Hi,

I thought about playing a team game against the whole TL- and Snailbucket community (community vs schachbjm) after this season.

The idea of this unofficial event is to have fun and to improve the communication/talk with other players. Team games are a great opportunity to learn unfamiliar openings and to understand the way of thinking of higher rated players. Moreover, there will be a lot of interesting and instructive ideas.

Interested players can talk/discuss/decide about their moves with the kibitz function (I will set no kibitz in order to see no comments). Every player (rating does not matter) has the right to propose and explain their moves/ideas. The majority decides which move will be played against me.

It would be nice when higher rated players take care of lower rated players and explain their ideas in detail. Furthermore, lower rated players should have the possibility to share their ideas without any pressure. There should be a friendly and warm atmosphere.

The game will be played as an unrated game against one of the community members. Bethany and I checked that Watchbot saves the comments of unrated games, too. The admins remind me that no one (observers, participants and players) is allowed to use any computer assistance.

Date: Saturday, 19th December 13:30 server time
Time Control: 45 45 (+20 mins after 40 moves for the community and another 15 minutes after 60 moves)
Colors: Random
Requirements: fun and respect; rating does not matter

To make it even more interesting, I thought about some “punishments”:
If the game ends as a draw, I will analyze one game of the week in depth.
If the game ends as a victory for the community, I will analyze 2 games of the week in depth (more than 1000 words).
Furthermore, I will analyze the team game and focus on the comments of each player. As a result, I hope that I can everybody to improve his/her chess knowledge.


Feel free to propose your ideas, improvements and other 'punishment ideas'!
I look forward to see a great and instructive game!
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me!


Best regards,
schachbjm
Member of the flamingphoenixfighters


P.S. Message me (message on FICS) when you are interested in order to get an overview about the interest. I look forward to play against as many nice opponents as possible.
P.S. Bethany and pchesso are such great members! Thank you for helping me and answering my questions!

Fantastic idea. At MFO (RIP), we did a few forum based team games way back when. Once (or twice) we broke up the site into two teams and played each other. Twice we played against a GM that ButiOxa knew in real life. Once we played against another chess website. Those were always super fun games, and I would definitely learn a lot (I was only a 1200-1400 player at the time, so never had any good ideas of my own).

I've always felt it's a shame that the FICS Team Game bot is broken, but I've definitely wanted to do something like this live, as you suggest. I think it'll be great fun, and I look forward to participating.

-JoshuaR

Thanks for being the first to recognize my true talent, but the (B) behind blindpchesso(B) means "Blindfold account", not "Badmin". ;)

I played a team game years ago and did not like the complicated commands I had to memorize and type. Your idea to use kibs should be much easier. Nice idea, good luck with the game!

One remark: If people do use time to share, discuss and explain the candidates and finally vote on every move, they might not make it past move 20 - not even in a structured discussion process. Unless you want to grant "moretime" freely, maybe playing "untimed" could be an option?

Thx for your comments and proposals!

I know that (b) stands for blindfold, nevertheless I somehow thought that you are an admin as well. At least, you would be a great admin!

I thought about the time control for a while and 45 45 with extra time after a specific amount of moves is not ideal, nevertheless I was not able to find a better option. I can play until 05:30 pm, so I will give some further extra time, if needed.

Just as a reminder: The game will take place this Saturday on 13:30 server time.

Final information regarding the game:

- ob schachbjm to observe and participate!
- The game will be created as an unrated game on 13:25 server time.
- Watchbot will observe the game
- There will be an introduction with all relevant information before the game starts.
- Timecontrol: 45 45 with extra time after 20, 40 and 60 moves
- Discussing process: There will be a discussing and a voting period.

Discussion period: Everybody is allowed to propose, explain and discuss their ideas. Other players can give their opinions.

Voting period: The team captain will summarize all options and ask for a vote (if necessary). Every player kibitzes his favorite move once within (half) a minute. Now, it is not allowed to discuss and explain moves/ideas anymore. The captain will tally the votes (count out) and execute the desired move.

