Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Rococo does have a rules-enforcing preset, which has been used many times. However I personally don't trust that it is currently bug-free, as I reported a log once where Francis lost a game to Carlos due to apparently not being allowed to play a legal move (Francis decided to resign at that point). Here's a link to the preset's page; note my comment (currently at the top) in the comments section, re: I reported the bug when I noticed the game that Francis had resigned, after I played over that plus other games of this variant:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/rococo.html

Around that time I reported a lot of what I suspected were bugs with other variant's presets, too, but I'm not sure if any of my reports were acted on, including the one in the link for Rococo.

I might be interested to participate at the tournament.

Sorry to return to that, but would it possible to have shorter time settings? I recall that the 2017 tournament took 10 (!) months. (And there were also a few games where one player just stopped to play, instead of resigning, making the others wait for a long time until the game finished.) What I would like to suggest is to set a Max time (30 days for example seems good to me) without Grace time, so we could know the day when a round is finished at the latest, and the global duration of the tournament.

Having grace time makes things fairer for people who normally move at different times. A day of grace time is good for assuring that differences in personal schedules do not cost some players more time than others. While we should do something to rein in the length of games, some games go on because of several moves. Limiting the total time of the game could unfairly hurt the player whose turn happens to run up against such a time limit. The maxtime value is used to limit the total time a player may have between turns. It does not limit the total time for the game. This could put a cap on how much extratime and bonustime could increase someone's total time. Setting this to 30 days would mean that no player could take more than 30 days between turns. I would suggest setting it to 28 days, which is twice the initial spare time. If we want to be a bit stricter, we could set it to 14 days, which matches the spare time. This would allow someone who is behind on time to gain some back by making moves, but it would not allow anyone to gain more time than the initial 14 days of sparetime.

OK, what you propose is certainly more suited for correspondence play. I was just wondering how the duration of the tournament could be reduced.

Finally I've decided not to participate in the tournament. Good luck to all!

Thank you Greg, the short answer is I prefer your array, Grand Betza Stong. The long answer. After my game of Chess on a Really Big Board with Georg Spengler, we both decided that the Rose was a horrible piece. Then I was mortified to find that our game is still on the Wikipedia page for CoaRBB. The Rhino is also mentioned in the article for the game and I wanted to try playing with that piece. With the Rhino being a slider, I hoped it would be less obnoxious then the Nightrider and a full major piece . I also wanted to play with the Phoenix and Kirin, and the number of pieces suggested a 10x10 board for a good piece density. This was my first attempt at an array from scratch and the Grand Betza array seems to favor white to much. If you don't wish to have your name attached to it, I'm ok, but I much prefer your array and would like to have it as the official array for a published preset under either Grand Betza or Grand Betza Strong, your choice. 

I'm willing to play in this 2019 GC tournament. I'm happy with my Sac Chess variant invention being proposed for inclusion in the tournament.

Note that my email address is still found on my CVP personal info page; however, it's been a long time since I've been sent automated messages, e.g. reminding me whenever it is my turn to move in a game (to tell the truth, I don't miss the clutter in my email inbox that that causes).

About the tournament containing my game I'd like to retreat it for now as I had anyway improved the rules and not completed the new preset. Is that fine guys?

I'm stil playing that has not changed :)!

Ok, I have set the Max Time to 4 weeks and removed Apothecary as requested.  It looks like we might have around 8 players.  For anyone interested in playing, please rate each of these games with a value between 0 and 4.  Use 0 for a game you really, really don't want to play and a 4 for a game you really do want to play.  There are no limits - you could rate everything a 4 if you wanted to, but doing so would not accomplish anything.  Basically I'm going to total up the points for each game.  I will try not to include any games that have been given a 0, so if two games are very close in score, I may pick the lower rated one if it received no 0 ratings while the other one did.  So please use the 0 rating sparingly as that is basically a veto (unless lots of games get zeros.)

Please send me your ratings by email: mageofmaple@gmail.com

Thanks Greg,

For me:

Courier Chess Moderno 2;

Metamachy 4;

Symetric Chess 3;

Collosus 2;

Hectochess: 3;

Falcon Chess 4;

Gross chess 4;

Odin's rune chess 1;

Grand Shatranj D 2;

Janus Kamil Chess 3;

Maorider Chess 4;

Elven Chess 3;

Decima 4;

Sac Chess 1;

Unicorn Great Chess 3;

Heroes Hexagonal chess 1;

Tess Chess 1;

Opulent chess 4;

Shako Balbo 4;

Thanks.  And your rating for Hectochess?

@Greg

I have edited my previous comment with the needed information.

Good luck!

The Tournament of 2019.  Greg is there a starting date?

