Tantrix Tournament Reports

[colly89]

Hi everyone,

Niklas and I were talking in the lobby and decided that we would like to run a blitz tournament. We were thinking a one day event with 5 minute games and 5 mins in between rounds. The format being like a table tournament with preliminary and then final groups. However we are open to feedback after all it is you who will be playing, so if you could answer the following questions in a post that would be great:

1. Time Limit - Anything from three to seven minutes would be acceptable.

2. Time penalty system - Either a straight loss for going over the time limit. Or for every x seconds over the limit you get -1 point from you score or -1 tp depending on the scoring system.

3. Scoring system - Just a simple win/loss/draw system depending on the tile score (taking into account any time penalties if they apply). Or TP system (though we won't be able to use the online results system, we could easily use a spreadsheet for results and incorporate time penalty as well) Also for any system everyone will either have to post results in a chat room or on the forum (chat room probably being easier).

4. Tournament format - we could either do preliminary and final groups like at a table tournament. Or preliminary groups then KO. Or just straight KO (though this is will probably not be popular as you could be out after 1 round)

5. When? - I think the best slot would be early january before the WTTC and WJTC start and probably on a sunday. but suggestions welcome.

This will be run as mainly a fun tournament (hopefully)

And finally the most important question is are you interested in playing?

Feel free to add anything else too!
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Pessimists are never dissapointed but it doesn't hurt to be optimistic - You can always cry later!

[Pellepen]

Hi Michael and Niklas.

I think that the previous Blitz Tournaments with maximum 7 minutes (otherwise loosing the game), win/loss, and Swiss system was a very good format to play Blitz!

1. Time - OK you can go with 5 or even 3 minutes, but the fever minutes you can think, the more luck it will be.

2. If you will allow time for more than the maximum limit, you can't have win/loss. And it will be much harder to count TPs for everybody in the result list. And it will take longer time for you to get the result up.
Hopefully there will be a lot of players and a lot of activity...

3. I suggest that you use "previous games" instead of mail to get all the times and scores right.

4. What about the players from other time regions?
What time will it be possible to have such tournament? It's impossible to find a time that suite everybody.
Or should you just ignore those players, and let them join in the middle of the night if they like to?

I think you could have it on a good time for us in Europe, and let it be open to all players in the world.
We already have the Euro competition and this could be an "Open Euro Blitz Tantrix Tournament".
Playing time on Sunday afternoon is probably a very good time for a lot of players.

The format could either be groups or only one group with all players if you have Blitz system and win/loss.
That would be much easier for you to arrange, and the players that don't like the Blitz system, don't have to join the tournament.

5. If you just announce it a couple of weeks before, then I think any Sunday will be good.


Irrespective of what rules or format you decide to have I will join the tournament.
Looking forward to it - Blitz is really fun to play!

[Alpaka]

Hi,

I think 3 minutes are not enough as time limit, 5 is better from my point of view.

Anyway, I will join the tournament if possible.

Alpaka

[blick]

[Zormac]

Past blitz events were run with 7 minutes, straight loss when time's up, on a win/draw/loss basis only, with the format being two Swiss qualifier events (allowing for anyone around the globe to play in at least one of them), and a KO phase afterwards.

Other qualifier formats may work, but it's a question of infrastructure: there are various free softwares allowing you to handle Swiss chess tournaments (which is what a win/draw/loss Tantrix event basically boils down to), but integrating our TP system into any Swiss may be a little tricky, if you think about it. Of course, you can always try to get Dave to implement it

Unless a good deal of thinking put into alternatives and a wide acceptance is granted, I'd suggest going with the "old" way of running it, see above. Past blitz OCs (Steven, Simon, Miklos or myself) should be able to help with any questions if needed.

[Brainless]

3 minutes is way too short, especially for an auto-loss situation. It's tough enough to play the tiles within 3 minutes, let alone trying to play with any kind of strategy. 7 minutes still forces quick play, so that's my preference.

The best time I think is European nights (ie. 20 GMT). Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's around 7am for Aussies & most of Asia, 9am for New Zealanders and around 2pm for Americans. If it took 2 hours, most of Europe would be done by 11pm/midnight. This would therefore make Saturday a better prospect or people are playing at/before work on Monday. I think this only leaves out India (don't attack me if I'm wrong ).

We always want more tournaments in non-European countries, so making ANOTHER one (even non-ELO rated) which we basically can't enter (I'm sure I'm not alone in saying "I'm NOT playing at 3am") would just be wrong.

No pressure, but I'm pretty sure Dave could implement the tournaments page, only thing different would be ELO rating (which I'm 90% sure is easily turned off (see 2006 NON) and the time limit (probably easily changed to 3/5/7 instead of 15). Win/loss/draw might be slightly harder...

If it's a convenient time, I'm in!
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[colly89]

After talking to Niklas, we have decided that we are only prepared to do one event (ie without qualifiers), but are prepared to put the event on a saturday evening / sunday morning at around 20 GMT, and are quite happy to use a swiss system with straight win/loss scoring as long as we can find some free software to use.

We do however, still have a preference to use a 5 minute time limit for the simple reason that quite a few tournament players use less than seven minutes per game consistently anyway, thus it not really feeling any different for them, it also allows for more games to be played in the same time period. But if the majority of people want it to still be seven minutes, then we will go with that.

Lennart's suggestion to use the recent games list for the results is a good one as it won't require scores or times to be posted in a chat room (except in the case of a disconnection requiring time adjustments).

Any other suggestions/feedback are still welcome.
_________________
Pessimists are never dissapointed but it doesn't hurt to be optimistic - You can always cry later!

[Pellepen]

Perhaps have a poll for the time 5 or 7 minutes?

For me it's no problem to play in 5 minutes.
But there will be more luck the shorter time you are able to use.
And should we have a lucky winner this year?

(Benopi's theory is that the winner of a tournament is the most lucky player in that tournament.)
That means that it will be more of a lottery if you only have 5 minutes in total.

Perhaps a good choise to test this time with 5 minutes and see what happens. Since we have never had a tournament in 5 minutes, we can compare afterwords if players like 7 minutes better or not.
And perhaps you could have the poll AFTER the tournament instead...

[NiklasA]

[tizz88]

I don't really get the point of changing it to 5 mins when 7 worked fine...

Something tells me the organisers have a vested interest here

[colly89]

OK it looks like seven minutes each is what most people want, so we will probably go for that.

On a different note I have found some swiss softwre which is easy to use and free (for 30 days) which i can also export the results and pairings relatively easy into text files to post in the forum (or possibly in a chat room but it would not be formatted and might not work).

My only concern with swiss is that with 32 players it still only takes 5 rounds to complete, and after this amount of rounds the top players will start to play lesser players in the standings, but if people don't mind this then that is ok. But we would like the tournament to be for around 3 hours, which is 9 games (assuming 20 mins between start of rounds), which means by the final round the top players are most likely to be playing mid table players to decide the final standings which isn't ideal.
_________________
Pessimists are never dissapointed but it doesn't hurt to be optimistic - You can always cry later!

[colly89]

Time, Date, and Format have been decided (still open to minor adjustments though) and entries are now open.

Details can be found here: http://tournaments.tantrix.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1378
_________________
Pessimists are never dissapointed but it doesn't hurt to be optimistic - You can always cry later!