Best regards
Schachbjm

P.S. Is there somebody, who wants to be the captain of the community team?

Just to ensure,

1. You have a mechanism by which to ensure Watchbot will be there to record comments in an unrated game?
2. The person playing against you (controlling the team moves) will also be able to communicate with the other players' whispers (or do they just input the moves and not participate?).
3. Given the time it takes just with discussion and voting, the time control won't be too hard for the TL team?

Hi JoshuaR,

1. Watchbot is recording unrated 45 45 games. I tested it twice.
2. Everybody is supposed to use kibitzes. So, the captain can see other comments and participate if he wants to do so.
3. The game wont be decided due to an exceeding time limit. Keep in mind that there are already 3 times 20 extra minutes, so in total 105 45 for the community team.

(Nevertheless, when this is not enough, i will give some further extra time. The idea of this event is to have fun and to have a warm atmosphere. So, the game should not be decided due to time pressure. It is not the "Norway Chess" :D)

Best regards,
schachbjm

re:kibitzes, I had forgotten that you can "set kibitz off" to avoid seeing kibitzes while playing!

It's too bad the fics teamgamebot does not work anymore. IIRC, it used to work and also recorded comments/votes that were uploaded to a web page. (http://dooglus.rincevent.net/chess/ and http://dooglus.rincevent.net/chess/logs.htm) You can click on the first link of the logs page to see the example team game pgn, and if you are using babaschess, for example, you can load that pgn and look at the comment tab to see the game chats and voting history.

You'll notice the white players debating over d4/e4 and black people planning sicilian. The chat is especially confusing because one of the player's names is "nonooo," and I kept feeling like someone was arguing against every proposal. :P

Unfortunately the bot doesn't work. That game was played in 2006, it looks like, and is the last evidence of a successful teamgamebot game as far as I know it.

I take that back, maybe it's worked as recently as 2012. http://dooglus.rincevent.net/chess/logs/?C=M;O=D, but FicsTeamBot last logged in in 2012.

I think this is a great idea by you , schachbjm!

Several years ago I played many tamgames here on FICS, they were quite a fun. Sad it doesn't work anymore.

But i wonder how you can play with more than one additonal time upgrade after a definite number of moves?!

I am still not sure, how it works, since the teamgamebot is disabled; is it like you actually play against one person but this person receives move proposals from other players (simulation of a teamgame)?

Regards Boobyslegacy

Hi,

the game is adjourned after 33...Ng3 and will be continued tomorrow at 14:00 server time.

Edit: The game ended as a draw after move 70. Thank you for participating!

Best regards,
schachbjm

Thanks schachbjm! It was fun.

Watchbot did not observe the game, so I copied the comments to a pgn which JoseCapablanca has kindly posted downloadable at his website here: http://www.learnchess.info/fics---team-match I didn't count the comments, but schachbjm estimates there were 4000 or so.

Do we have any other highly-rated volunteers who'd be up to games against the TL community these next weekends? This might be a good tradition to continue if anyone is up to the challenge.

Considering how much moretime schachbjm ended up generously giving the TL team, I think we'll have to go for a 120 30 time control (and that will still be very tight for getting 5-20 people to agree on every move, but I believe we can do it provided votes are forced in a reasonable amount of time).

This was a ton of fun. Multiple hours over two days. Kind of felt like I was a pro with the quality of moves and the level of thinking and discussion. It was a whole lot of fun. Thanks schachbjm, BethanyGrace, and everyone else who participated!

Beyond playing Team vs High rated player, it is also always an option to play Team vs Team, which is also something I've done in the past (MFO formed a Knights vs a Bishops team). For recording comments, we can use two different private channels for move discussions if Watchbot isn't observing for whispers and kibitzes, with a volunteer from each channel recording comments into a pgn.

If anyone is talented in programming and interested in working on fixing the fics team game bot, the source code is supposedly online here: http://dooglus.rincevent.net/