Daily Tournament Games

[turtler7]

Daily Tournament Games Group
I like playing turn-based so I can walk away and come back to continue if anything distracts me. But I also like games that move fast enough for me to remember what is happening. 2 moves per day just isn't a fast enough pace. Tournaments allow for 1 or 2 day total times giving players a chess clock to make moves before their total 12 hrs ends. To keep up with the number of games I want to play with these faster game pace, I have been making weekly and weekend round robin tournaments with a day between matches. I want to open them to Swiss and have more of them. Looking for players who want to do the same. Name the games you are interested in and I will be glad to make the tournaments.

Weekday Monday-Friday 11am EST start time 12 hr per player clock Swiss System 32 max tournaments for most games, Alt Weekday games with longer play time are MWF followed by TuTh the second week with 1 day per player clocks.
Weekend Friday-Sunday 11am EST start time 12 hr per player clock Swiss System 8 max tournaments. Monitor this feed or turtler7 to find the postings and register quickly.
Weekly Sunday-Saturday 11am EST start time 12 hr per player clock Swiss System 64 max tournaments. Alt Weekly gametypes are SuTuThSaMWF 1 day clocks
(Player counts are for upcoming tournaments and are subject to change.)
Current rotation:
China Gold
Takenoko
Jaipur
Race for the Galaxy (The Gathering Storm version)
Longer games with 24 hour per player alternate days play:
Carcassonne (Strategic version)
[Potentially more games added in future, requests welcome]

Games to be posted by request:
The Boss
Nautilus
Senet
Twin Tin Bots
Yahtzee (Yahtzee version)
Can't Stop
Backgammon
Lost Cities (Single Round version)
Dragonheart
Color Pop (2-color version)
24 versions:
Stone Age
Through the Ages (Complete)
Hack Trick

Edit:
New regular tournament play! Several games now have 5 day total timer with 7 matches spaced throughout an entire month. Happy Monthly Tournament gaming everyone! More monthly games should be made soon or by request.
Also new! Tournaments of Champions from past winners within a month of all daily tournament games are now going up. Starting with Jaipur, Takenoko, and Race for the galaxy but hope to include others in the future.

[senatorhung]

12 hours for turn.based is unrealistic given timezones. basically you are rewarding who is online more often, or who gets online at the most opportune time - if any opponent can't make it back to BGA in time, they get skipped and get a loss AND a timeout on their record.

[turtler7]

In most of these tournaments there is at least one game that times out. But most of the matches get played successfully. I am watching which games have the most time outs and have started changing a few of the longer ones to be 24 hour player clocks with new matches every other day instead. If too many continue I will change all of them to 24 hour clocks and just have new ones start each week and last for 2 so that games still start daily just the first half Monday, Wednesday, Friday, (Sunday for ones that include weekends) and the second half of previous finishing on Tuesday, Thursday, (Saturday for ones that include weekend). Trying to attract the crowd of players who can be online enough to keep up despite time zones, real-time tournament players, and to encourage more activity in general for those who like competitive play and now have a reason to be on here frequently.

The matchups I was put in for today's tournaments all have been moving rather quickly. Most ended up playing in real-time or near real time. 17/23 of them are finished 5 hours after they started.

Is there anyone who really likes that they move this quickly? Or would everyone be happier with every other day and tournaments staggered from the weeks before making it still daily play just not for the same tournament?

[sprockitz]

Most tournament time frames end up being pseudo-live because there simply isn't enough time to finish a game making a couple moves a day. That said, I actually think it might be better to have a 'turn-based' that is like 4 or 6 hour maximum. This could limit the time-zone as it essentially sets a 4 or 6 hour window in which you need to be available, and would work in a scenario like these where there is 1 game starting at the same time everyday. Since that isn't an option, I think 12 hours per player is probably better than 24 or even 36 hours per person, only because it forces you to play real-time on a specific day. Also the 24 and 36 leads to some games being played during the week and some over the weekend is tough since not everyone is glued to a computer 7 days a week.

I think 12 hour cap per player with games every other day isn't a bad idea, especially for those playing in a lot of these type tournaments. each tournament would last 2 weeks and stagger game starts. Half the tournaments Could start monday and half on tuesday.

[turtler7]

Also the 24 and 36 leads to some games being played during the week and some over the weekend is tough since not everyone is glued to a computer 7 days a week.

If I change to every other day format I would set it to 24 hour clocks so less out of time warnings or opportunities for someone to skip their opponent would come up. But I would still set up one as Weekday and one as Weekly. Weekend ones will stay 12 hr as people should know when signing up if they can play Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of a single weekend but not be able to be sure about the following week. If they are like me and the matches were to spill into the next weekend they might make plans limiting their play time for the 2nd week.

