[pbmserv] Broadcast from dshort via PBM Server

[pbmserv@gamerz.net]

A couple of months ago I announced my intention of organizing a new 
Omegachess tournament
on Richard's Play By Email server. So far, 8 people have indicated to me 
their desire to play in
this event. (Those players are myself, ragnar, nantonas, sharkey, jova1, 
chyn, eholzman and
thrawn).

I was hoping for a bigger response, but I now believe that it will be 
feasible for me to run this
event with 10 players. Therefore I am announcing that I still have 2 spots 
open for this
tournament. If you are an enthusiast of chess variants I strongly urge you 
to email me at
davidnyjfan2006@hotmail.com ASAP before these last 2 spots fill up. Don't 
forget to tell me
your PBM userid. What I have decided to do is to break the field of 10 
players into 2 sections
of 5 players each. I will rank the 10 participants 1 through 10 according to 
their current
Omegachess ratings, ranking established players above provisions and 
unrateds at the bottom of the field. Section A will have players 1, 3, 5, 7 
and 9,  and Section B will have players 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10.
In each section, each player will play a total of 4 games concurrently, one 
game against each of
the other players in his section, two games with the white pieces and two 
games with the black
pieces. The 2 section winners and 3 "wild-card" players (non-section winners 
with the 3 next best
won-lost records) will advance to a 5-man finals section which will then be 
conducted the same
way as the preliminary round sections. The winner of the finals section is 
the winner of the
tournament.

I have decided that we will be using a total time control cap of 270 days 
per game.
Thus the first round can take no more than a year and a half to finish. In 
all likelihood it
probably will not go that long. Unfortunately I seem to recall Richard 
Rognlie once telling me that
total time cap games continue to tick when a player is on move even if he 
has requested to
be placed on the vacation list; Richard said the software on his server 
cannot prevent that.
My advice to players is to try to send moves quickly during the opening and 
conserve time
for later in the game as positions get more complicated.

Are there any prizes for this tournament? I would love to be able to offer 
some one an Omegachess set as first prize, but the company doesn't seem to 
be making them any more.
Perhaps I can offer the next best thing. I will offer the winner of this 
tournament a free copy
of ZILLIONS OF GAMES 2, which has a retail value of about $35. For more info 
go to

http://www.zillionsofgames.com/

Zillions of Games can be used to play chess variants. The additional files 
which are needed to
play games like Omegachess, Doublechess, Capablanca and other similiar 
variants which do not
come with the game can be downloaded for free from www.chessvariants.com
I will arrange for the winner of the Omegachess tournament to provide me 
with his home
mailing address, and I will pay for a copy of the CD to be mailed directly 
to his home after the
tournament is over.

If I should suddenly receive an unexpectedly enthusiastic response to this 
broadcast and
I receive more than 2 new entries in the next several days, I may try to 
expand the
field to 15 players and break them up into 3 five-man sections. It's not too 
late to tell all of
your friends who like chess about my tournament and get them to sign up for 
this
OMEGACHESS email tournament on Richard's Play By Email Server.

By the way, I probably will be looking to start up a new tournament in plain 
old ordinary
good old fashioned CHESS pretty soon--- keep your eyes out for a future 
broadcast from me
about that!!

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