Hello everyone,

Huge thanks to all admins and TDs for organizing T83, which just ended, and congrats to the winners. Well done!

I'm a big fan of surprise, competition, suspense, playoffs. What I like less, is playing a team twice in a Double Round Robin, and then yet another time in playoffs. It's a bit boring. I also suspect, sometimes we spend too much time avoiding playing much stronger or much weaker opponents. In every Soccer League, there are favourites, and underdogs. That's sport. It's normal, noone complains.

I would like to discuss two ideas for a new TL format with you. Nothing revolutionary, idea A is inspired by the format of Soccer World Championships, whereas the gist of idea B has been brought up here on the forum before.

Idea A

Preliminaries + Playoffs, like we have now, but each group for the preliminaries could consist of a mix of stronger and weaker teams.

Example with 20 teams (hypothetically sorted before the tourney, like now, that is, by the average rating of the top four boards):

Preliminaries: 4 groups of 5 teams each
Group 1
Team 1, team 8, team 9, team 16, team 17

Group 2
Team 2, team 7, team 10, team 15, team 18

Group 3
Team 3, team 6, team 11, team 14, team 19

Group 4
Team 4, team 5, team 12, team 13, team 20

Playoffs:
Semi-final 1: Winner group 1 vs. winner group 2
Semi-final 2: Winner group 3 vs. winner group 4
Small final: Loser semi-final 1 vs. loser semi-final 2
Big Final: Winner semi-final 1 vs. winner semi-final 2

All the 2nd ranked, 3rd ranked, 4th ranked, 5th ranked teams, could also play playoffs: the so-called "position rounds" (which not all of you like, I know), unless the preliminaries have already featured groups with many teams.

Example with 18 teams
Preliminaries: 3 groups of 6 teams
Playoffs: 3 teams, Single Round Robin

Example with 23 teams
Preliminaries: 4 groups of 6 teams (1 BYE), OR 6 groups of 4 teams (1 BYE)
Playoffs: 4 teams, Elimination format, OR 6 teams, Single Round Robin

Example with 25 teams
Preliminaries: 5 groups of 5 teams
Playoffs: 5 teams, Single Round Robin

Elimination, and Round Robin formats, can be reversed. Example with 24 teams:
Preliminaries: 3 groups of 8 teams, elimination format
Playoffs: 3 teams, Single Round Robin

With the above examples, player clashes can be avoided for the preliminaries. Smallblackcat may even right from the start place teams (and clubs) across groups accordingly. But clashes might (re-)appear before the playoffs. In that (rare, supposedly) case, a swift solution should be found without any worries, even if it includes re-adding a formerly removed player (currently not allowed), or something similar.

Idea A, if implemented, might enable a limited number of individual games with higher rating gaps. Not many, though, and I personally would love to face the challenge. But, idea A will also keep some of the tense games which we got used to over the last years: already during the preliminaries, and, of course, even more so in the playoffs. There, the favourites will likely get to play each other (while allowing for the casual surprise).

Idea B

If you prefer a more balanced approach, we could introduce an overall top 4 board rating cap of e.g. 2100, or we could introduce new rules, like: At least two players with max. 1750 fixed TL rating must enroll on every team, and at least one of them must be included on the lineup each round. This would break the current rosters of the LightSpartans, and WorldWideWolves, but with a bit cooperation of the other teams, this should not be too much of an obstacle. It's possible to find new players rated 1400-1750, and submit two teams instead of one.

Ideas A and B can be combined, but don't depend on one another, and can be discussed separately. I personally don't feel the need for idea B to be implemented. I just wanted to show: If people like things a bit more balanced, there's always a way to make it possible. And perhaps some of you like it the other way around: Idea B, but not A?

We've kept the current system for ten years; perhaps it's time to try something fresh? I look forward to hearing from you, because, obviously, ideas have drawbacks, and it's important to know them, and find work-arounds.

This is possibly the longest text I've ever posted on the internet, thank you for reading it.

thanks for starting a conversation.

I'm with you on the fact, that it's rather less fun to have double round sections. also, I feel that teamleague has do adapt to the new challenges of playing chess in the internet.

concering your idea A: the rating range differences of teams already allows for pretty high rating differences on the single boards. I do not like stretching that difference more. Everyone know that given that the rating is accurate a rating difference of 100 points means that the weaker player usually does not state a chance, 200 points mean that the higher rated player can even lose a piece without losing the game. this is why we try to
avoid such differences - it's not fun having no chance. so I think this is not a good idea. where this difference makes no difference is obviously for instance Lichess-like tournaments where in a course of an hour or more you play several players in a row so losing one game to a higher rated player while you don't have a chance of wining is usually compensated for wining a game against a lower rated player who does not stand a chance against you. but we do not have that in TL. if you put three to four blocked hours for chess on the line on the weekend or during the week instead of spending this time with friends, family or whatever hobbies you have, you should at least have a chance to not have a guaranteed loss.

