Tourney Guide
Snail Bucket 5 is a tournament for individual players. There will be a preliminary stage with 2-player mini matches, followed by playoffs for the winners of their group.

Eligibility
- Have played in at least one TL season.
- Have forfeited no more than one of your ten most recent TL games:

tell teamleague hi

Joining
Message pchesso on FICS, or post below, in which bucket you want to play, e. g. "Hi, I want to join bucket 13. Alternatively, I could play in bucket 19, if this helps."
Deadline for joining: December 26, 2200 FICS server time.
Fixed TL ratings as per December 26 will be used, if ever necessary for whatever purpose.

Buckets
There are four buckets (groups). They are not determined by player rating, but by playing times. Pick the one that suits you best:

Bucket 01: Matches to be played at 0100 FICS server time (find dates below).
Bucket 07: Matches to be played at 0700 FICS server time (find dates below).
Bucket 13: Matches to be played at 1300 FICS server time (find dates below).
Bucket 19: Matches to be played at 1900 FICS server time (find dates below).

Bucket format might be Swiss, or Single Round Robin, or Double Round Robin, or K. O. system, or whatever. This will differ from bucket to bucket, depending on the number of sign-ups, and will be announced before the start of round 1.

Playing dates
Round 1: December 30 at bucket time (see above)
Round 2: January 02 at bucket time (see above)
Round 3: January 05 at bucket time (see above)
Round 4: January 08 at bucket time (see above)
Round 5: January 11 at bucket time (see above)

These dates and times are fixed. There are no TL-like negotiations. You cannot switch buckets once the tournament has started. If you join e. g. bucket 13, you must be ready to play on above dates at 1300 FICS. The grace period for showing up is 15 minutes.

Depending on the number of sign-ups, there may be less than five rounds.

Pairings will be published on the TL discussion board timely before your next match, but possibly not timely enough for you to prepare for your opponent.

BYE requests
No half point BYE requests granted at this point, as all four bucket formats are in the air. Feel free to sign up if you can guarantee participation in four of the five rounds. Understand, however, that inability to play a game (whichever of the five) may result in a set game against you (Round Robin etc.), thus eliminating your playoff prospects, or even in you dropping out of the field altogether (K. O. system etc.).

For those on the other end of the availability spectrum: Yes, you may join two buckets, if you can show up two times a day on above dates.

Playoffs
Semifinals: January 14-21 (no extension)
Finals: January 21-28 (+ 1 week extension till February 4)

For Semifinals and Finals, send FICS messages to your opponent to negotiate a date and time. Update your email address, if necessary, and allow FICS to auto-forward every message to your E-Mail inbox:

tell sibylle newemail YOUR@EMAIL.COM
set mailmess 1

Once you have agreed upon a date and time, publish them here on the TL discussion board.

Match format
Every round will consist of two Standard games:
Player A vs Player B: time control 60+30
Player B vs Player A: time control 10+10

If the match is tied, two Blitz games will follow:
Player A vs Player B: time control 5+3
Player B vs Player A: time control 3+2

If the match is still tied, pairs of 1+1 Lightning games will follow, until a winner is decided.

Feel free to take breaks of 5-10 minutes between games.

You need not play Blitz: You are allowed to play the two Standard games only, and resign the match in case of a tie. Message your opponent after the second Standard game, and message pchesso likewise.

Game play
No Teamleague (TD) bot will automatically set your variables before a game. Manually, upon joining the tournament, copy and paste the following commands into your FICS console, one by one:

set notakeback 1
set private 0
set kibitz 0
set noescape 0
set rated 1
set autoflag 1

When done, check your variables:

var

If your current formula demands nocolor, disable it.

Adding further safety regarding noescape, you may want to create a new formula for this tournament, e. g.

set f7 !private and !noescape and rated
set formula f7

Conduct
Use the match command to start the game. Examples:

match OPPONENTNAME 60 30 white rated
match OPPONENTNAME 10 10 black rated

Message pchesso the result of your match.

Every reasonably applicable TL rule applies: silence, fair play, no repetitive draw offers etc.

Thanks
Snail Bucket was a popular TL supplement back in the day, with several inventive features. Its website has been defunct for years. Thanks to former SB staff for allowing to use the SB Brand, and to TL staff for allowing to use the TL discussion board for this event!

Disclaimer
Above tourney format is an experiment, obviously. I hope to fill the gap between T76 and T77 in a way that shall accommodate as many players from as many time zones as possible while minimizing the organizational part (no programming, no Game forum negotiations to monitor). Let's all agree to have a few fun games and see how it goes, okay?

During the tournament, check the TL discussion board regularly for pairings and announcements.

Any questions? Post them below.

