Creating Simuls - min and max bullet rating, and min bullet games played

Simuls are great fun indeed.

From my experience last night, I think it might be useful to have another field when creating Simul:

Minimum and Maximum bullet rating (with min number of games played at bullet)

I played a simul last night and some were really strong bullet opponents on 1-1 games. And for me bullet is like an intuition test of skill, so i would like to create a Simul maybe limiting opponents in this regard of the 'strength of their intuition'.

I think I would find it more encouraging to more easily set the maximum bullet rating of the participants (and minimum to ensure they have played bullet)

The argument about intuition for bullet chess is made in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wzs33wvr9E

See 1:25 onwards

Feedback welcome

I don't get it... you don't like that people that are good at bullet are joining your simuls? I don't see how that would be relevant considering the time control was 180+60.

I can maybe understand not wanting to let people join who have never played bullet. You might view those accounts as suspicious. In fact, this is an example where your opponent was pretty blatantly cheating: lichess.org/cC4KZ7na Unfortunately things like this will always happen, and there's not much Lichess can do about it other than ban the player after the fact. If Lichess were to add another field restricting players with few bullet games, some players with fully legitimate accounts might be barred from joining your simuls. That wouldn't be fair to your fans who aren't bullet players. That's why it's your job to decide if you'll let that player into your simul in the first place.

Next time you run a simul, be a bit more cautious of who you're letting in. If someone is too strong, or a suspicious account, just don't let them join.

Joshua, when will you stream again? Stream

#2 Joshua because I like setting up big simuls - e.g. 50 player ones. And with those I like to spend less than 1 minute per move. So I want to try and make sure that opponents are not as strong intuitively as me. I put in a big time limit just to make sure no time pressure going round the simul overall. Maybe I set the time limit too large in that one I did though.

The way I see that is that on enrollment, the bullet criteria would really help. I want to play 'less strong intuitive players' in general when playing in a Simul format.

Kasparov apparently tries to make sure in his Simuls players are 'Not Pro' - and he means less than 2000 (ever). See here:

http://www.kasparov.com/simul/

'Players must be true amateurs who have 1999 ELO points or less, no exceptions. No player who has ever held a Rating of 2000 or over is permitted–it is contrary to the spirit of the simul and to the agreement. No coaching or computer assistance is permitted.'

For me 'Not pro' in online terms, is not having a bullet rating close to me. This is how I personally see 'Not pro' as regard to online chess in general. Now that might be a big simplification of course, but I personally would be more comfortable not playing against players just as strong on bullet speed as me. In general to me it seems the stronger titled players are often stronger at bullet because their intuition for the game is much stronger than the average player.

Also of course Lichess seems to prefer bullet chess when it has the Lichess Titled area - it reduces potential for cheating as well of course. So for me the Bullet ratings are an important indicator for online opponents in general. And that view seems to be implied by tournaments like that which even have Magnus Carlsen competing in them quite often.

As an aside: This is also why I would be a huge fan if the site ever got a timed puzzle thing which is now on about 5 different sites - including Chessbase now. Where you have 3 lives, and have to solve as many puzzles as possible within 5 minutes. This to me is a kind of 'intuition test' as well. The stronger titled players tend to do much better on this kind of puzzle test. I hope the site gets this kind of feature some day because it would be another fantastic 'intuition test' and fun and competitive at the same time.

Cheers, K

The points of @Kingscrusher-YouTube and @jposthuma make the great sense.

As a chessplayer who has probably given much more than 1000 simuls, I would also like to extend Tryfon's idea.

It would definitely be helpful if simuls will include more similar filters like manually created tournaments already do such as:

1) usual simul settings:

starting position, time before simul starts (just as an additional option cause the current option (unknown start time of the simul) is also very useful, at least for the simul hosters - it gives them more comfort and flexibility);

2) advanced simul settings:

password (this option might be useful for streamers who could share it on the sites, where they stream (for their viewers) and on the sites like discord (for streamer's community));

minimum rated games, minimum rating, maximum weekly rating (these options would help to filter players by simul hoster's preference);

only members of team (this option would help simul hosters to play just with the players of the concrete team, for example, with the players from their fan clubs);

custom start date (just additional feature like "time before simul starts").

Also it would be helpful to add feature (for simuls and tournaments): only players from more than 1 team (e.g. from some friendly teams (to each other)).

Speed tactical competitions (like 5 minutes tactical races) would be also very exciting, indeed.

Thanks a lot to @Kingscrusher-YouTube & @jposthuma for their smart posts and thanks a ton to Thibault and Lichess Team for the constant huge improvement of already more than fantastic chess site!

#6 Thanks Lance - great feedback

I think Scheduled simuls in advance would help build hype and excitement and a bit like the Scheduled or 'Premier' style releases of content now available on Youtube and facebook where you can schedule in advance or have premiers.

I foresee a slight downside is of course with extra filters that they filter out potential candidates. Maybe a calculation could be done on potential audience when each filter is applied.

Cheers, K

You are very welcome, Tryfon!

Yes, it would be useful to have more additional simul features like schedule/premier etc.

As for the pluses and menuses of each filter, it would be the simul hoster's job to see which filters to use in each concrete moment of time.

Streamers can see statistics of their streams, so they can easily test different simul filters in different times of the days and days of the weeks and while they have different amounts of viewers, so they'd see "trends" and would be able to autoadjust their settings (simul filters) just like players autoadjust their playing style in bullet chess, in order to make their playing style more efficient.

I would also like to add to my post #6: "minimum rated games - in each lichess variant, especially in bullet, blitz and rapid", "minimum rated games with the game's length more than 15 moves" and "minimum rated games vs humans".

I think this is a great idea. I would also like the options to filter out players based on blitz, rapid and classical rating as well. In fact, the ability to spot checks is a huge factor in what I consider a pro player so if I could limit it based on 3+ rating that would be amazing. I also don't trust anyone from Denmark, or anyone with the number 9 in their name, so filter by country and username is a must. In addition to that, players who push their pawns are terrifying so anyone with an established horde rating needs to be out. If I could also get like 30 more options that take out anyone who has specific settings enabled such as auto-queen and premoves that would be great. I know simuls aren't a huge part of lichess, and this would only really affect the 12 people who regularly give large simuls, but I'm important and I want it!!!!