I thought it might be fun to have an Unstuck chess tournament. Everyone is welcome, total noobs included, as long as you don’t mind probably getting crushed against the stronger players. The plan would be Round Robin, either blitz or rapid, with time advantage based on rating. What that looks like exactly depends what time control we play, but I’m currently thinking a minute for a 100 point rating difference and two minutes for each of the next two 100 points, to a maximum of 5 extra minutes?
I made some poles. Vote if you’re interested, only voting Yes on the last pole constitutes any sort of agreement to play.
Which site should we play on?
Lichess
Chess dot com
0voters
If 3+2 and 5+0 together constitute a majority in this pole, we’ll play whichever form of blitz is favoured. We’ll only play 10+0 if a majority go for that.
What time control should we play?
3+2
5+0
10+0
0voters
I’ll provide some sort of prizes. I’m thinking 3 days per round, for everyone to find a time to play their games? I don’t know how to easily count signups so I’ll do it like this.
I play almost exclusively 3+2 and my rating varies between 1200 when drunk and 1400 when sober. I’m pretty sure I could give drunk me a 2-3 minute handicap, so your system seems fair.
btw it occurs to me that in cases where people don’t have a rating on whichever site we play on, we might have to estimate based on their lichess rating and proceed on that basis.
5+2 or 5+3 is a reasonable option as well, I guess sound off here if you’re voting blitz but would prefer that.
I just play no-increment because I’m often squeezing games in on limited time and don’t want to deal with an increment game that goes on into eternity, and I guess I voted that because my ingrained time-management works on that basis. I’m fine with increment though.
Yeah, I was actually thinking recently that I should switch to 3 2. I lose way more games on time in good positions than my opponents do. I’ll give it a go over the coming days. I wonder if there’s a rating difference. In my experience in the no increment world, the the player pool for 3 0 are fundamentally stronger than those for 5 0, such that I tend to lose rating if I play 3 0 (and this continues the pattern of 5 0 players being much stronger than 10 0 players). I don’t have enough experience to know how that works for 3 2.
3/2 usually takes about the same amount of time as 5/0 I would say. Can’t speak to the player pool really, since my last 1k or so games have all been on 3/2. I picked chess back up only a few months ago and have settled on that timer.
Isn’t it a tournament ie a league not a knock-out?
Optimal would be double round robin (ie with white and black against all others), but that might be too long if there are a lot of players, in which case single round robin (or Swiss I guess).
I’m not sure, but I think it’s actually allowed on chess.com up to a certain number of moves? I don’t use them though, and I don’t know them really, other than what I’ve worked out in game, so my openings are all pretty mistake-ridden.