On-line engine blitz tourney!

[hgm]

I already posted this in the general section, but so far with very few reactions, so I now post it in the other sections as well.

Some of us (Tord, Pedro, Miguel and I) would like to play in a blitz tourney (e.g. 5+1 games) that I could organize. If this works satisfactory, we could make it a monthly event. (Or we could alternate 5-min and 10-min tourneys, or even do bullet some times.)

Is there any interest amongst engine authors to participate in this? Only thing you need is a computer with an internet conection, and an engine! I will provide the server, and accounts on it for all participants. The four of us is a bit few to make an interesting tourney, even if we would all show up with 2 engines...

The date and time are still negociable; I was thinking on the first Saturday of the month (i.e. Feb 6), 3 pm EST, so that it is 9 pm in Europe and noon in California.

[Stan Arts]

Hi H.G., sounds good, I'll see if I can make it.

Date and time sound fine to me so far.

Stan

[Tord Romstad]

The date and time are still negociable; I was thinking on the first Saturday of the month (i.e. Feb 6), 3 pm EST, so that it is 9 pm in Europe and noon in California.

The time is good for me, but of course I won't be able to participate every time.

Do you plan to alternate between normal and UFO tournaments, or just to play normal tournaments?

Tord

[hgm]

Nothing is decided yet. UFO tourneys could be interesting as well, if there is enough demand for it. (None of my current engines is easy to convert into an UFO, though, as they don't use Piece-Square Tables. But I am interested enough in the concept to run the server for such a tourney on behalf of others.)

I guess an UFO tourney is only of interest if we have enough games to get statistically significant results. That probably means that we would have to do bullet games, and 10 games/pairing, or something like that. I don't know if that is feasible w.r.t. bandwith of my internet connection. But we will learn as we go, and explore the possibilities.

[Zach Wegner]

Count me in. Doing 5+1 games allows for quite a few games in just a couple of hours. Rotating time controls and other parameters allow for some fun, and if it's monthly you get a lot of flexibility. There are monthly computer Go tournaments that work the same way, where each tournament has different time control and board size.

The time you give is OK by me as well, and should work fine for most. Just don't make me get up at 6 AM on a Saturday.

[Greg Strong]

Sure, I'm in.

[Zlaire]

I'd be interested, but isn't saturday evenings a pretty poor choice of time? (shouldn't most people be busy with families and whatnot then)

Sunday would be much better, for me atleast.

But I guess logging on and leaving it for the tournament director would work anyway.

[TonyJH]

What is a UFO tourney?

[Tord Romstad]

What is a UFO tourney?

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26157

[TonyJH]

I'd at least be interested in observing, and maybe entering.