The FACCT

[IAHM-COL]

Current Participants Standard:

• IAHM-COL
• JWocky
• SHM #forfeits all games
• Keith

Current Participants Blitz:

• IAHM-COL
• Omega
• JWocky

Hi All, here I introduce The FACCT

The FACCT stands for FlightGear's Airport Cafe's Chess Tournament

This thread is an open invitation to join the FG Airport Cafe's Chess Tournament on it's first edition 2017.

Would you consider joining? Then read below:


Who can join:? Any FGer that is willing to participate can join. You can be a developer, a beta tester (git version) or just a FG afficionado, you can have hours or years of multiplayer experience with us or you can be a solo-pilot off line most of the time. You do not need to know how to play chess but make sure you know the basic chess rules by the time your first game pairing is made, or you are going to probably be defeated by the Clock.

Requirements

There are 3 requirements, in this order

1. Willingness: Wanting to participate without coercion.
2. Time availability: Each player is expected to play the whole tournament, which consist of a total of 6 (standard) or more games(blitz-chess) (7 sessions in the case that a Final tie-breaking match(es) is(are) required). The game schedule is clarified below. A game has a maximum duration of 3 hours (frequently much less) and all players have exactly one match each schedule day.
3. An account on FICS and ability to play a chess game on this server. Doing so is very easy and we can provide guidance. I recommend you try and test before the first game schedule. I found ChessX to be a easy to use software to enter the FICS server and join the match. There is ChessX available for all Linux/Windows/MacX. You can choose your own chess client, anyways.

The FACCT schedule

The First FACCT will be a six-round tournament. Each competitor will be paired to an opponent (or given a point pass in the case of odd participants). The exact format competition to be decided depending on the number of registered participants.

The schedule is:

The second Saturday of April, June, July, September, October and December; at 1800 UTC.
Each match to begin at 17Zulu (Blitz-chess) and 18Zulu (Standard chess). Pairings to be released at least half a month in advance.
If you can't make your match on schedule time and date, you must contact your opponent via the forum and try to set an acceptable time/date, but the match to be played within 1 week period, or the game will be forfeited against you.

The Months of May and November are skipped since FG Festival Occurs, and therefore pilots are unlikely to be stranded in the Airport Cafe. The month of August is a mid-way rest-stop.

In the event of a Tournament winning draw, a final match or matches are held on the Second Sunday of December at 18UTC.



Time Regulations

Blitz Chess: All FACCT Blitz games will be played on 3 minutes per players with 2 seconds increments per move.

Standard Chess: All FACCT games will be played with 60 minutes per player with 1 minute added per move. That's a limit of about 1h 40 minutes per player, and in the longest event a game of up to 3 hours before either one player checkmates, or the other resigns or forfeits by time.
This clock is set via your chess client and FICS.

Scoring

Scoring follows chess rules of 1 point to winner, 0 to loosing opponent and 1/2 points to draw games assigned.

Rating; FGELO

The presumption is that participants of the FACCT are not (necessarily) tournament seasoned players -- and as such they lack any FIDE Elo rating scores.

FACCT will create a FGELO score to remedy (to be read as flagellum). This is a FIDE-like calculated Elo rating that only takes into account FACCT matches. A new player is initially assigned (for calculations and pairing purposes) the average of all rated tournament competitors score. In the first FACCT all participants will initially be considered to have a 1200 FGELO, and the first game or set of games will be randomly paired.

All FACCT games are considered for rating purpose, including Standard and Blitz games.

Game Reporting

All FACCT games will be played in FICS (or chess.com /to be decided and discussed). We will report the FICS game page in the FACCT forum threads for other FG members to view/review/comment.

I recently tested FICS capabilities and I found them to be amazing for this purpose. I joined a game with an online FICS en-passant player and noted how easy the games are re-fetched for tournament purposes analysis, anotation and comment.

See my test game here:

http://ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=410895389


Participants

REGISTRATION for FACCT 2017 ENDS MARCH 21ST at 00:00UTC

Feel free to leave a forum note, or send a message to register for the First FACCT. Minimum number of participants (2). No maximum number of participants established. Cost; Registration is Free as in Beer. Price; Community acknowledgment and fan base


You are invited!!


Best,
IH-COL

[Omega]

I suggest using chess.com instead, as it is browser-based, thus no downloads are necessary. Also, the classical time control is way too long for online chess, I would prefer playing standard blitz (3 min + 2 sec increment). Or we could have two separate tournaments with different time controls. Around 15 minutes is probably the maximum I will accept for online chess.

[IAHM-COL]

I suggest using chess.com instead, as it is browser-based, thus no downloads are necessary.

I wouldn't immediately mind to change to chess.com.

but

1) When I go there it comes in Norweggian for me and in the home page is game over. I don't know why.
2) One can use "javaboard" to connect to FICS online without downloading a chess client
http://www.freechess.org/javaboard/
3) I liked the FICS database to keep track of every game after the fact.
4) Anyways both FICS and chess.com do require registration, it seems
5) Can I use my chessX to connect to chess.com?

Also, the classical time control is way too long for online chess, I would prefer playing standard blitz (3 min + 2 sec increment). Or we could have two separate tournaments with different time controls. Around 15 minutes is probably the maximum I will accept for online chess.

I like the idea of having a blitz and a standard tournament a lot

If we keep the idea of having just 6 rounds, and one game per player per round (that is not knock-out phases).

I am not that great of a chess player (as in I make many mistakes), and if you give me extra time pressure I become even more reckless

But I'm game to join the blitz tournament too ...

Should I list you and I as the first contenders to challenge in the FastFACCT?

[Omega]

1) Go to the footer of the page and click on "Language."
2) I believe that chess.com will provide a more even playing field, because every board will be the same. As such a player will not have an advantage over others based on what client they are using.
3) Chess.com also provides that feature. You can also use computer analysis, which will point out mistakes and blunders.
5) No.

Another thing to mention is that with a short time control, each of us can play multiple matches per day, instead of being restricted to one.

Should I list you and I as the first contenders to challenge in the FastFACCT?

Yes please.

[IAHM-COL]

3) Chess.com also provides that feature. You can also use computer analysis, which will point out mistakes and blunders.

If done so during a tournament game, it qualifies as cheating to me.

[Omega]

You can only use the analysis board after the game has ended.

[IAHM-COL]

ijm stll dpply trobleyd in the Norweggian ft Chess.com

so I'll keep the idea of FICS open. We can discuss this again, but consider looking into FICS and the javaboard?

http://www.freechess.org/javaboard/

It's quite easy and more flexible. You can do it on the javaboard with no download or you can use any chess client you want.

I think there's not an outstanding "client" advantage given two different looks.

About the Blitz and Standard tournament series I like it.
I join you in the Blitz tournament.

For now I'll say let's do the Blitz at 1700 ZULU and the standard at 1800 ZULU the same days.

For the standard is 1 game per day per player.
For the Blitz, we can organize up to three games per player per day, depending on number of participants.

[IAHM-COL]

found the translation of chess.com!

[IAHM-COL]

Thanks @JWocky for joining the Blitz tournament as well

[SHM]

Count me in for the standard chess.