#10 Exactly, the infrastructure is pretty much there. We just need the developers to go for it, or someone who is good at programming to take control!
I personally hate ladders :D but yes it would work too. I like - and many others have said to me that they do too - ongoing competition, working towards that ultimate goal. Imagine being the 1800 player who makes it into the chess premier league :D
Totally Toutatis! How exciting that would be.
I've wanted some kind of league play online for quite awhile, and unfortunately it's just far too much work to organize via the Team function, because you have to use outside software to track everything and actually get people to pay attention to the events. Everything is already here with the tournaments and tracking, there just needs to be a database to dump the info to and some sort of classification for sorting it to present rankings by divisions. Obviously that requires some work, but I think it'd be worthwhile and give lichess yet another strategic advantage over all the other chess sites out there, as I can't think of a single one that does this well!
For the record though, I know what someone is going to say, so we might as well get ready to challenge it...
Someone will point out that awhile back, lichess tried pools, and outside of bullet no one used them, and even in bullet they weren't that popular.
I think it must be stressed that this idea isn't entirely the same, as this is more tournament based - something people always crave on lichess is more tournaments. And a second point is that those pools were tried what, nearly 2-3 years ago? The user base has changed quite significantly since that time.
You're right...
The pools were very different. For starters, this has a defined beginning and end, a championship with lots of tournaments to be won. The pools weren't 'winnable' - which is one of the things that made them so crappy. Also, the pools were dipped in and out of - I think with this we would quickly have an established userbase.
You're right that the userbase is also quite different from those times!
I hope mods see this and note that it is already attracting some talking...
Yes, we can only hope that this dialog stays open and more people contribute support and/or ideas to this and eventually attract the attention of someone who can work toward developing it.
Sorry to see Fenris leave. Perhaps this sort of event would tempt him back?
This is a very interesting idea!
I was just thinking... What happens if a player fails to turn up for one of the tournaments? He probably loses out on some crucial points.
In the real world, there will be times when players will be genuinely unable to make it to weekly tournaments. So I propose an additional rule - a player's worst 3 performances are not counted.
So this way, players can miss up to 3 tournaments, and not have to pay a penalty on points - they can still get a fair shot at championship.
Moreover, players who play all tournaments anyway will have their worst 3 performances nullified as well.
A by-product of this rule would be that nobody would know until the very end of the last tournament who wins - at the last moment standings would get recomputed as all players' worst performances get dropped!
A cool idea nonetheless.
I quite like this idea - they had something like it in Formula 1 in the late 1980s. I think Piquet beat Mansell to the title for Williams in '87 because they only counted so-and-so many results out of the 16 races.
Maybe, count the best results from 75% of tournaments.
The main thing is, for LICHESS developers to see the potential in this whole thing OR for someone who is good at programming to be able to help by setting up the project separately but using lichess...
If this was OTB I'd be getting sponsors in and sorting out the televising of it... but it's online so it needs programmer type people instead!
This actually sounds like a very decent idea.
You sound surprised, Gambo-Fett :D
Who could programme this and would like to go down in history? :)
In brief, let's quickly run through the idea of the Lichess Super League as bullet points:
- Uses current tournament system
- 5 Divisions, initially separated by rating
- Weekly tournaments
- Championship points won by top 20
- Promotion and relegation between divisions on percentage basis
- Up to 4 seasons per year
- Feeder 'top-up' tournament stops good players starting in D5
- Great Lichess TV as top players compete against each other in D1
- Lower-ranked players have opportunities to win lower divisions
- Weekly league table for each division ranks players
- Virtual trophies for the top 3 per division
- Wider participation among users as there's something for everybody
HELP?