groups.) It makes sense to have two judges from the same group play-test the same games with each other, either by email or in real-time. (With internet communication what it is today, moves can be sent in algebraic notation via instant message, using ZILLIONS to record the game, if the direct interactive ZILLIONS in-game link cannot [for whatever reason] be used.) I would also hope that each judge play-test each game they are responsible for at least TWICE. One time does not necessarily give one a good feel for a game, and often once a game has been played for the first time one might begin to pick up on certain strategies once they get into the flow of the game that had not occurred to them simply from reading the rules page and looking at the initial setup, which they will then be better prepared to use (either for attack, or to defend against) during the second time around. After that, if someone wants to play-test it even further than that, that's up to them based on how much free time they have on their hands. I also think that it's always helpful whenever a game's inventor can volunteer to play-test his own game with a judge (as I have offered), since who else has a better initial feel for a game than the creator itself, and I hope that as time goes by more entrants will come forward to volunteer to play-test their own games with judges. Even the games which do not yet have a ZILLIONS OF GAMES zrf file available can be play-tested by email, by including an ASCII diagram with each move transmitted, altered by hand in each reply to reflect the new position that occurs with the move that is being sent. (btw that might also be another initial criteria to use to seperate games into different preliminary round groups: those games which do not have ZILLIONS OF GAMES zrf files available for them, should be equally distributed amongst the groups). <p>Finally I was wondering if anyone was going to make any suggestions as to what criteria judges should use to when evaluating games in the contest. I don't mean to say that I think anything would be written in stone, that anyone MUST use certain criteria when evaluating games, because I would think that judges should be allowed a certain amount of flexibility and freedom in deciding which criteria they feel are most important, and obviously different judges will probably weigh different criteria with different importance, but I wonder if anyone will come out and state POSSIBLE criteria that could be used, or if you would prefer that judges figure that out for themselves without any outside influence. I would certainly be willing and able to give my two cents worth in this forum as to which criteria should be used in evaluating games if I am asked to, but for now will keep my mouth shut in case you'd all rather everyone be silent about that topic. Please let me know. I'll tell you this much though: If you ask me to state the various criteria I think are important in evaluating games, I'll tell you which ones I think are more important than others, but I won't try to come up with any kind of elaborate points-scoring system to give games grades or scores. To me that's a bit too scientific and it's not going to be appropriate or userful for different judges who may personally disagree that a particular criteria I stated should be more (or less) important than the emphasis I would seem to give it.