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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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Following a heated discussion with a friend about what terms are acceptable or unacceptable, I thought it might be interesting to provoke an open discussion on the appropriate rules for major tournaments (e.g. national or provincial opens, etc.) in Canada. As you know, these issues are left wide open by the CFC handbook which provides no real guidance to organizers and thus no standard baseline over the years.
Specifically:
1) How many sections should there be? a) One (as in the recent CO in Ottawa or in Edmonton 2009); b) Two (as in, for example, Kitchener 2006); or c) Three or more (as in Montreal's CO in 2010).
2) Should the Sofia rules be applied, under which draws may not be agreed before move 30 without permission of the arbiter?
3) What should be the time controls? a) 90 + 30s increments (as in Ottawa 2013); b) 40 in 90 plus SD in 60 with 30s increments (often applied in the past); c) some other control with 30s increments; or d) any time control without increments.
4) Should there be a dress code?
Perhaps someone more familiar with the technicalities of this site can construct this as a poll but at this point I am more interested in comments.
As a player, arbiter and organizer for some five decades now, I have some definite thoughts on this topic.
Where funding allows for many strong and titled foreign players to be invited, and / or when the event is likely to attract strong Canadians and other North Americans, then I am in favour of more than one section, with a rating floor set at a minimum of 2000 for the top section, with no exceptions. The reason is to maximize norm opportunities for Master-strength players. The FIDE rules for earning norms favour countries or regions where there are many federations within geographical proximity, for example, Europe. When these rules were originally made, European federations dominated both the playing and the governance of chess, and set the rules to help themselves. To earn a norm, a player must face opponents from a minimum of three different federations. Canada, which is a very large, sparsely settled country (separated by oceans from more densely populated Europe, Asia and Latin America, which also have many nations within the amount of land occupied by Canada), probably has the toughest task of any nation in the world in attracting foreign players, due to distance and financial challenges. Because of this, and because there has usually not been a rating floor for a Canadian Open, not many norms have been scored in our national Open championship. Look no further than Ottawa 2013, the Canadian Open, where there was one section, 12 GMs, and probably close to the same number of IMs/FMs, and, to my knowledge, there were NO norms scored.
1-Sections: I really don't like having one section. Mixing players is fine, but a 1200 playing against a 2400 is, IMO, a waste of everybody's time. Especially when we're trying to determine which of these two players should be Canadian champion.
2-Sofia rules: if the players are paying to be there and the semi-professional players are not receiving an appearance fee, I don't think it's fair to enforce such rules. But I do think it's a shame when two players agree to a draw before the game starts. Sofia rules won't change that, unfortunately.
3-Time control: can we please get rid of intermediate time controls? Just XX min. + 30sec. increment. Keep it simple. You want 4 hours games: go for 90m+30s. You want 5 hours games: 120m+30sec.
Now, for the time control fundamentalists out there: you know you can still resign your game if you don't manage to play your first 30 moves in 90 minutes? So basically, you can still use a time control even if the organizer says it's not there anymore!
An open tournament should have 1 section. In Canada the events tend to be reasonably small. One section gives everyone a chance to win, although most don't have a realistic chance. It also helps to improve the playing strength of the lower rated players by giving them higher rated opponents. I don't seem much point in inviting a bunch of GM's and then having them playing only other strong players.
Employing sections in an event is more correctly called a Class Tournaments. It's not open. Nothing wrong with it if the organizers want to call the event the provincial or national class championships.
A dress code of business casual shouldn't be out of line.
Draws seem to fall into 2 categories. Competitive and non competitive. A difficult situation is when a player is clearly winning and he gives his friend, who is higher placed in the standings, a draw.
I don't like increments. Either a player makes the time or not. Maybe when I get old I'll appreciate increments more.
I don't like increments. Either a player makes the time or not. Maybe when I get old I'll appreciate increments more.
I don't understand the argument? With increments, you still have to make it in time? It's just that this amount of time now has a certain proportionality with regard to the number of moves played.
The major advantage of increment, IMO, is that it makes sure that the position on the board is, practically, always more important than the amount of time on the clock. I can win B+N endgame with 30 sec. per move, but maybe not with 2-3 min. flat, for example.
And the rules of chess specify that you should always be trying to win by 'normal' means (i.e. good moves and not just banging the clock as fast as possible to flag your opponent). We've all seen this many times: a dead draw goes on for dozens of moves just because one player is in time trouble and the other is clearly trying to flag him. Very cheap and not in line with the rules of the game.
With increments, nothing of this happens. The game remains very civilized and when you lose on time, it's often because your position is difficult and you can't resign yourself to play something within 30 sec, not because you don't have the 1-2 sec. to physically move a piece.
So yes, time is still a factor, but never to the extent that it supersede the position on the board. To me, this is the most important reason why we should always use increments in serious competitions.
