Live Tournaments

I have been checking and it seems as if every tournament is completed through the correspondence option. Id prefer to play a live game. Having so much time between yours and the opponents moves doesn’t seem attractive to me. If anyone knows where i could begin competing in live Tournaments can you let me know? Or perhaps if others are interested we could make a group that does live tournaments. Thanks for reading.

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There are regular live tournaments running all the time.

If you look in the top right of the OGS screen you will see a trophy with a count down: click on that and you will be taken to the start page for the tournament that is counting down to start.

Of course, you are very welcome to do that, and maybe like-minded people will respond here. However, you should not under-estimate the challenge of getting people around the world into a live tourney at the right time :slight_smile:

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Yes, I have entered a number of those. Only 1 actually started and it was 9x9 not my idea board size for play.

Yes … it’s tough! Maybe you’ll be able to stir up interest and coordinate! Good luck!

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yes, thank you for reading and responding your time is appreciated.

The primary reason that live tournaments aren’t more common is because once you create one, you have to hope that people you don’t know will join it before it starts. This is totally viable if you can advertise the game in OGS Chat or here on the forum, but a lot of people just don’t have the free time to wait for all the rounds of a live tournament to finish.

As the board size increases, the time between games increases, and people run a sizable chance of getting distracted or be called away from the computer by real life responsibilities. Then there is the element of not knowing when the next round will start. By looking at the time settings it is possible to determine the maximum time before the next round starts, but if the games finish quickly, then the next round could start well before that value for maximum time between rounds. So you have to keep checking back once your own game finishes.

In these ways, and likely others I haven’t considered in this short time thinking about it, there are obstacles to the success of a live tournament. I run a Correspondence Tournament group with weekly tournaments, and people still manage to timeout. I’ve been a part of numerous site tournaments, which Eugene suggested, which have players who timeout too. Sadly, they are just really hard to organize, considering the difficulties inherent to the Live aspect of these tournaments.

If you really want to do this and the daily Live site tournaments just aren’t what you are looking for, I encourage you to create a group. If you got a bunch of like-minded people together and then organized tournaments well in advance, you would have the greatest success of running a tournament that both filled up, and finished to complete with all players staying throughout. I wish you luck! :smiley:.

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Thank you for all the great information and help. I believe I will try the sitewide tournaments for a while. If they do not work Ill check back here see if there are not many people interested in live tournaments, and possibly create a group. Thanks. Also if anyone is reading we will hold our tournaments over the weekends. To possibly best avoid real life interference’s.

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Sounds cool; I would warn you that OGS does not handle Double-elim tournaments correctly. If the winner of the loser’s finals beats the winner of the winner’s finals, the tourney ends immediately with the winner as the tourney winner despite that there should be one more game. If you plan on using Double-elim, I would recommend keeping track of the Brackets somewhere besides OGS and just letting the players send challenges to their assigned opponents.

thank you i will keep this in mind

I will kind of revive this topic although maybe it should go somewhere else for more general discussion:

I havent yet managed to participate in any Live 19x19 Tournament, it simply seems impossible to get at least 6 players for the tournament to be started.

Can you recommend any groups for live tournaments enthusiasts?
@OGS Devs - maybe you could try lowering the lower threshold to 4 players (from current 6)?
Or change the type to ‘single elimination’ - that could attract more people, who can play only 2 or 3 games in a row in a live tournament for 4 or 8 players, respectively.

I will welcome any piece of advice, I need to play more live games.

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Tournaments are great and you can gain a trophy if you win. But if you don’t win, no trophy. That is all a tournament has to offer. There is an increased chance of finding quality games against people who play with a competitive mindset. Though, that isn’t guaranteed and you could easily find the same caliber of individual by making friends.

A Few Ideas…

  • Next time you play a live game, and you play someone who you felt was a good match for your own skills, ask if you can add the person to your friends list at the end of the game; during the Score Estimation/Acceptance stage. Some people leave quickly after the score is accepted, so this guarantees they see your request.

  • If you are too shy, just send a friend request. A lot of players accept unsolicited friend requests.

  • Join the 9x9 Live tournaments (one on the site every 4 hours), then ask your opponent after the tournament match if you can friend them. Most folks who play 9x9 also play 19x19. This is an easy way to fish for competitive mindset players.

  • Ask for a study Correspondence game here on the forum. Making friends through Correspondence is the easiest way to find actual friends. I believe it is because you spend so long playing a game. Chat comes easy and it doesn’t require them to waste their turn time talking during the game, the way chatting during a live game does.

It is ridiculously easy to make friends on OGS. It’s pretty easy to make competitive mindset friends as well. Fill up a friends list in this way and soon you will have no trouble finding a competitive game when you come online. Just start messaging your friends. Of course you can always start a custom game and rank restrict opponents to a minimum of two or three levels above your current rank. Those matches will seriously test you as well :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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This is probably a stretch, but would any players be interested in a live 19x19 tournament at some point over the Christmas holidays?

I enjoy playing in the regularly scheduled site wide 19x19 tournaments but they are always really small if they even start at all. If there’s interest, I’d be willing to start organizing something.

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I would participate if I was available, but my work schedule changes from week to week, so it would be hard to commit to anything in advance.

Im interested. I could do my best to help aswell Ruby

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It might be interesting to have a group that schedules like a weekly bigger live tournament at a time when a bunch of people could participate. I’d love to play in more 19x19 live tournaments, but I don’t really have time to unless I plan for it in advance, so I can’t participate in the live 19x19 ones frequently.

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