[Seattle Go Center] Re: FEB Tournament Announcement

Hey, everyone.  The survey results were very clear.  People would prefer one game a week over three weeks.  There is also a leaning toward playing on OGS it seems, but I will leave it to opponents to decide when and how to play (if you need help getting familiar with KGS or OGS, we can help).  We will learn from this trail tournament and see how to change it if needed to keep it interesting for people (trying other formats, perhaps offering parings every week, or a leaderboard, or we don't know yet 🙂). 

We cannot submit a report to the AGA for ranking as we usually do with the monthly ratings because the AGA does not support ranking based on online games.  Therefore, if your AGA membership has lapsed, it is ok.  On the upside, you can have a thoughtful game (no online pressure to play super fast) that may be good for reviewing or learning from.

If you would like to participate, please reply to me (billchiles-gocenter@hotmail.com) with your name, the rank you would like to play at, and if you are under 18 yrs old.  Sunday night, 07 FEB, I will send out pairings to the participants, and you will have until Sun the next week to play your games.  Then please email me the result, and CC your opponent.  I'll email out results of the prior week when I sent out the pairings for the next week, and I will send the final results after the three week tournament is done.

The default time controls for a game are 45 min main with 5x30s byouyomi.  You may ask your opponent to play with a different time control, but your opponent can stick with the default.  This is our usual monthly ratings tournament time control.  

The tournament is a handicapped tournament.  If there are outlying ranked participants, and I cannot pair you due to no one being within 9 stones that you have not played previously in the tournament, then I will notify you that I cannot pair you.  If it happens that we have an odd number of people, then I will ask someone to bye for a round, and if there are no volunteers, I will pick someone as best I can.  If there is an odd number of people who sign up, then the last person to send email that they want to participate will have to wait for next time.

You can use the SGC Discord chat room to chit chat while playing or discuss your games, or chat boxes in OGS and KGS, or however you agree with your opponent.

If you are under 18 yrs old, we need you to CC your parent when you sign up, and the parent needs to agree to a consent form.  As are the rules for SGC, children need to be supervised by parents or someone the parents asked to be responsible to watch out for the kids.

Bill