7th Freestyle Tournament starts on Friday 7th September

[Ciron]

All details are to be found here:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4093

See you!

Arno Nickel

[Nid Hogge]

Thanks for the reminder.

I was very sorry to hear the rules changed and that engines are now forbidden to participate(And almost centaur).
I guess it shouldn't be called "Freestyle" anymore.

I am a very big fan of Freestyle but it looks like that for some reason they make it less "free" and more stiff for everyone.

No engines only allowed is a very poor decision I think. they also wanted to disallow the centaur mode but changed the decision in the final minute due to pressure from contesters..
So in the future maybe this won't be allowed as well, and this is going to be anything but "freestyle".
It takes out all the uniqueness the concept had.
I think it will discourage many potential participants in the long run.

I must also say thay for the first time in a long time iv'e also seen Chessbase officials join the criticism and go against that decision. (As I understand the decision is from the sponsor from UAE).

Best,

[Ciron]

Let me please put some things the right way:

1. The idea to disable engine-only play is not from the sponsor PAL, but from the organisers on playchess.com and CSS. It's true, that the CB sysop Richard Sticklen bashed this, but he is no longer a Freestyle TD, other people from CB were deciding on this matter.

2. The idea to abondon engine-only play is not motivated by an anti-engine attitude (as engine-use is still encouraged and nobody would have any chance without is), but by two other things:
a) technical issues (disconnections, engine-crashes), which often led to difficult situations for the TD: restarts failed, results had to be fixed by the TD, much trouble with the players, while he should have time for other important things like the pairings, updating information for the players etc. Sometimes the engine-only players weren't even on the server in order to answer questions etc. - You shouldn't forget, that a tournament with about 100-150 players and additional many spectators is an extremely hard job for a TD. And even Richard Sticklen couldn't say, he had no problems with that;
b) apart from this I suggest, that disabling engine-only play may also be motivated by the wish to impede multi-account strategies. Such strategies, where one person is playing by using different accounts at the same time, could lead to very unfair and unpleasant situations in a swiss tournament, and this has also been a source of troubles and suspicions.
Now, it is clear, that you won't be able to completely prevent such methods by disabling engine-only mode, but it would be more difficult to do so, as you would have to get operators for this job.

3. Nobody has an exclusive right to define, what Freestyle is and what not. If, for example, the tournament series would have started on a different server, where engine-only isn't possible because it's not implemented, nobody would have said it wasn't "freestyle". Same, if the CSS/CB organisers would have had this idea right from the beginning.
I think, the main point of freestyle is, that you can use as much help and computers as you like or can afford, but it's not necessarily depending on the possibility to have an interface, which allows engine-only play.

In the end, we should not forget, that these tournaments are the only big events, where amateurs can play grandmasters and top computer opponents in Adcanced Chess style and also may be win a lot of money! This idea is worth of getting popularised. And as I see by many last minute entries for the 7th Freestyle Tournament there are also a lot of guys, who like the new rules, especially because they were bored by playing an automatic engine, while it's owner might have sit in the sun waiting relaxed for his super machine winning a money prize.

Of course, there are lots of more issues and arguments on both sides. It's not the end of discussion, but only one stage of development.

Best regards, Arno Nickel

Thanks for the reminder.

I was very sorry to hear the rules changed and that engines are now forbidden to participate(And almost centaur).
I guess it shouldn't be called "Freestyle" anymore.

I am a very big fan of Freestyle but it looks like that for some reason they make it less "free" and more stiff for everyone.

No engines only allowed is a very poor decision I think. they also wanted to disallow the centaur mode but changed the decision in the final minute due to pressure from contesters..
So in the future maybe this won't be allowed as well, and this is going to be anything but "freestyle".
It takes out all the uniqueness the concept had.
I think it will discourage many potential participants in the long run.

I must also say thay for the first time in a long time iv'e also seen Chessbase officials join the criticism and go against that decision. (As I understand the decision is from the sponsor from UAE).

Best,

[WindPower]

Thanks Arno, you and a few others (like Vas) are working hard for the Freestyle. I think there were much to much negative comments lately.

The old rules did cause clearly problems (experienced a couple myself, quite annoying sometimes), and the multi-account play was definetely not fair (although unavoidable to a certain extent), hopefully now these will work out better.

Let's just try the new rules and be positive, it might be much better than most people think.

[CRoberson]

My only question is:

Why drop Centaur mode? It always worked fine for me and
reduced my need for an extra computer. I've used as little as
3 computers and as much as 5. Dropping Centaur mode forces
me to add another computer.

On the no comps only - on one occasion, I had to run 1 round
in comp only mode. It was the Friday 2pm (east USA time) round.
Difficult to find a babysitter at that time of day on a Friday.

[CRoberson]

This is odd:

This page
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4093

claims we can run in human or centaur mode.

