Freestyle Chess is Coming Home

[Ozymandias]

With less than 15 people registered, it was either postpone or cancel.

[Eduard]

It is not easy to organize such tournaments (with several weekends). It shouldn't fail because of the entry fee, there are also good prices (up to $ 3,000).

In the previous Engine Masters, 30 to 40 people have always played. But of course, in automatic tournaments your own chess performance is almost zero, maybe 10% to 20% book tuning. The engine does the rest. Whoever has the thickest PCs has the advantage. I've seen a lot of games in pure engine tournaments where they won because of gross book errors. The rest ended in a 98% draw!!

It's different with FreestyleChess. There will be no book errors, maybe a few during the qualification, and then no more later. So I would be surprised if less than 30 people register. It shouldn't be that pure automatic engine games triggers more enthusiasm than the freestyle discipline? In my opinion this is the wrong way to go, and then I will soon stop playing computer chess. We will see.

[Ozymandias]

The prize being offered for the tour being promoted right now is $1,000, with the total prize bag being almost entirely covered by expected registrations. $3,000 is for further down the road, if ever.

No book errors in FreestyleChess? Last time 2/3 of the mistakes were book losses, I don't expect this to be different. The only difference is that the moves will be entered by engine human players, and not by engines.

[Eduard]

If you only play because of the prizes, you are not a real fan of the discipline. I also play in the engine tournaments on PlayChess and InfinityChess. It's boring, totally boring. Unfortunate about the electricity bills for those. If you have that much money, you can also raise the entry fee for freestyle. I wrote that there could be book errors in the qualification. But after that, when the top 15 will play against each other, there will be no such thing. I would be very surprised! There will be several divisions, the bad players are allowed to continue making mistakes.

[Ozymandias]

I was clarifying the situation regarding the entry fee vs prizes. If it were just for those, I don't think anyone would play Freestyle.

Bad players? Is there such a thing anymore? There's the case of some players making occasional blunders, but that isn't the same thing. The bad player doesn't know better, the latter must have his reasons for choosing to loose a particular game, someone should ask them why. I know I have, in the past.

[Eduard]

There are unsporting things. Friends could give each other points away. Maybe you can design the draw after the qualification so that friendly players (where this is known) have to play against each other in the first round (14 rounds = 28 games).

[Ozymandias]

Many things could, something surely should, nothing has ever been done. And I'm not talking just IC, I've been along for quite some time and I've seen some unsavory things. The problem is that as draws become more common, wins are more precious, and irregular wins become decisive.

[Uri Blass]

There are unsporting things. Friends could give each other points away. Maybe you can design the draw after the qualification so that friendly players (where this is known) have to play against each other in the first round (14 rounds = 28 games).

The only way to prevent friends who give away points can be by changing the competition.

I believe that the competition should be simply about beating pure chess engines.

Every participant play against some engines(stockfish,Dragon,Lc0 and more players) and the winner of the tournament is the participant who get more points againt them.

[Eduard]

This is a great idea! However, those players who are familiar with the weaknesses of engines then have an advantage. Strong grandmaster players tend to have a disadvantage compared to experienced engine experts.

[Cornfed]

This is a great idea! However, those players who are familiar with the weaknesses of engines then have an advantage. Strong grandmaster players tend to have a disadvantage compared to experienced engine experts.

'Proof' this...is not chess (?)