The weekday ones would be M W F of week 1 and T TH of week 2 for 5 games total. During week 2 a second tournament starting its first week as M W F would be able to make it still daily but with more forgiveness in timing on any single game. I have already started doing this for games that have abnormally large numbers of time outs.

Weekly ones are for players who have no difficulty in playing any day of the week but could also easily be set to every other day format over a 2 week period 7 match swiss.

[sprockitz]

The weekday ones would be M W F of week 1 and T TH of week 2 for 5 games total. During week 2 a second tournament starting its first week as M W F would be able to make it still daily but with more forgiveness in timing on any single game. I have already started doing this for games that have abnormally large numbers of time outs.

This sounds like a reasonable format going forward, but at least for my Tzolk'in tournament know it isn't in place...that one has 7 total games starting every other day (meaning a game starting Friday and another starting on Sunday)...so any weekend plans would make this difficult. Weekend plan difficulty can also impact weekly tournaments as games starting on Friday are largely played over the weekend.

As for weekend formats, if the number of participants is greater than 2^number of rounds there will be multiple players finishing undefeated. In my opinion, this is a very unsatisfactory result. Perhaps limiting these to 8 players would be the way to go so there is only 1 undefeated player at the end.

Obviously any time you have an aggressive schedule such as this some timeouts will be unavoidable. I'd be fine with timeouts if it was only a loss in a tournament game, but since it counts as a 100% loss and has an additional 10 point penalty, we are talking up to 30 Elo points lost (and usually pretty close to that for highly rated players). And that 30 point penalty is giving away a huge amount of work that was taken to get there. I'm not sure what percentage of players take this action, but it seems to happen fairly frequently, even for games that are barely started.

Given that risk I'll probably avoid joining those games where my rating would be most at risk...though I did join Tzolk'in where I'm a Master so really hoping not to time out there . For this week I also joined Can't Stop and Takenoko, but was immediately reminded why I hate both those games . (by hate I mean super frustrating because of how much luck is involved...takenoko in particular because you feel like it shouldn't be entirely luck based then you get the worst combination of plot draws (3 times in a row pink and yellow only) with objective card draws (4 straight 2 green pandas and a 2 point green plot objective)...at least with Can't Stop you know it is mostly luck but still frustrating when you get your Probability of win up to 98+% then see it crashing down. END RANT

[dim2a]

I'd love to have a Through The Ages complete game tournament. I see you listed "advanced" game, but imho it is good while learning rules, but as not a good game for actually playing.

The 36 hrs "chess clock" time control sounds great though -- I personally would prefer 24 hrs, but I can see how 36 hrs can be appealing to more people.

[turtler7]

I'd love to have a Through The Ages complete game tournament. I see you listed "advanced" game, but imho it is good while learning rules, but as not a good game for actually playing.

The 36 hrs "chess clock" time control sounds great though -- I personally would prefer 24 hrs, but I can see how 36 hrs can be appealing to more people.

Updated the list to reflect the group page description. TTA has been successful enough and not so harshly timed as originally feared so they are currently being set as complete settings and 24 hour player clocks with a weekend variant set to 12hr for those able to commit to that Friday-Sunday having the time to finish them.

Also updated to show new games being added to the list. I am intending to keep adding even more less played games that I feel are fun enough as 2 player competitive that I would be willing to play in them regularly. If anyone has an interest in any games on this list they don't know I would also be more than willing to take the time to teach you, give what advice I can, or make recommendations based on other games you like.

[dim2a]

Having tried weekday TTA tournament... all good except the Friday 11 AM game spoils it a bit for me if I am away for the weekend or have limited access (playing end of TTA game on my phone is hard).

If it is a problem for others as well, I can see two potential solutions:

One is to move first week's game start to Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. Sunday is a weekend BUT if I am on line all of Monday I can play a game that way even if I am away on Sunday, without timing out (as is, I will time out in a Friday game if I am away on Saturday).... plus it is easier for me to predict first weekend schedule than second.
The other is to perhaps have 2 games per week (but maybe 3 weeks)? I love the time controls for 4 of the 5 games, but one starting Friday 11 AM is causing me potential problems.

[turtler7]

Upcoming tournament of champions:
Takenoko March
Invited Participants:
Robin Son
gerard33
whyngrh
pwwong
Tashina
potenial0805
jd_hermes
turtler7
-myrtille-

Jaipur March
Invited Participants:
Reedflacon
Opulentus
BoB Special
turtler7
Sojaboon
Clavigne
coffee101
f88niks
professor-yaffle
ckwatt

Race for the Galaxy March
Invited Participants:
seattlecyclone
turtler7
malabal
c0rsair
bart182
wishard
rain