Closing Standard chess tournaments

  

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Thibault de Vassal    (2026-08-08)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Hello everyone,

This topic to know your opinion on the idea to close the whole Standard chess tournaments, to keep & favour Rapid ones.

Waiting lists should fill quicker this way...

What do you think?


John Dyson    (2026-08-08 14:55:09)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

If that happens, I will leave FICGS immediately


George Jempty    (2026-08-08 15:04:38)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Yeah, we don't want anybody defecting, and I personally prefer standard over rapid at this point ....


Ilmars Cirulis    (2026-08-08 17:15:49)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

I would prefer for them to stay.


Scott Ligon    (2026-08-08 17:21:45)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

I prefer Rapid, but closing one or the other would make sense to me. Closing Rapid and keeping Standard would be ok too. The existence of the 2500+ category makes no sense to me at all, that's never going to fill up, and 2400+ seems marginal at best. One set of tournament time controls with 2300+ being the top rating division would be a nice improvement. Even then, that top rating category would have the problem that almost every game will be a draw, but there's nothing to be done about that in a standard game of chess with modern engines.


Janusz Swiatek    (2026-08-08 23:15:46)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

I wouldn't close it, but changed form of starting them. Now we have to wait for the list of participants to be completed, but what about starting games as soon as at least 2 players join in a similar way as for example on LSS server.


Janusz Swiatek    (2026-08-08 23:24:07)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Alternatively you could decrease the number of participants to 4 per tournament and each player would need to play agains each opponent as white and black - so the same amount of games as now, when 7 players join the tournament.


Thibault de Vassal    (2026-08-09 02:55:17)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Ok... many thanks for your answers! Thinking about it.


Ulises Pineda    (2026-08-09 05:11:16)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Just stretch the rating ranges to fill them faster. If it was 0-2500 they would fill daily, so find the right amount of tourneys with the right rating ranges so they fill as fast as you want.


Garvin Gray    (2026-08-11 14:59:09)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Increasing the rating ranges does not make a group fill faster. If you have 200 points per rating range and five players have entered who are in the lower 100 points, no one from the 100 points is going to enter, knowing all they are going to get is a loss of rating points


Aniruddha Duttagupta    (2026-08-11 18:32:35)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Since I am most active in ICCF tournaments,I always have large no of ICCF games at hand.So I prefer standard Tournaments at FICGS to avoid Time Trouble. If Standard tournaments are closed I have to quit FICGS


Ulises Pineda    (2026-08-12 12:29:26)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Garvin, increasing the ranges downward to allow weaker players to enter would allow tourneys to fill faster (and I mean, if they haven't filled for a month that means stronger players aren't interested in playing, so you stretch them down to allow the weaker players to play.)

FICGS__CHESS__RAPID_GM__000022 is a great example, it's been waiting for the last player since June, it's clear no 2400+ player is interested in playing, the 2350+ players aren't interested in buying a ticket to join.

Solution: Just stretch it 10 rating points down so it becomes a 2390+ tourney, I can buy a ticket and fill the last place so it starts.

I'm the strongest player interested in joining at a 2343 rating but FICGS would rather have the tourney stuck for another month than allowing me to play with a ticket for 7 rating points of difference.

I would have never minded before, but the 2400+ tourney already has two sub-2400 players and without them it'd be missing 3 players instead of one, it's waiting for a player that doesn't exist and it's clear allowing weaker ones to join helped filling it more, but it didn't go low enough.

We act as if taking 3 months to fill up was normal.


George Jempty    (2026-08-13 19:36:40)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

i like the idea of 4-player double round robins for *both* rapid and standard, that should move things along much quicker, rather than fiddling with the rating ranges, although again, 2300+ is the only range that makes any sense once you get up to that level.


Paul Guralivu    (2026-08-14 18:04:49)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

I wouldn't close the sections.
Both are needed.

Increasing the rating band width is not going to do any good.

a 2200 playing against a 1900 ... knowing it will lead to a draw will NOT be interested to join.

I would keep things as they are.


Paul Guralivu    (2026-08-14 18:05:27)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Whomever wants something else: chould advocate for more thematic tournaments.

no engine tournaments.

rated thematic tournaments.