The email I received (from CSS on 8/31/07) says

Playing Mode in the tournament room

This time it is only possible to play as "Human". The operator modi
"Computer" or "Centaur" won't be available. This is because there ...

Which statement is the true statment? Can we use Centaur mode?

[VP]

This is odd:

This page
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4093

claims we can run in human or centaur mode.

The email I received (from CSS on 8/31/07) says

Playing Mode in the tournament room

This time it is only possible to play as "Human". The operator modi
"Computer" or "Centaur" won't be available. This is because there ...

Which statement is the true statment? Can we use Centaur mode?

To the best of my knowledge, the organisers bowed to the pressure of public demand and now you have BOTH Human and Centaur play.

[Ciron]

This is odd:

This page
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4093

claims we can run in human or centaur mode.

The email I received (from CSS on 8/31/07) says

Playing Mode in the tournament room

This time it is only possible to play as "Human". The operator modi
"Computer" or "Centaur" won't be available. This is because there ...

Which statement is the true statment? Can we use Centaur mode?

To the best of my knowledge, the organisers bowed to the pressure of public demand and now you have BOTH Human and Centaur play.

On the whole that's right. Chris should have received (like all other freestylers) a CSS e-mail with a questionaire, where this solution had been proposed.

I also agree with Chris votum for keeping the centaur mode. Many details about the whole affair may be found in the rybkachessforum:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... l?tid=2058

and

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... l?tid=2078

Best regards,
Arno Nickel

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Hi Arno !

I followed the chat on the machine room (cb server) some days ago about this topic. I don't agree about some views of you.

I just want to try to explain for what "freestyle" stands for now. You're right if you say nobody has the exclusive right to define what means "freestyle" exactly.

So, i'm looking back how to developed this tourney series in the past. Then you'll noticed that the most players and participants defined "freestyle" already.
It's not one person who defined it, the players itselfs has defined it and the view is that they say to use every single possibility is "freestyle".

It doesn't matter if it possible on other servers or not. It doesn't matter if somebody don't using all possible possibilities. It's just the principle to have the option to use it. That is freestyle and nothing else.

The importent point is that it is possible as it is.

So taken away some options for no good reasons, like doesn't allow centaur mode, just starting to destroy these glory tourneys.

If there are technical reasons, like don't allow engine-only, it's okay for me.

Best,
Daniel

[Dr.Ex]

Let me please put some things the right way:

1. The idea to disable engine-only play is not from the sponsor PAL, but from the organisers on playchess.com and CSS. It's true, that the CB sysop Richard Sticklen bashed this, but he is no longer a Freestyle TD, other people from CB were deciding on this matter.

2. The idea to abondon engine-only play is not motivated by an anti-engine attitude (as engine-use is still encouraged and nobody would have any chance without is), but by two other things:
a) technical issues (disconnections, engine-crashes), which often led to difficult situations for the TD: restarts failed, results had to be fixed by the TD, much trouble with the players, while he should have time for other important things like the pairings, updating information for the players etc. Sometimes the engine-only players weren't even on the server in order to answer questions etc. - You shouldn't forget, that a tournament with about 100-150 players and additional many spectators is an extremely hard job for a TD. And even Richard Sticklen couldn't say, he had no problems with that;
b) apart from this I suggest, that disabling engine-only play may also be motivated by the wish to impede multi-account strategies. Such strategies, where one person is playing by using different accounts at the same time, could lead to very unfair and unpleasant situations in a swiss tournament, and this has also been a source of troubles and suspicions.
Now, it is clear, that you won't be able to completely prevent such methods by disabling engine-only mode, but it would be more difficult to do so, as you would have to get operators for this job.

3. Nobody has an exclusive right to define, what Freestyle is and what not. If, for example, the tournament series would have started on a different server, where engine-only isn't possible because it's not implemented, nobody would have said it wasn't "freestyle". Same, if the CSS/CB organisers would have had this idea right from the beginning.
I think, the main point of freestyle is, that you can use as much help and computers as you like or can afford, but it's not necessarily depending on the possibility to have an interface, which allows engine-only play.

In the end, we should not forget, that these tournaments are the only big events, where amateurs can play grandmasters and top computer opponents in Adcanced Chess style and also may be win a lot of money! This idea is worth of getting popularised. And as I see by many last minute entries for the 7th Freestyle Tournament there are also a lot of guys, who like the new rules, especially because they were bored by playing an automatic engine, while it's owner might have sit in the sun waiting relaxed for his super machine winning a money prize.

Of course, there are lots of more issues and arguments on both sides. It's not the end of discussion, but only one stage of development.

Best regards, Arno Nickel

As engine-only player you can't suffer from mouse slips and making the second move in a planned sequence of moves before the first.
Both has happened to me in the first CSS freestyle and might have cost points.

I always regarded this as an unfair advantage for the automatic engine player, so I appreciate the rule changes. It might lead to considerably less participants though.