Can't kick people out of tournaments?
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yh because someone who wants to play might want to play in it
oooookaaaayyy...
But if I'm the tournament director, shouldn't I be able to police the tournament according the established rules?
Mar 16, 2008
0
#4
yeah. this is actually a really big debate we have. we don't really have any way of forcing people to be good TDs. i can only imagine the outrage of somebody wrongfully kicked from an event. :(
any suggestions of how we handle this (give TDs power while preventing abuse) would be helpful.
Let's consider a principle: A tournament is a voluntary gathering at the invitation of one person. It's like a party. The party host gets to decide who can come to the party.
No one complains to the mayor of Peoria because they weren't invited to a party within city limits, or were kicked out of a party. It's not the mayor's job to dictate who must hang out with whom. I run forums on Yahoogroups, and when I ban someone, they can't go to Yahoo and complain. I suspect it wouldn't even occur to someone to do so.
If, for instance, I want to have a tournament for people who collect butterflies, I ought to be able to hold one. The responsibility of chess.com is to provide the tools with which I can do that while maintaining the integrity of the game, and the integrity of the stats.
For tournaments that are official chess.com events, you may want to establish clear rules about who will get booted and why. That makes sense.
For private events, if someone complains you say "If you don't like how you were treated, create your own tournament according to your own preferences."
The only problem I can see with this is how it affects the statistics. It doesn't affect a player's rating to be booted from a tournament, but the difficult issue is how should it affect the standings in that tournament? I think the rule should be as if that player had never entered the tournament.
"It doesn't affect a player's rating to be booted from a tournament, but the difficult issue is how should it affect the standings in that tournament? I think the rule should be as if that player had never entered the tournament. "
It actually does affect your ratings. If you kicked someone who was in the middle of a few games, he or she would immediately lose the games and have his or her rating adjusted because of it.
I do see what you mean though. It's a fraught issue. I'm going to mull it over today and see if I can come up with a feasible solution.
Mar 16, 2008
0
#7
"The only problem I can see with this is how it affects the statistics. It doesn't affect a player's rating to be booted from a tournament, but the difficult issue is how should it affect the standings in that tournament? I think the rule should be as if that player had never entered the tournament."
Well as tournament director you could easily boot someone to help out your own rating or others that you know if they are in bad shape during a game. That could easily cause a problem. It wouldn't hurt the person booted but it sure would be abusing powers to keep a higher rating.
That's an easy problem to solve: Being booted from the tournament would not cancel any games in progress. It would simply render them ordinary games. In tournament terms, they would be gone, but in chess.com terms, they would still exist and people could individually finish them, resign them, or whatever.
Now there is still the issue of tournament related stats, but they are far less important and less pervasive to the site.
Update:
Now the guy who joined my tournament and instantly did nothing has timed out on all 11 games where his opponent moved. However, the 11 games where he must move first never timeout, so I can't withdraw him, ever.
Guys, come on.
I think if a problem like this occurs, the tournament organizer should be able to contact an administrator to get the raincloud member booted swiftly. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would happen often enough to warrant giving tournament organizers any more special powers for.
satisfice wrote:
Update:
Now the guy who joined my tournament and instantly did nothing has timed out on all 11 games where his opponent moved. However, the 11 games where he must move first never timeout, so I can't withdraw him, ever.
Guys, come on.
Okay, that is too much. Satisfice is right that there has to be SOME way of removing people. I can't wait to see all the hilarious threads though: "I got kicked out of a tourney for no reason!" "Boot Abuse" etc...
Good fun.
It's happened in the first tourney I've hosted.
It happened in the first tourney I joined, too.
I bet it happens pretty often. But the real issue is: why deny this common sense feature? It's incongruous, coming from other sites that have forums and gatherings, to have a site where the director of a voluntary group is denied the ability to regulate the integrity of that group.
The reasons given so far both have easy solutions.
people running tournies SHOULD be able to boot as neccesary.
I'm playing in one now and my opponent makes a move per week at most, after every move,... it's back on vacation>!>??.....also the current games in which there are BOOT-EES they're opponent shall have a bye, or be used as a tiebreaker?!? just a thought
signed,
Frustrated!!!!
Mar 16, 2008
0
#14
I think the solution is obvious. Not a boot button, but time controls for people doing the first move if they are never going to time out.
Mar 16, 2008
0
#15
so, if he hasn't moved, his games will timeout in 3 days.
but you raise good points. we will discuss this internally.
Maybe there could be a moderator, or moderators. When the tournament starts, three people are selected to be moderators. They'll have the choice to accept or decline. If they decline, it goes until there are three people who have accepted. Maybe it could be an automatic that the person who set up the tournament is one of the moderators. If there's a problem with your game, you submit a request to the moderators. If two of the three moderators believe that the person should be ejected from the tournament, they eject him/her. If less than two agree, the person stays in. Maybe the moderators could even talk to the offender to see why he/she did what they did. If there was a good reason, they can decide to let him stay.