I want to join Bucket 07

Lord Tyraad

Registered players
Bucket 01
Matches to be played at 0100 FICS server time on Dec 30, and Jan 2/5/8/11:

Bucket 07
Matches to be played at 0700 FICS server time on Dec 30, and Jan 2/5/8/11:
Oakwell, LordTyraad, pchesso

Bucket 13
Matches to be played at 1300 FICS server time on Dec 30, and Jan 2/5/8/11:
bretantonio

Bucket 19
Matches to be played at 1900 FICS server time on Dec 30, and Jan 2/5/8/11:
OldFlyer

The proposed tourney format has returned two 1-player buckets, so that doesn't work. I had been hoping for four players per bucket; apparently, that was optimistic. :)

Instead, we will play a Single Round Robin in just one bucket, and do what I wanted to avoid: send FICS messages to our opponents to schedule the game. These messages will not be monitored by any TD. Thanks for your sportsmanship, and cooperation. Please, update your email address, if necessary, and allow FICS to auto-forward every message to your E-Mail inbox:

tell sibylle newemail YOUR@EMAIL.COM
set mailmess 1

The following dates are just a rough orientation. Play earlier, or later, as suits you and your opponent. Feel free to play e. g. your round 4 game before your (or anyone else's) round 2 game; don't worry, it won't mess up the standings.

Round 1 (31.12. - 7.1. or earlier/later)
B vs D; ---------- E vs C; ---------- F vs A

Round 2 (7.1. - 14.1. or earlier/later)
A vs B; ---------- C vs D; ---------- E vs F

Round 3 (14.1. - 21.1. or earlier/later)
C vs A; ---------- D vs E; ---------- F vs B

Round 4 (21.1. - 28.1. or earlier/later)
A vs E; ---------- B vs C; ---------- F vs D

Round 5 (28.1. - 4.2. or earlier/later)
D vs A; ---------- E vs B; ---------- C vs F

Spot assignment according to drawing of lots:
A pchesso
B LordTyraad
C bretantonio
D Oakwell
E OldFlyer
F BYE or _____________

Spot F is free for another player. Leave a message below, or send an FICS message to pchesso, if you want to sign up.

The Match format and time controls will not change: two Standard games, see above, followed by blitz/lightning, if necessary. Please revisit the original Tourney Guide, sections Match format, Game play, and Conduct.

Post questions and comments below. Thanks and good chess to everyone!

As I noticed that there were recruitment problems, some suggestion for the future: hours matter. I considered playing but none of the hours offered suited me (from my FICS+6 european point of view only 13:00 was at all possible, but meant playing "just when I came back from work").
IIRC hours about 15-16 FICS time (european evening) used to be fairly popular in teamleague.
In general it could probably make sense to review recent teamleague history for scheduled game hours and offer buckets based on this statistics.

Thank you for yor work on organizing tournaments.

Two of the five registered players have opted out, so the tourney is canceled. I'll extend an individual match invitation to both remaining players. SB5 is delayed until further notice, perhaps post-T77. January would have been perfect for me to put in a little extra time; I do not yet know about summer.

Thanks for the feedback, Mekk.
- Yes, hours were likely suboptimal for some players.
- Other players may have been put off by the the fixed days, regardless of the hour.
- Some players may have preferred buckets sorted by rating, not availability.
- Lastly, some players are probably satisfied with TL and don't need in-between tourneys, no matter how these are set up.

Perhaps a tourney with individual time negotiations is better after all, Game forums to be created manually on e. g. Proboards, as we once did.

More feedback and suggestions are welcome.

If it helps with future organisation I think the playing dates were also a bit awkward. At least in Scotland we tend to celebrate Hogmanay (31st December) and the 2nd January is a bank holiday since traditionally the revelers still had a hangover so couldn't work then!

Although to get back to the point often major holidays like Christmas, Easter, New Year etc and even National ones like Thanksgiving etc mean that many players have social or family obligations so aren't as free and format seemed to be very strict with regards to byes so at least in my case when I saw 30th and 2nd might be a bit awkward I figured it was best to avoid it.

If planning fixed days I think 3 day interval might also cause issues as it means that for a 5 round event it will take place on 5 different week days so if people have a weekly activity there is a 5/7 chance of them having a prior engagement. It might work better with it either being weekly or for the gaps to alternate between 3 and 4 days so it remains on the same week days (e.g.Sat/Sun & Wed or Sun & Thur)

Thanks for taking effort to organise it and good luck with future tourneys!

Thanks for the feedback, KRMCHESS. I was actually inspired by several Christmas/New Year OTB tourneys I read about, but online conventions seem somewhat different. More reasons provided by you to create/monitor Game forums (whatever way/platform), and let players schedule times on their own.