"it's possible to find new players rated ... " this is surprising news to me. Over the course of four seasons I usually lose one to two members due to misbehaviour of our opponents or poor decisions by admins and it's hard work to gain two new members in the same time. FICS is just not the place to be if you want to play chess right now - let's face it. it's too much work to install a client and learn how it works instead of playing on chess.com or lichess which allow for very intuitive use. also negotiating on TL has to compete with just joining a tournament of the chess variante and time setting you want at any time of the day without preconditions on chess.com, lichess or other sites. I'm all for changing Teamleague so negotiations go faster and results are faster - for instance if someone does not show up to a game - no renegotiating, game is lost. or just a short period for negotiations - if they are not finished by Friday 22:00, admins decide if there's a lack of will to make the game happen on either side. I'm also for rule simplification because usually new players and sometimes even captains do not know the rules.

Well with idea A I think the best way to refute it is to just see how it would work in reality. So this season we had 18 teams so I would assume it would be a 3 team section. I'm assuming teams would be

Group 1: Team 1, Team 6, Team 7, Team 12, Team 13, Team 18
Group 2: Team 2, Team 5, Team 8, Team 11, Team 14, Team 17
Group 3: Team 3, Team 4, Team 9, Team 10, Team 15, Team 16

Once we put ratings into that we get

Group 1: 2244.5, 2034.5, 2018, 1849, 1844.25, 1705.5
Group 2: 2240, 2112.5, 1981.25, 1881.75, 1775, 1741
Group 3: 2185, 2120.5, 1972.75, 1899.25, 1773.75, 1771

So in this scenario just looking at Group 1 the top team has 3 matches against opponents who are rated ~400+ below them. The bottom team has 3 matches against teams who are 300+ above them and 2 matches against teams that are roughly +150 above them.

As far as idea B goes I'm assuming it's the idea of fixed rating sections. So what would happen is that at the start of the season smallblackcat would say something like we're accepting entries for U1700, U1850, U2000 and Fischer Sections and then teams aim for one of these rating caps.

"It's possible to find new players rated 1400-1750" - This is maybe true to some extent but players in the 1400 to 1750 range aren't viable for TL in it's current form. This is because the lowest section average is 1793.75 and for all non-Fischer Sections combined it's 1922.33. So basically if I want to enter a team in each non-Fischer Section the non-Fischer players need an average rating of ~1900 but as my average is lower my teams are a fair distance from the cap (around 190 points combined). For each additional player in that rating range I recruit, the further from the cap I get so for example recruiting a 1400 means average is reduced by 500/12 = ~42 or 14 points for each team. To balance out a 1400 in the lowest section you need a 2187.5 rated player just to reach the section limit or 3 players rated 1925. If the above seems a bit complex basically as I enter multiple teams I have to work out if it's viable to submit teams while allowing everyone to play as many games as they want and maths indicates that adding a player who is over 1900 makes it easier to form viable teams while adding a 1400 player makes it significantly harder.

In addition if you check the 18 teams submitted this season other than the bottom 4 teams none have a board 4 below 1700 and only 1 has a board 4 below 1600 so any 1400 player you field is likely to be 200+ points lower rated than their opponent. Problem is that as section ratings go up it's no longer viable to field lower rated players and then that pushes section ratings even higher leading to a vicious cycle.

There's less variety of opponents simply because there're fewer teams participating, and since T77 4-team sections have been part of the adjustment to the new reality. Making 2100+ teams face teams in the 1700s can hardly be a viable idea, as already demonstrated by KRM, and limiting captains' options to form their teams just makes everything much more difficult.

It seems more productive to try to raise the total number of teams again. If some teams can add one squad each to the ones they had in T83, then there'll be more possibilities to distribute teams. Also, I mentioned on other occasions that some dialogue among captains prior to the start of the season would be very helpful for everyone (including admins) to get a better view of what's coming. We're a small community and should work cooperatively.

The only way I think a "World Cup Style" format would work is if the players are allocated to teams on the basis of rating. This would mean it would be individual entries instead of team entries. Having said that you'd still get some mismatches even if average team was equal since assuming 18 teams and 72 players we'd get following match ups if first team played last team (that would be worst case scenario)

1st Player vs 18th Player
36th Player vs 19th Player
37th Player vs 54th Player
72nd Player vs 55th Player

The drawbacks to this system would be as follows:
1. If individual entries aren't a multiple of 4 some players wouldn't be in a team.
2. If players can't play every round other than defaults and postponements there isn't much leeway.
3. If a player quits or is banned midway the team is pretty much defunct.
4. Players that only want to play with their teammates would no longer be able to do so.
5. Team Captains/organisers would be a bit unclear for teams, especially when currently some captains negotiate on behalf of their players.

Whether benefits outweigh drawbacks is a judgement call but something like the above I think is probably the only way to get the initial proposal to work

I am really unclear why people are worried that there are only 18 teams instead of 50. What is the problem? Interested players still get to play. I dont see any problem. I played this time the tournament was good. It is not like we are playing in a pool of 48 teams. There is sectioning. If there are 18 teams, in what way is the fun any less?