Not sure how much programming that would require.
Not sure how much programming that would require.
But why is it not obvious to you, from my earlier comments, that this isn't just about time?
A private tournament is a voluntary association of people, just like a forum or a party. I didn't realize, when I started the tournament, that I was starting an uncontrollable beast. I feel discouraged from starting new tournaments except by invitation only. Is that what the designers of chess.com intended?
Chess has rules. The rules don't change and there's no demand for them to change. So, I don't mind that chess.com enforces the rules of chess.
But tournaments sometimes have rules that are special to that tournament. That's part of the fun of running a private tournament. Otherwise they would all be identical. I'm campaigning, really, to allow tournaments with special rules. To do this, all that's needed from chess.com is one feature-- the ability for the tournament director to control who is in the tournament. Every other rule can be enforced manually if that one capability is granted.
...the hypothetical works the other way. what if a tournament director, out of favoritism or whatnot ejects a player(for whatever reason) at a critical moment, allowing someone else to win the top honor. it's the simplest form of abuse. others might be, ejection due to someone making a bad move, and slandering their oponent, ...while the person being acused of wrong doing is away... under the rules of the game/within time constraints is then booted, with no appeal or opportunity to voice concerns. that's also a more circumspect form of abuse. the "party host" arguement only holds water if you ignore the fact that you yourself are a guest of the chess.com server/service and there for must abide by their over-arching rules. in all things electronic you're subject to the whims of anonymous people with unknown constraints on their time, access to internet or interest/fealty to the game. it sucks if someone is just "sitting in" on games, tieing up resources in your tournament and dragging down the fun. but... it's bad play to agree to a set of rules and then want them changed mid-way through. the site has a "friends" functionality... games have notes, i'm sure you have access to pen and paper. start making lists of good players. so if needs be you can send out a email/invitation scheme if you need more control(as it was hinted at...i'm assuming this is an option). Tournaments are supposed to be "en masse" type events. it's sad that you've got a bum in your lot. But as in all civilized societies...we're sort of forced to put up with bums, lest you look like the beast.
smsjr723 wrote: ...what if a tournament director, out of favoritism or whatnot ejects a player(for whatever reason) at a critical moment, allowing someone else to win the top honor.
What if? I don't care. It's all just fun. I can't believe that would happen a lot, but if it did, it just goes to show that there are reputable tournaments and there are disreputable ones. Chess.com could hold official tournaments which would be presumably run strictly to protocol.
The whole point of making a space like this is to let people play. I can understand why not to let people cheat in chess games. But if a tournament director wants to kick people out of a tournament for no good reason, then he will suffer the consequences to his reputation on this site. That's punishment enough.
smsjr723 wrote: the "party host" arguement only holds water if you ignore the fact that you yourself are a guest of the chess.com server/service and there for must abide by their over-arching rules.
Well, that is not really a fact: I'm a paying customer of this site. It's you who are a guest.
Even if you consider me a guest, my argument would then be that this is a privilege that the chess.com party hosts should extend to their guests who choose to host tournaments at their chess.com party.
But you raise a reasonable possibility. Perhaps the feature I'm talking about can be given only to premium members. That would be okay with me.
but... it's bad play to agree to a set of rules and then want them changed mid-way through.
I don't think you're hearing my argument. I'm trying to say that a tournament director ought to have the ability to set the rules and enforce them. That is the agreement players are making when they join a tournament.
I'm not talking about changing the rules once the tournament is on. I'm asking that we be granted the right to enforce the special rules that may distinguish a tournament. Besides if the rule is "by joining this tournament you agree that the tournament director can boot you for any reason" then we're all cool. What you are saying about friends and pencil and paper is true, but it only goes to support my point: give people the power to run their tournaments how they like, and if they misbehave in any way, players will be free to not be friends with the director any more or refuse to play in his tournaments. It's very simple. It's a model that works on forums all over the Net.
Chess.com is not Mommy and Daddy. Its responsibility, given the rating system, is to preserve the integrity of the games themselves. As long as it doesn't affect the player rating system, tournaments should be free.
Free Tibet! And free the tournaments!
Let us play!
Let us play!
Let us play!
I have never participated in a tournament nor organised one, but have a related question. What would happen, for example, if someone wanted to hold a "Ruy Lopez" tournament, where this opening must be played in all games? If I joined such a tournament and then decided to play the Sicilian in all games that I played as black, would it be possible for me to be removed?
A fellow joined my tournament and then let 7 games time-out. Obviously, he's not going to be competitive, even if he comes back to play the rest of the games. But the system won't let me force him to withdraw because he has "active games".
I don't understand that rule. Even if someone has active games, seems to me a tournament director should be able to toss him from a tournament, for whatever reason. For instance, a tournament might be limited to people with certain attributes, and during the event it emerges that someone doesn't meet those qualifications.