Scott Ligon    (2026-08-15 19:12:45)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

The standard starting position is trivially drawn with engines. A focus on thematic tournaments is one way forward. Not just one thematic at a time but a lineup of rated thematics, and I think there should be a separate thematic rating. Everyone starts with a thematic rating set at whatever their current standard chess rating is, but it would be treated as a separate entity going forward from there.


George Jempty    (2026-08-17 20:49:52)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

i have been advocated for more thematics lately, now there seem to be 3 of us, and I particularly like Mr. Ligon's idea of a separate thematic rating. Plus will multiple thematics, they'd fill up more quickly, I think, because players could pick and choose, perhaps aligning with their OTB reperttoire, which is how I would choose ....

I think thematics could be the future of FICGS. Without these ideas, FICGS is dying, slowly but surely. Thematics could be promoted on reddit.com/r/tournamentchess , chesspub.com , and a presence on lichess and chess.com. This would lead to an influx of players, rather than the current steady outflow of late.

It would however also mean more admin duties on Thib's part. Perhaps he doesn't want that and/or doesn't want to enlist assistance? If he would share the source code to ficgs however, I could take it and create my own ficgs clone. the domain thematicchess.com is available, by the way. However, I would *not* go it alone, and would try to build a team, on which Thib could participate if he so chose, as a sort of consultant at least.

I'd open source the code (which would be hardly look like ficgs code, which would be more of a "guideline" for me) on github, so anybody could contribute, code gets reviewed before being deployed, etcetera. Or I could start such a project *without* any FICGS code, but I find it easier to decipher existing code, rather than building entirely new code from scratch.

it were "da zero" however, I'd need help nailing down all the requirements. I also think the time control should be simpler, something like 15 or 20 moves, every 60 or 90 days, no vacations. This would definitely simplify coding .... I'd eliminate forums, etc, perhaps farming that out to a lichess group. Etc etc, not that I've been pondering this lately ;)


Ulises Pineda    (2026-08-18 21:09:08)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

The fact is more people have always wanted to play in normal chess than in thematic chess, but FICGS isn't facilitating that people who want to play can do so, with unsurmountable requirements like "+2400" which causes tournaments to take months to get their last player.


Daniel Reboredo    (2026-08-19 15:12:18)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

I would keep the standard tournaments and add others. For example, tournaments with one day per move and a maximum of five days of accumulated time; live chess tournaments (not matches); open tournaments with one day per move and a maximum of one day of accumulated time; and tournaments lasting 15 or 30 days to the finish, with no time added back per move (a completely new feature in correspondence chess). At the same time, I would retain all the current tournaments.


Daniel Reboredo    (2026-08-19 15:25:02)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

I see that most of my previous reply referred to new tournament formats. I want to make it clear that I don't like the idea of ​​closing any tournament format, and I also want to emphasize that it would be good to create new ones. I've proposed a few.


Daniel Reboredo    (2026-08-19 15:47:38)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Another interesting point related to the clossing of standard tournaments is that this suggestion stems from the difficulty of complete some standard tournament categories. This might discourage many players. Many games end in draw-endings due to the use of engines. What about creating ratings for non-engine tournaments? That is, those that don't use engines could have a separate rating system. At the same time, unrated tournaments and thematic tournaments, which are also unrated, could remain. And, if super-rapid and "to finish" tournaments (without time recovery) are played, there could be rapid ratings for them. All of this implies more work, I know. And implies the fact that I don't like the clossing of any tournament format. I love FICGS as other part of my life.


George Jempty    (2026-08-19 20:03:08)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

BTW I have begun *very* initial work on an entirely different thematic chess server. I don't mean to compete with FICGS however. For instance, my code could possibly be folded into FICGS' in the long run, as they are both based on PHP ....


Ulises Pineda    (2026-08-19 21:36:29)
Closing Standard chess tournaments?

Lol, George, Thib was considering closing standard tournaments so people would be forced to join the rest of what is available if they wanted to play, for faster waiting lists. Of course if they played in your server instead of filling them up, it'd be considered "competition" to FICGS.

Can't we steal a page from the LSS? They have this knock out tournament that requires 16 players, and it fills up in less than 2 weeks! Because it has its own separate rating thing where people of higher one can join without risking it, and anybody of any rating can join and play together. The "who advances on ties" is a bit complicated, you never know if a tie eliminates you or you advance, but with a 10 days/game +1 day move format that doesn't allow one to accumulate much time on the clock, games are played in a breeze.