Mid-stream Horse Change

Now that we've had a few weeks under our belts, we're all getting a better feel for how we should organize our game night. I've talked to several of you and I think we have a consensus as to how to move forward. First of all, forget everything that's happened before.

Rather than deciding matchups by what order people arrive in, we are going to do a scheduled round robin that will allow each of us to play everyone else twice (once as white and once as black). The method used for pairings was completely random. I listed all players alphabetically by last name then randomly assigned each a number from 1 to 6 (using this web site's random number generator). From there, I used the same site's Round Robin pairing algorithm to set up the games. You can see the detail on these pairings by opening the Chess Rankings spreadsheet link to the right and clicking on the Pairings tab.

In order to keep things moving and prevent players from having to wait a long time for their next round, we will use timed games of 40 minutes. This should result in games of around an hour since it will be rare for both players to use up all their time. Hopefully, we will have time each week for everyone to play two games. Martin plans to buy a clock, so we will have 3 to use by next game night.

Finally we will restart everyone at 1100 and use the same ranking method as before to determine new scores based on win-loss-draw. There seemed to be a consensus that we would no longer count games played outside of the usual game night in the rankings. In fact, I have recalculated and reposted everyone's current ranking based on this change, although, surprisingly, the scores and rankings were nearly the same either way. Nevertheless, the round robin scheduling should result in a much more accurate ranking of players.

Here are the pairings. Please post a comment or email me if you have any questions about any of this. Click on the image to get a larger view.

November 20th Results

The group picked up an additional player this week. Jerry Reimer acquitted himself quite respectably with a 1-1 for the evening. Stephen and Rulon easily beat the old record of 2 hrs, 5 minutes for longest game (set just a week ago by Stephen and John) with a 2 hr, 35 minute melee that came down to a single pawn advantage. Bill, John, Martin, and Jerry all played two games apiece with Martin remaining the person to beat at 2-0 for the night.

Calculations for current rankings can always be viewed in detail by clicking the Current Rankings link under Useful Links and downloading the CurrentRankings.xls file.

New Chess Sets In

Everyone but John has picked up their new deluxe tournament chess sets. John's was missing the two extra queens but, fortunately, Bill's set came with four extra so he will be willing to sell these for a modest handling fee.

We will now have four of these sets to use for Chess Night. If we get another player on Thursday, we will probably want to switch back to the large room and table. Try to pair up with an opponent you haven't faced recently. There have been a number of extra-curricular games played during the week by Bill, Martin, and Rulon. As mentioned before, these will be included in the ranked games play. New overall results will be posted on Friday.

In other business, we still need to settle on a name for our club. Please, no suggestions for the Chess Knights as that seems to be the most common club name out there. However, I think Siloam Springs Chess Knuts has a nice ring to it. Send me your suggestions and I will post them for vote.

Official Kickoff of Rated Play

Thursday, November 13th, was our official start of rated play. In all, five games were played. Martin defeated Rulon in a timed 35-minute game. All other games were untimed - especially the 2-hour-plus game between John and Stephen. It was a back and forth affair which ended, rather anticlimactically, in John stalemating Stephen. After losing to Martin in his first game, Bill narrowly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he overlooked a mate in 3 moves against Rulon.

Each player starts with 1100 points and will have points awarded or deducted based on win/loss/tie and the rating of the opponent. A description of the calculation used is included in the weekly spreadsheet. You can access this from the Current Rankings link to the right and download the file. I have a few suggestions as we get started:

1. Games between players do not have to be on scheduled Chess Night. Simply report the game and result to me and I will include it in the rating sheet.

2. New players will start with the same 1100 rating.

3. Players can play timed or untimed games, the only requirement being that both players have to be in agreement.

4. If desired, players can record their games on one of the provided score sheets and give them to me. I will create a PGN file which can be imported into ChessMaster or other chess programs for post-mortems.

Let me know what you think.