On a seperate point I had another idea for qualification, which I'd be interested in feedback for.
7 arena tournaments (say 3 hours each), one per day at different times. From each tournament the top 3 players qualify = 21 qualifiers. The best 11 cumulative scores not already qualified = 32 total qualifiers. Then the tournament runs as a knockout similar to this year.
Pros
1) Lower rated players have a chance to play a lot more games
2) More accessible for majority of atomic players
3) More players have a chance to play/beat some top players
Cons
1) Higher likelihood of dupes taking part. I could remove any qualfiiers who do not meet certain criteria (e.g. 6 months activity), however they would still impact the tournament.
2) Qualifiers may not want to take part in the knockout, so higher chance of forfeit in the last 32. I could message each qualifier to get confirmation after each arena tournament though.
I had a number of requests for a double elimination, in order for lower rated players to have more matches. This may be an alternative method to achieve that.
Why elimination at all? It’s not like we have a limited number of tennis courts or something. A number of Swiss rounds, then single elimination for top 8.
As for qualification, it’s better to err on the side of including too many players rather than too few.
I think the current formula is better, qualification can be used for more players, currently working with Bitchess to make a tournament, hoping it works out.
@rdaysky with elimination the players left after each round are more motivated to continue. I've attempted to run other types of tournament before on FICS but it becomes a nightmare as players lose interest and forfeit.
As atomic game does not have many players tough the community is growing and that the entry for the WC was really nice but not huge I think that the best would be to do similar as this WC but, to reach a determined pair number of players, players with high rating promote directly to WC and other left make a tournament to be able to be at the WC.
For example:
Players with higher rating promote, and rest of players left play the tournament and promote to WC of 32, 64 or 128, etc...
If >128 players ask to entry, first 100 players promote WC and 28 of the rest promote via tournament first places...
If > 64 players ask to entry, first 50 players promote WC and 14 of the rest promote via tournament first places...
...
Obviously all that numbers to be studied and modified, just keep the main idea. What do you think?
OK, recently I started making a tournament with BitChess, and we are almost done with all the rules. I want to try promoting atomic as well and so far it's been working. Bitchess and I agreed that we can call it the Atomic Candidates similar to the World Chess Championship. It will be 8 players with the top 3 having prizes. 6 players qualify by rating, 1 is a wildcard that me and the other organisers will discuss, and the last player is the loser of the World Championship Final (tipau vs onubense) It will be a double round robin tournament (14 rounds) with the time control to be voted by the players who accept. 15 5/12 7/ 10 10. You will not have to play more than 1 round a day, just set up the time with your opponent according to the pairings. And we will try to play 2 rounds a month for 7 months. i.e from January to July 2017 with the Winner of the tournament playing the World Champion in a 12 Game Match with 1 Game a day, scheduled between the players. Time control and Number of games per day will be discussed by the players at the time with a prize for both. And then this WC tournament will take place, having atomic year round. I hope Bitchess continues to co-operate, as I will be sending out invitations and rules very soon in a new forum.
@victorvi this sounds similar to this tournament, where there was a qualificiation round to reach 32 players. Am I right that you suggest a tournament instead of the qualification round? That idea also sounds interesting.
@Arka50 if BitChess are interested in running atomic tournaments that is great news. All their other tournaments are in the arena though and what you describe sounds like something that would need to be organised by the atomic community. I can see a couple of potential problems but will wait for the rules to be made clear and an announcement by BitChess. In the meantime I will continue to get ideas and plan ahead for next year's World Championship.
@tipau that's it. I believe it would be more interesting for lower rating players to be able to play 10 games in a tournament, for example rather than being eliminated in the first round. The tournament can be a private one run here in Lichess. Also it would be faster and in one day in the first week we would have results...
Also it would transfer in less forfeit eliminatory games tough we presume that as each player to be in the WC or tournament to promote to WC has had to ask for entry, there wouldn't be many anyway as it happened in this WC.
No, I like the KO format, similiar to the World Cup, we can call it the WC. Yes I understand it's better for lower rated players, but this tournament is to prove who the best player is, and it does give lower rated players to play a match against one of the top 10 players, which is great experience.
@victorvi I think if there would be tournament qualifiers it would need to be several tournaments. If there's only one many players would be unable to make it (time zone, too busy etc).