Fast Correspondence Tournaments

I’d argue that 2 days per move, even with the strictness of simple timing, is not really “fast” correspondence.

I think fast correspondence should be faster than the typical 1 day/move pace, and preferably 12 hrs/move or less.

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Most tournaments I see in Fast Correspondence are up to 3 days per move (with Fischer), but I’ll remove it if it’s not common consensus.

Yeah, I really don’t understand why others would create even slower 3 day/move tournaments.

I think different people would have different opinions about what is considered fast, but I consider 1 day/move to be the typical OGS pace (since it is used in ladders and many open correspondence challenges) and thus only faster than that should be considered fast.

In a similar tournament I created, we usually end up playing 1 move/day (or more) anyway, 2 days/move seems good enough to cover different timezones and the occasional “life happens” without anyone disqualifying. I like fast games but also I don’t want people DQ’ing left and right.

I think the most important is not 1/ 2/ even 3 days (which is a bit on the longer side indeed), but no vacation/ no pause and TDs willing to enforce that.

refuse to comment :stuck_out_tongue: (nominally 1 day/move, but vacation/ pause throws it out the window more often than not)

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There’s a difference between “up to 3 days” in Fischer and 3 days per move simple, if that’s what you mean.

In Fischer it’s the maximum time you could have on the clock. But since the increment is usually 8 hours per move, you have to play on average 8h per move or faster. If you consistently play slower, you’ll run out of time.

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Yes, the increment is key, but remember to double it because there are two players. 12h per move times two players means one move a day for each player.

Actually what really make fast games are fast opponents. :smile:

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115, first part is done.

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Shouldn’t the 40 be easy to hit? If we assume a quarter of players will time out of day correspondence, as seems to happen in the round robins, and that each round the portion who time out will halve as the more likely to time out players have already timed out, then the remainder of players after an infinite number of rounds should be about half the starting player count, no? So with this rough estimation we expect to still have at least 57.5 players by the end, no?

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I like the sound of this in principle but worry that it could be quite stressful in practice. One of the small mercies of having a bunch of games on the go at once is that some of them go slowly so you don’t need to think too much too fast. If all the games were played against people who reply quickly, in but sure my brain could keep up!
Maybe with the right tourney choice - DE or something

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I like the idea of invite-only, but I don’t think the pool is big enough for this.

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Would finishing position in each tournament affect advancement in the series at all?

How do we measure “slowest” exactly?

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This is a bit extreme IMO.
My experience is that fast games come people that often check their moves, no matter what the clock says

So, being able to find people who plays more than a move per day in each game should be sufficient to grant fast games.
But are we able to do that?
Could we actually check all moves in a period, let’s say a month for example? Are you able to find quickest players of the month? That would be great.
We could just invite them to a group an offer group tournaments.

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I think just requiring an invite from someone already signed up for the tourney would be enough.

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But a tourney series called “survival of the fastest” wold be cool I think

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I like the general idea of an invitational tournament series aimed at the fastest correspondence players, but I think we should avoid subjectivity when deciding who is “fast” and who is “slow”.

To find the fastest players, I think we should just gradually decrease the increment in each tournament from +8 hr/move to +4 hr/move (which I think is the minimum). Everyone that fully finishes each tournament (without dropping out or being disqualified) should be invited for the next tournament.

For the first tournament in the series, perhaps this ongoing tournament started by Kosh could serve as providing the first pool of players to invite (i.e., invite everyone that fully finished Kosh’s tournament).

Also, for this series, I think that using vacation or pausing any game should result in immediate disqualification, without any warnings, grace period, or second chances.

For those that think +4 hrs is too fast to play, I personally know from experience that it is entirely manageable (provided that you have a max cap of at least 2 days). Even though you might lose 8 or more hours at night, you can easily make it up during the day with multiple plays. The only way you don’t is if your opponent burns away even more time during the day. Not everyone can handle a +4 hr increment, but that’s the point, isn’t it?

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I agree, it really annoys me when I take part in fast tournaments and the TD says “yes, I sent that player on vacation a DM, they have 24 hours to respond” or something. That’s not the point.

However, since life happens, I wouldn’t want to exclude a player from any further tournaments in this invite-only system, because something serious happened in their lives. Maybe if they sit the next one out, or have a 3-strikes system.

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Well, you could always set the absolute time to 7 days, and so they’d be forced to make more than 1 move / hr (7 days = 168 hrs)!
However, in my tournament (which I have now deleted), it shows up as 30 seconds per player (a blitz setting), even though when I edit the tournament, it says 7 days.

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Well, anyone can run any tournament. The choice is yours.

There’re a lot of fast players out there. Considering there’re thousands of correspondence players in general, at least a few hundreds are fast.

OGS records move times but you need to access each game individually with some exceptions. So you can’t really process many players or many games. But you can get some idea. I used it to avoid slow players in ladders.

You can calculate everyone’s speed in one tournament no problem.

+4 hr/move can be too slow for fast players. Some people have average speed of hour or less.

I like the idea of eliminating players by speed because it’s painless for everyone. Restrictive time settings force some games to time out which is a bad result. But when you eliminate players after the tournament by not inviting them to a new one, it’s all good. Most likely they don’t even know about the next tournament.

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Looks about right

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I play in less than 3 hours on average? I am impressed with myself. :smiley: (Though honestly, I think that’s skewed by some quickly finished games of mine)

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