I tried to pitch this idea a while ago about being able to kick off sitewide tournaments once there was enough players interested, rather than waiting for the right hour of the day for a particular tournament you liked to begin.
That said, maybe a better proposal is just the Arena style tournaments they have at lichess.
As an example, take the current sitewide Blitz tournament time settings.
Make a Blitz arena that runs at certain times of the day and it has a fixed duration (like an hour or 2 hours etc tbc). The way the Arena works (over at lichess faq here) is that it autopairs you with other players either of a similar rating or ranking (tournament standing) in the tournament
At the beginning of the tournament, players are paired based on their rating.
As soon as you finish a game, return to the tournament lobby: you will then be paired with a player close to your ranking. This ensures minimum wait time, however you may not face all other players in the tournament.
Play fast and return to the lobby to play more games and win more points.
You score points based on wins, and they have a streak system. (edit it to suit go)
A win has a base score of 2 points, a draw 1 point, and a loss is worth no points.
If you win two games consecutively you will start a double point streak, represented by a flame icon.
The following games will continue to be worth double points until you fail to win a game.
That is, a win will be worth 4 points, a draw 2 points, and a loss will still not award any points.
So whats the point, why does it matter, why is it better than the ASTs or comparable to spontaneous ones?
- It has a fixed duration, and you won’t miss out on it just because the minimum number of players weren’t there right on the hour the tournament was supposed to start!
- Lichess has a pause feature and a withdraw feature, so that you can take a break from being autopaired, or just drop out whenever suits. New players can jump in whenever.
- You might actually get more games close to your rating and/or standing in an Arena like this, rather than the ASTs.
Currently the elimination tournaments have slide pairing which can pair like 4kyus up with 18kyus, and maybe it’s fun if you like that, but it is just designed to keep the strongest from playing each other till the end, so it’s hard to have a chance of winning in some cases.
The swiss tournaments pair by strength, sure but I imagine a lot of people sign up for one game and then drop out, because who knows how many games you’re signing up for? When this happens there isn’t a chance for other players to fill in and take their place.
One could say just use automatch or custom to play games, but people do use the tournament system, so why not add to it a bit?
The drawback, of course, is that it only works well when there’s enough interest in it. For example, the player base isn’t quite big enough at lishogi, so those arena can just stall with not enough players signed up, or not enough unpaused.