Single Comment

5 people submitted two games apiece: myself, Glenn Overby, Luiz Carlos Campos, William Overington, and Antoine Fourriere. Then there are four entries submitted by three members of the Newton family: Paul, Andrew and Timothy. Splitting the two games submitted by one person into two different judging groups would be easy enough to do. For the four entries by the Newtons, i would suggest that OUTBACK CHESS by Timothy and TRANSPORTER CHESS by Andrew be in the same group and the other two, one apiece in each of the other two groups. I just think it helps prevent any bias (either positive or negative) that a judge's review of one game should not let him color his predisposition to the other game by the same entrant. Ya know what I mean? At least not initially. In later rounds if both games from a single entrant have advanced beyond the first round of judging it may be unavoidable to prevent the same judge from looking at both games if they are asked to review all remaining games still in the running. But at least initially let's try to avoid someone saying 'Wow this game is great, I bet the other game he entered must be equally good, lemme take a look, this guy is really sharp and seems to know what he is doing when it comes to designing a good CV' or 'Wow this game is terrible. I bet the other game he entered must be equally bad, lemme take a look, this guy really has no clue about what he is doing when it comes to trying to design a good CV' No review of one game can in any way influence his perception of the other game. That's just me; I would like to know if anyone else thinks it is a good idea to try to avoid situations like this or if it is really ultimately not a big deal. If you wish to make it truly random in determining which games go into which judging groups then don't thinker with it. Otherwise, deliberately assign the games by entrants with multiple entries into specific groups and all of the other games by people with only one entry into their groups randomly and then randomly assign judges to groups once they have been laid out. Also if I might make a further suggestion, you may also want to further try to seperate and to some minor degree pre-determine which games go into which groups, by making sure that you don't put all of the 7 by 12 or 12 by 7 boards into the same group but try to equally distribute them among the 3 preliminary round groups. The same thing could be said for the games on 10 by 10 boards with the 4 by 4 16-square grid in the center a 'no entry zone'--games into different groups as well. This will further prevent judges who either have a preference or dislike for that type of layout from judging all of the games with that design. Finally, someone like Hans or Fergus should try to pick the 3 games in this contest which they feel are the most complicated or confusing, and/or the ones which they anticipate will take the longest to complete a play-test game (take a long time to achieve victory) and make sure to assign them into different groups as well, so that no judge gets all the 'easy' games while someone else is burdened with all the 'hard' games. Do you guys like these suggestions or do you think it should be TOTALLY random and just live with whatever way it comes out??