The Snail Bucket TDs and I would like to invite you and all members of your TL team to Snail Bucket 3, a 7 round Slow Time Control Tourney for individuals, here on FICS. All info can be found here: http://snailbucket.org/wiki/TourneyGuide Could you please forward
our invitation to your players and team-mates? Thank you very much! We would love to welcome you and your players in SB3! If you have questions, please ask in channel 101 or message an SB TD.

I love the idea of Snail Bucket and it's a perfect complement to Team League. My only gripe is that it is seven rounds and there is no possibility for byes. Unfortunately I find this a bit restrictive as I am often travelling for work and live in a difficult time zone.

If there were a bit more flexibility, such as the ability to play a game at any point during the 7 weeks, or if there were an 8th week at the end of the round for all make up games, that would really help.

Hi saketaeio,

You have two weeks to play each round, the second week of any round is not an extension, but a regular second week. It is fine to make offers only for the second week. I hope this helps at least some of the players.

Starting with SB4, we intend to provide possibility to play games ahead of time, if agreed by both players, but we will not be on time for SB3 to make the necessary software change.

An extra 8th week to finish any round is a new idea, which we will discuss. My only concern is that there might be a lot of games postponed until the 8th round.

Thanks for the feedback!
Michal

Thanks for the response on this, I didn't realize that Snail Bucket allowed two weeks to play. SB is set to run from May 20th - July 8th. I'm wondering has a start date been set yet for the next round of Team League? I would want to be aware of any potential overlap before making a commitment.

Normally we wouldn't have such a long break between TL tourneys, however this year is a little different because we can only fit two more tourneys in. Therefore we could start T60 in early July, and T61 in early October.

As of now, nothing has been formally decided. Our intention is to return to a 4-tourney per year schedule next year, so in future the gaps between TLs won't be sufficient to run a SB tourney.

As TeamLeague and SnailBucket share many of the same players, it may be less confusing if SnailBucket used server time as Teamleague does instead of GMT.

I would agree with that, and would also love to see Snail Bucket use and contribute to the Team League rating system.

Hi,

1. Concerning usage of server time instead of UTC/GMT: no, we have no intention of doing it, but I agree that it would be less confusing if TeamLeague used UTC/GMT ;-).

There are two reasons:
- major reason: UTC/GMT is an international standard and will not be changed so easily and without any warning, just because the server changed geographical location.
- minor reason: with time negotiations performed in US-based server time, the players in USA do not need to care for time change at all, the players in countries not using the summer time need to care twice per year, and the players in countries using the summer time differently than USA need to care four times a year.
With time negotiations performed in UTC/GTC, players in countries not using the summer time do not need to care at all, and all the other players need to care twice per year but only for change in their own country.

2. Concerning using TeamLeague ratings in Snail Bucket: this is a good idea, we will consider this before SB4.
Concerning contributing to the TL rating system: we are happy to contribute results to the TL staff in any easy to use format, but it is up to them, if they want to use it or not :).

Michal