Restrictions on "Long Haul" Tournaments

Thanks for the support - Any 'tip-offs' that long haul tournies have been created woule be gratefully received.

How about a 48 player Long haul split in groups of 12, this would help - as part of the problem at the moment is that they are all 24 player!

Originally posted by Russ
I can certainly create more.

I perceived these tournaments to be the least popular, and I assumed I was catering to a minority of people who like the lengthy time controls.

-Russ

For the record to add to the voices calling for More long hauls......

I have been trying ever since I re-joined up again a few months back to get onto one of the long haul tourneys...I click on the tournament page every time i log on ,but each time ther ehas been a long haul, it is already fully subscribed.

Personlly, it seems to me in my short time here that when a long haul (or similar) goes up, there is only one. Lets do a long haul banded or as someone else sugggested varying time outs (ok so 1 day time out isnt long aul i guess)

All just suggestions - still love the place whether i can get into these tourneys or not.

At risk of banging on - a 64 player Long Haul has just been fully subscribed in a couple of hours, hence proving their popularity. A big thanks to Howitzer for tipping me off!

More Please Russ

Indeed!! Nice one Russ for putting out a big Long Haul! Thanks for listening.

I have to say though that the facts speak for themselves...


All 64 places of the tournament was subscribed to in less than 24 hours

79% of the subscribers have their frequency set to 'All Day' / Multiple Time A Day' / 'Once A Day'.
60% of the subscribers have their frequency set to 'All Day' / Multiple Time A Day'.

I bet there's a few p!ssed off slow players who missed the limited subscription period again......

Originally posted by howitzer
Again it seems like
1 a lot of people enter every tournament they can
2 this excludes the likes of APB who can only really play these long haul contests (and he subscribes)
3 some of the faster people who enter the slow tournys get frustrated

Looks like a solution liesalong the lines of some sort of restriction on move frequency. Even if it is by the profile's Move Frequency - leaving it open to abuse - I think it would help folk like APB.

Derive restrictions off a manual setting is no smart idea in my opinion. But using an auto-calculated metric for this purpose similar to the 'max rating within the last 30days' may certainly help:

http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=30944

Gotti

I'm not sure that it makes sense to restrict people's entry based on move frequency. What is wrong with a player who moves frequently who also wishes to participate in a tournament with slower time controls?
I propose an alternative, what about setting up tournaments which have a fixed start date and pre-set group size (say 12 or so) but no pre-set limit on the number of participants. Rather, anyone who wants to can sign up, and the tournament begins when the start date is reached. I realize this will lead to huge tournaments, but having lots of small full tournaments amounts to the same thing. It seems to me to make more sense to make sure that everyone who wants to can participate than to allow a smaller subset of people to participate many times over and exclude more occaisonal users.
My solution also addresses another annoying feature (to me) of the current system for tournament play on this site, the lack of set beginning points for tournaments! I find it very annoying that I can sign up for a tournament and have no idea whether it is going to start tomorrow or a month from now.
Anyway, I'd like to know whether anyone else thinks this is a good idea. I understand that implementing it would take some behind-the-scenes work on the code which handles tournaments, but maybe it would be worth it if enough people think it's a good idea. So, what do you think?

Originally posted by mikebind
I'm not sure that it makes sense to restrict people's entry based on move frequency. What is wrong with a player who moves frequently who also wishes to participate in a tournament with slower time controls?
I propose an alternative, what about setting up tournaments which have a fixed start date and pre-set group size (say 12 or so) but no pre-set limi ...[text shortened]... but maybe it would be worth it if enough people think it's a good idea. So, what do you think?

That's not a bad idea at all. I presume that you're suggesting an unlimited size for both fast and slow tournys? As long as the group size is pre-defined (e.g. 2, 4, 8) and not decided as a precentage of total entrants (e.g. 100!) then it would work well. There would be plenty of spaces on the fast tournaments, and the slow ones wouldn't be overwhelmed by those that don't give a fig about the time settings and who they may be excluding.

A couple of worries though:
1. the tournament page with the links to each game is already slow presumably because it has to look up the result and id of each and every game. This would be made worse.
2. the _number_ of fast tournaments would have to stay the same so that regular tourny players wouldn't loose out on the proportion of games they get from these contests.
3. a large slow tournament would take even longer to finish, though I can't see any of the slow players having a problem with it.

Given the incremental nature of development in this site I think that the best solution is one that would take minimal amount of development. Given the nature of the community here - not backwards in coming forwards - I think the best solution would be the one that p!sses the least number of people off , the least controversial.

Having free-sized tournys or restricting entry by profile-set move-frequency are LOW in development costs, and non-contentious!

Originally posted by mikebind
I'm not sure that it makes sense to restrict people's entry based on move frequency. What is wrong with a player who moves frequently who also wishes to participate in a tournament with slower time controls?

[proposal]

I don't want to comment on your proposal too much, I think Russ should comment on the possibility.

I want to comment on the quote given: There are a lot of restricted tournament anyway (they are called banded) Even if it isn't my case (I think I count as rather (too) fast mover) I support the idea to keep the long haul tournaments for the slow moving members and if the restriction goes via move frequency it is at least some work for the ones who want to join any tournament to fix that now and then 😉