Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Chessloser's WEC (release 1.2)

The unmatched sage of the 64-square jungle, the mighty and vaunted chessloser, proposes a new World Extreme Chess league to replace FIDE and USCF which "while awesome, [have] become old mired in their own unwieldingly large hugeness , like republicans and democrats."

Oh man, truer words were never spoken--except that perhaps CL is being too kind in his assessment of these two organizations; FIDE is run by the semi-dictator of a semi-autonomous region of Russia who once said:

"Irrespective of what I tell people, I give them instructions on a sub-conscious level, a code. I do the same thing when I communicate with Russian citizens from other regions. I am creating around the republic a kind of extra-sensory field and it helps us a lot in our projects."

Uh-huhhhhh.

The other big trouble with FIDE is that it's an organization of national organizations, just like the long-defunct League of Nations on which it was based; players aren't members of FIDE, chess bureaucracies are. Meanwhile, the USCF chess bureaucracy has been run badly for decades, seemingly no matter who gets elected to the Board; they tried to ignore internet chess for as long as possible, totally blowing the chance to be some kind of official ratings org for it and profit from it, time after time they signed idiotic long-term contracts for various things that drained the treasury, etc. They do a good job with the rating system, and my view is that's all the USCF should do. We need a whole new structure to promote chess and run tournaments, a complete fresh start. Will it happen? Probably not, unless enough of us quit paying them dues and form some competition; but wait...

Now comes chessloser and the "WORLD EXTREME CHESS LEAGUE!!!!!!! (you have to say this in the voice of the “sunday sunday sunday, monster truck rally ” guy)."

I will not repeat all his proposals here, if you haven't already you've got to go read the post, but all that I would change to suit my own, personal prejudices is (original WEC in GREEN):

ALL games will be G60. no delay, no overtime, no sudden death, no fucking around. if you can’t finish a chess game in two hours (each combatant gets one hour) then you lose. period.

I would like to have all games at G/30 + 10 sec. increment, 90-move games would still take two hours, max, but instead of piece-scattering time scramble disasters like they had in the U.S. Women's Ch. this year, you would still have chess being played throughout the game.

there should be no draws, but i understand sometimes there are. draws are not allowed if there are enough pieces on the board to mate. if you reach the same position after 3 moves, the first person to move on the 4th time MUST make a different move or be disqualified. no draw by repetition allowed. draws will not count for points or ratings. if you have more than half your games end in draw, you are disqualified. kill or be killed.

Sometimes draws by repetition are the fair result, so I'm against the DQ provision which unlike chessloser's other proposals changes a basic rule of the game; at these kinds of time controls I think draws will be pretty scarce, even among masters.

And now the part I totally don't disagree with:

i bet i could find enough people interested in pure chess to play in the league. it would rock. i think the chess world needs a small change in how things are run.

You know it, baby! Anyone else ready to join?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's easy to criticize the USCF but what have you done to make it better? A lot of people are spending their own time and money on it so if you're going to run it down how about something constructive instead of just bitching?

Unknown said...

i love anonymity, you can say anything and not be held accountable

Unknown said...

Hi Chessloser, you have to understand that it is 'the way of the coward.'

Courage isn't in them and fear permeates their bones.

Robert Pearson said...

Guys, even if s/he's something of a brat anon. has a point, so I'll soon be putting up my ideas.

Unknown said...

Hi Robert, sorry, but I don't listen to points by anonymous people. To me, no identity, no voice=no audience. You simply do not rate and your opinions do not matter. I'm sick of these guys.

Anonymous said...

The way I see it, as long as you didn't vote for Sam Sloan to be on the board, you did something constructive for the USCF.