Sorry for the delay.  I think I should be able to kick things off this weekend... Let's shoot for Sunday, March 2nd, sometime around noon or thereafter (EST).

The selection of games is complete.  I heard from almost everyone and the results were pretty consistent.  If it is the case that we don't have quite enough players and we need to give each player a BYE for a round, I will try to give each player the bye on the game he rated low (although that might be difficult to work out in practice.)  Most of these games got a low ranking from one player and high rankings from everyone else.  In only one case was one of the games selected given a zero ranking by anyone, but I included it anyway because the next game in the ranking got several points less - quite a drop-off given the distribution - and because the player who gave it a zero only gave the game that would be its replacement a one.  So, I think all-in-all everyone will be pretty happy with the game list.

There are nine games for three rounds of three (like last year.)  These are the 9 games, in no particular order:

Metamachy
Symmetric Chess
Colossus
Hectochess
Gross Chess
Sac Chess
Unicorn Great Chess
Opulent Chess
Shako_Balbo

And these are the nine people who I believe are playing.  If anyone else wants to join, you are welcome.  It would be great if we could get one more.  Otherwise, everone will have one bye round.

Aurelian Florea
Carlos Cetina
Adam DeWitt
wdtr2
Greg Strong
Fergus Duniho
Kevin Pacey
John Davis
Jarid Carlson

Also, we will probably have rule-enforcing presets for all games. I believe the only two that do not yet have rule-enforcement are Symmetric Chess and Metamachy (which I know Fergus is already working on.) We won't play either of those in the first round to give time for rule-enforcing presets to be made.

Thanks everyone!

It seems to me that the shedule is a round robin. Am I correct?

The goal is for everyone to play each game once and to play one game against every other player.  Since we have 9 games, 10 players would work perfectly.  If we have 9 players, then a fake player called "bye" will be in the roster.  If we have 11 players, each player will have one other player he does not complete against.  (Does this describe a "Round Robin"?  I think so but I'm not sure.)

Sunday is March 3rd.

It does for 9 or 10 players.

ANd by the way, Fergus is correct. Sunday is march 3 :)!

Fergus,

Something strange is going on with the comments at least on this page.  When you view What's New, you see everything.  When you launch the tournament page, however, you only see a few comments (which is normal) but they are not the most recent.

And yes, tomorrow, Sunday the 3rd :)

Player dax00 has joined, brining us up to 10 players, the magic number.  The pairings have been posted on this page.  I will get the first round games created later today!

All game for the first round have been assigned.  Good luck everyone and have fun!

When I looked over the time controls before, I didn't notice the thing about the 4 moves per week pace. I had previously modified the invitation script to not include the option of setting a pace in the time controls, but I forgot about doing the same thing in the script for defining a round. The code is kept in Game Courier for backwards compatibility with games that still use it, but I do not recommend its use. Here is how it works. I have added some extra comments to better explain things.

// As long as you keep the desired pace, your reserve time is kept from falling below $sparetime.
// $i is the turn being checked. $i & 1 returns 0 or 1 to identify the player.
if ($timeleft[$i & 1] < $sparetime) {
    // Total time that has passed from beginning of game
    $timepassed = ($timestamps[$i] - $timestamps[0]);
    // If average duration for a move is less than the set duration for a move,
    // then moves are being made faster than required,
    // and $timeleft is raised to value of $sparetime.
    // Equivalent to -> if ((($timepassed / 2) / $i) < ($paceperiod / $pacefreq)) 
    // but loses no precision and avoids division by zero error
    if ((($timepassed / 2) * $pacefreq) < ($paceperiod * $i))
        $timeleft[$i & 1] = $sparetime;
    }
}

One problem with this is that it divides the time passed by 2, which is accurate only when each player takes exactly as long to move as the other player. It would be more accurate to count up how much time each player has individually used. So, it will normally reward both players or neither player, depending on how fast the game is moving along. It does not account for individual variation in playing speed. Because it divides time passed by two, the pace it checks for is actually half as fast as the pace specified. So, if the pace is 4 moves per week, it will reward players for moving twice a week. Without knowing how it works, you might imagine that it will enforce a certain pace. It will not do that. It will just reward players for keeping a minimum pace. When combined with other time controls that already reward players for moving quickly, it may help inflate how much time players have left. With the pace set to 4 moves per week, it will be possible to play slow, leisurely games that will take many months.

I have completed all my round 1-3 games. How are the standings and who still plays?

There are two games still going: Gross Chess with Fergus vs. Kevin and Colossus with Fergus vs. Carlos.

Here are the current standings:

Greg: 3-0
Carlos: 2-0
Kevin: 2-0
dax00: 2-1
Fergus: 1-0
Aurelian: 1-2
Jarid: 1-2
Adam: 1-2
John: 0-3
Wdtr2: 0-3