I'm just wondering, is two weeks per round really necessary? Honestly I would have thought a week should be enough. If somebody has time in general to play chess then I'm sure they can find one hour out of a whole week to dedicate to the tournament.

Actually I'm just itching to play the next round already...

No, planned is only 1 week / round.
Made the 1st round last 2 weeks because it might have overlapped with holiday stuff in the 1st week of January..

Comments/Incidents/Thoughts on Round1:

1.
The game Fuzion vs. Moejoe was scheduled for 5 PM GMT yesterday but it seems it didn't take place.
Ficsgames doesn't list a game and it seems that by FICS server data there was some time issues. 17:00 GMT = 09:00 PST and FICS says that Moejoe was online at that time but Fuzion wasn't (he actually seems to have waited from ~9:50 to ~10:10, an hour later).
Not that much of a problem. They can of course reschedule the game if they want.
Which brings me directly to #2

2.
As RR allows for a SLIGHTLY! more flexible scheduling than a swiss system I thought about the following:
From now on we have the usual 1 game per week but we have the possibility to insert 1 or maybe 2 weeks in which no game is scheduled (maybe after Round 4 and 8 ), which could be used as a "catch-up round". (Don't get sloppy with the scheduling though! Severe punishment ahead! )

3.
StudentofChess asked if he could stil enter the tourney. PM'ed him on Thursday it should be ok but got no reply til now ( actually it hasn't even left my outbox which means he hasn't been logged in since then). Left him out for the pairings for this round. If he notices me this week I will still add him.

Now les pairings :

Round 2


P.S.:
Just in case.
Tiebreakers:
1. Head-to-head
2. Number of black games
3. mini bltz match (like in the playoffs)

edit:
table, results etc in the startpost

From Hero to Zero, starving forum members, fireworks (no not Fuzion in the kitchen) ... there has been quite some drama this week so check out the vids !

On to R3 !


---
Startpost updated with Table, Pairings, Results

Hey

Here we are for R4!
I know that some are itching and excited but I would like to make this round last 2 weeks.
Seems that otherwise stuff might get stressful for some people. Kamus travelling at the moment, Moejoe 3 games unplayed (including this round) and last I could use a slightly longer round, too.



Table,Results,etc in the startpost

Bumpty-bump!

Finally Flint wasn't able to keep his 100% win ratio, and we also have our first drawn game!

Halftime round :





***
startpost also updated with table, etc.

For some reason when I try to send a message to thechesser it just gets stuck in my outbox...I tried it twice so I'm pretty sure I didn't press 'save' instead of send! If I made the same mistake twice then I'm just an idiot...which is, of course possible!

In any case, hopefully he will look here:

I'm available to play from 12pm-2pm or from 8pm-12am GMT+1 most days. please let me know when's good for you

Hi Flint,
I got confused by that also a while back - any messages you've created remain in your outbox until the recipients sign in and receive them.

Ah I understand...never noticed it before! Cheers GW for passing on the message, in any case.

So, how did I miss another one of those? <.<

Result of Flint-Chesser is 1-0. Game posted in the other forum

Kamus - Fuzion 1/2-1/2

It was an unusual opening Kamus, at least to me. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. Did you do a live commentary?

Half-time is over
Guess we will have another "1-weeker" and next round we calm down again for a two week round.

I did but it was unpublishable due to audio problems. The opening is the Portsmouth Gambit which is a better version of the Wing Gambit IMO. Black has no real option to decline because after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. b4!? if Black doesn't take the pawn then white plays 4.b5 and the knight gets kicked back and White is already better. I'm actually pretty booked up on this line and from what I can see, there is no outright refutation though Black can equalize in a few lines as you would expect. Extensive analysis indicates that White gets an advantage or good compensation for the pawn in all the other lines. This is only my second game in the line ( I won the first time), but so far I like it a lot. Leonard Barden has a good opinion of the line as well as GM Smirnov though the latter stresses that it is probably best suited for sub-2000 opponents and/or quick time controls. One other aspect of the opening is that there are killer traps that occur after "natural" Black moves in several lines. The fact that I only got a draw was a failure of me rather than a failure of the opening.