Following a heated discussion with a friend about what terms are acceptable or unacceptable, I thought it might be interesting to provoke an open discussion on the appropriate rules for major tournaments (e.g. national or provincial opens, etc.) in Canada. As you know, these issues are left wide open by the CFC handbook which provides no real guidance to organizers and thus no standard baseline over the years.
Specifically:
1) How many sections should there be? a) One (as in the recent CO in Ottawa or in Edmonton 2009); b) Two (as in, for example, Kitchener 2006); or c) Three or more (as in Montreal's CO in 2010).
2) Should the Sofia rules be applied, under which draws may not be agreed before move 30 without permission of the arbiter?
3) What should be the time controls? a) 90 + 30s increments (as in Ottawa 2013); b) 40 in 90 plus SD in 60 with 30s increments (often applied in the past); c) some other control with 30s increments; or d) any time control without increments.
4) Should there be a dress code?
Perhaps someone more familiar with the technicalities of this site can construct this as a poll but at this point I am more interested in comments.
1 - c
2 - no
3 - a
4 - if I am being paid then the organizer can impose a dress code. Otherwise casual is fine.
I like one section tournaments with the top 20-30 players (depending on number of entrants ) getting the money.
Eliminate class prizes . Or if you have to give class prizes then make it so low that it is not worth the bother to play for class prizes.
If you cannot be in the top say 20 in a tournament then do really deserve a prize?
But then again, is there any other competition where you have such a mismatch that one of the participants has virtually no chance of winning?
In tennis, for example, the U.S. open is not open to everybody. You have to qualify.
To me, 'open' in that context means that any qualified player can register, regardless of his nationality.
A 1200 chess player is simply not qualified to win the Canadian open. So what do you do with these players? Ask for their money but give them absolutely nothing to fight for? Seems unfair to me.
1) More than one section makes sense. In a a single section tournament, a gross mismatch cannot be avoided completely. However I believe the option should be then to play up a section or more by paying an additional fee. For some lower level players this is their only chance to play a GM one-on-one.
2) I don't know if Sofia rules have improved anything. There are many ways to force draw by repetition if someone wants to.
3) Time controls should be as per FIDE "There is a single time control for all major FIDE events: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one." End of Story.
So are you telling me you play chess to win a prize. A poor reason to play chess.
They could do better with entries if you are 2200 + you pay a price a 1200 could pay a lower entry to play.
You asked about qualifiers then maybe organizers should run tournaments with lower rated players paying lower fees and getting trophies rather than prizes. If you want to make money then chess is a bad choice in Canada.
Once you win the U1200 then you can move up to U1400 and continue until you reach 2200 +.
If you have not realized it yet the tournament organizers prey on the lower rated players to pay for the elite players.
That is why lower rated class prizes are so low. That is also why a 20 top winner list is better. The top twenty deserve the money not the bottom 20 players.
3) Time controls should be as per FIDE "There is a single time control for all major FIDE events: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one." End of Story.
But then again, why not 120min. + 30 sec. Let the players manage their time as they see fit.
Sometimes, non chess players ask me about chess tournaments and how it goes etc. The time controls with both an increment and additional time is something you can hardly explain, because it just doesn't make sense, especially without adjournments.
2h/40 + 1h/SD made sense at the time. You play 40 moves, you get some extra time to finish the game. Even 2h/40 moves + 1h for every additional 20 moves was easy to understand.
With increments, you just get this extra time with every move you play.
Last edited by Mathieu Cloutier; Saturday, 7th September, 2013, 09:05 PM.
So are you telling me you play chess to win a prize.
I fail to see where I wrote that. My rating is a tad above 2000 so I can't remember the last time I won a prize and I'm perfectly fine with it. I play for fun and that's it.
I'm just saying that asking a 1200 guy to pay in order to play in the Canadian 'open' on the premise that he could be the Canadian chess champion, is, at best, dishonest.
The whole debate about money in chess is much larger than this and I don't want to deviate because the original post is interesting. All I'm saying is that: a 1200 cannot win the Canadian open, so there's no point in trying, especially if money is involved.
It's not a question about the relative merits between the FIDE time controls and one time control with increments, which I concede are only subtly different. I simply think that if we want to promote the Canadian Open as THE premier tournament in Canada, then we should use the time controls set by FIDE as the one to use for major events.
Who knows, maybe some day FIDE will see the merit to change the time controls based on your rational. It's not like the current time controls were the official ones 20 years ago. However, whatever they state is the official time control should be the one used.
1. One or two (O & U 2000). The number of rounds should be increased too if there are a lot of players.
2. Nope. Sofia rules more important for a RR tournament when there could be nothing to watch.
3. 120+30s
4. Nope for Opens.
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