Live Boards

[andyburnett]

We shouldn't forget that Steve has been one of the most loyal supporters of weekend congresses for as long as I can remember and has done lots of great work with Scottish juniors as well as being a stalwart of our international teams for over two decades!

If he has made a 'mistake' or an error of judgement then it's not a very serious one in the grand scheme of things and at least now we can have a debate about the live boards issue and ensure we get things ironed out for the future.

[Calum MacQueen]

If he has made a 'mistake' or an error of judgement then it's not a very serious one in the grand scheme of things and at least now we can have a debate about the live boards issue and ensure we get things ironed out for the future.

Yeah, this seems a little out of proportion somehow. I'm more curious than anything else, Steve has one of the most solid and steady repertoires in Scottish chess which most top players know about. Maybe he's got a big novelty/new opening?

[AndrewGreen]

Yes there was a new opening: h3 vs the Najdorf/Shev instead of his good old f4! . Looked like a nice game.

[Patrick McGovern]

We shouldn't forget that Steve has been one of the most loyal supporters of weekend congresses for as long as I can remember and has done lots of great work with Scottish juniors as well as being a stalwart of our international teams for over two decades!

how true ! Many others would do well to follow his example.

[George Neave]

It does seem unfortunate that the game of the event played on board 1 on Sunday morning was not broadcast. At time I assumed the board was switched on; what a missed opportunity. If I hadn't been in Oban myself I am sure I would have been tuned in (in fact really ought to have been paying more attention to my own game at the time ) .

On the general principle of it all, my view is that it is entirely the organiser's discretian what they do on case by case basis but would hope the bias is towards broadcasting top boards wherever possible. Anything that makes chess in Scotland available to a wider audience can only be good thing in my opinion.

[KMcGeoch]

Personally I don't really like playing on digital boards (I was gutted when I got a digital board in first two rounds of SNCL :\), although I'm kind of resigned to it being way of the future and at least from spectator's viewpoint I can see how it's beneficial so maybe in 5 to 10 years time it will be no different to digital clocks that are now regularly used instead of old analogue ones. I suspect one of the problems at least from my perspective is that as chess sets are a slightly different model to ones used universally in chess clubs throughout scotland that I find piece recognition a bit awkward and pieces aren't as familiar as I'm used to.

I've also seen some people mention that it's an honour to play on digital boards. Logically it would seem that best solution that should keep everyone happy is to ensure that people who consider it an honour to play on digital boards do so while people who want to avoid them don't have to play on them. This means that for example in case of Oban congress simplest solution would have been to switch board 1 and board 5 so you would have boards 2-5 broadcast and board 1 with person who didn't want a digital board not having it.

Of course problem is that organisers rarely know in advance if someone will refuse to play on a digital board and inherent problem isn't refusal itself but rather short notice. Solution to that is simply to have a digital opt out box in entry form so let's say you get a standard congress you get let's say a £20 entry fee, £2 CS/junior etc discount and then a £2 fee to be guaranteed not to play on a digital board. When draw is made cards with scores can have a red sticker to indicate opt out and top x boards with both players willing to play on digital boards play on them. I'm all for top boards in every event being broadcast instead of just open. If organisers want titled players to play on digital boards they simply need to specify that free entry for titled players is only available if they do not opt out. Irony is that with that solution you could potentially fund digital boards for congresses from players who don't want to use them.

I would also like to add that work everyone has done to raise money for sensory boards is a good thing for chess in scotland and that all the hard work is appreciated.

[Andy McCulloch]

If I recall correctly, Oban did not offer free entry to titled players, at least not on the entry form.
Oban did not advertise the live boards.

[Andrew McHarg]

Perhaps the arbiters are the best placed to confirm Kenny but I don't see how an opt-out is feasible. Having run a couple of Congresses it would appear to me to be an administrative nightmare and add to the workload that event organisers already have to deal with.

I'd rather see Chess players join the 21st century and accept that live boards are the way forward for our game. Absolutely anything which can spread Chess to a wider audience is a good thing for promotional purposes and raising interest with sponsors, and the knock-on positives of this are potentially massive. We collectively moan about a lack of interest in Chess (and the absence of Chess on tv), yet when we get an opportunity to spread our game ourselves many people would rather not? I just don't get it.

Do we want our game to die out? We aren't going to attract new players to the game with distant memories of Kasparov playing super computers forever. We need new, innovative, and interesting ways of getting our beautiful game to the masses.

[Alastair White]

(Sent from the World Seniors in Greece)

Regardless of the circumstances of this particular case, having chess games broadcast to a wider audience can only be a good thing, for spectators and potential sponsors alike.

Here we have the top games (both men and women) broadcast live, and no-one is questioning that. We also have digital clocks, increments, and all of the games published soon after the round is finished, and no-one is objecting to any of that either. It's called progress.

Many of the top players here are GMs, IMs and/or chess professionals, and they receive certain concessions from the organisers (reduced or no entry fee, etc) and know they have to agree to certain things in return. They are not particularly concerned that their opponents will prepare for their games - they will do that anyway, given the large volume of data available on the internet. That's the way it works nowadays.

Obviously a weekend congress in Scotland is a very different thing but if we want to aspire to greater things then we should be prepared to move with the times.

Incidentally, Craig Pritchett will be playing on the 'live' boards against GM Okhotnik today which should be worth watching.

[KMcGeoch]

Indeed arbiters are best placed.

My reasoning was that in congresses where draw is done manually you get a card for each player that gives their total score, opponents, colours, players number etc. If you put an indication of opt out there then at a glance when arbiters do draw they can see top 4 boards where both players want to play on digital boards and can then simply switch boards so traditional "Board 1" match is played on Board 5 and on Board 1 you put highest board number where all people want to play on boards. Admittedly that extra step could take a couple of minutes in each round that in a 5 round congress would be 10min per event that for a 4 event congress could add 40minutes onto workload spread out over 5 rounds

Trickier situation is when draws are made by a computer. Ideally if you had access to code all you would need to do is to add an opt out variable and then have computer populate boards as per description above. Unfortunately it's quite likely that source code isn't readily distributable so two options available are either the inelegant solution of scoring out and rewriting board numbers or alternatively writing a small program that takes data exported from program that makes draw to reorganise it according to digital board preference.

I will admit that it is probably easier for arbiters either to have no digital boards at all or force players to play on them whether they like it or not, although looking at problem and since original post did mention there being no real procedure in place I figured solution above is probably only theoretically feasible compromise. As far as getting chess out goes I'm more conservative so rather than newfangled inventions I figure education is way to go about it.

P.S. As far as digital boards go I often find their location is a bit inaccessible at least to general public. Would it not make sense to for example have a very prominant link on chessscotland website whenever any congresses have live boards. For example something like <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.theweekinchess.com/live">http://www.theweekinchess.com/live</a><!-- m --> or <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://teamleague.org/index.php">http://teamleague.org/index.php</a><!-- m --> could be a couple of examples to look at with maybe even permanant hosting of all previous games played on them so anyone looking can also look up past events although hosting might be an issue although usually pgns are quite small