GeoChess : 2015.March : Moscow : Rook Edition

GeoChess : 2015.March : Moscow, Russia [Rook Edition]

This is for players with ratings between 750 and 1275. In the March 2015 edition, there is a 50% advance rate with medium-sized groups (6(2)->3) and so you'll begin with ten simultaneous games.  Only players with more than 100 games, less than an average of 6 hours per move, and less than a 3% time-out rate may join.  This is also a premium-only tournament and there is no vacation time.  I think that these fairly strict rules serve to improve the tournament in terms of fewer dropouts and less general wonkiness.

This tournament is scheduled to begin as soon as it is full, following midnight, chess.com time (Pacific US time, GMT-8) on March 15, 2015. There is no autostart in this tournament and it will not start earlier than the appointed time. Once the time comes around, I'll switch it to "start ASAP," which means it will start as soon as we have all the players.

I'll remove players who look like they are "gaming" their score or whose score exceeds 1300, starting when the roster is full or a few days before the tournament starts. I've found that it's best to remove players when I see scores get too high, merely to keep the playing field reasonably even and give other players a chance to grab the spot. Here is the link to the parallel tournament for players with ratings over 1275.

I've put this up a few weeks in advance to keep the place and allow players to register ahead of time if they wish.  Next month's tournament (April 2015) is Tokyo, Japan (click here for the tournament page).

удачи!

This month's tournament and trophies pays homage to the city of Moscow, Russia.



A map showing Moscow's location [source: Wikipedia]

Aerial view of the Kremlin [source: www.airpano.com]

St. Basil's Cathedral [source: cop6russia.org]

This is the full resolution of the trophy image, drawing from Moscow's coat of arms.