Just a heads up. I hope for as many strong players as possible. If you want to be eligible for a top three medal, also register at the MSO before the tournament starts.

This is a Swiss tourney. The more accurate the ratings are, the more fair the first round pairings will be. So if you haven't played there yet, I suggest you play at least a few games before Saturday. I will show up as a punching bag as often as I can.

So Dave, I joined :)

I am wleboeuf

do I just show up at the mso site before 10:30 on Saturday?

What do they mean 15 minutes per player? Total time for the whole game?

David, the board is unacceptably ugly, can they at least rotate it as we're used to see it and set the colors right? (red is vertical not horizontal).

David, and please tell Maciej to come back here, we would like to play serious games with him, no more holidays! :D

And what's the prize anyway? I don't see hex: https://msoworld.com/prizes/ :D

Bill, are you looking at some page on the MSO site? It's not 15 minutes per player for 14x14. It's 22mins 30 seconds per player per game. Each new round ends in 45 minutes, if not earlier. If you visit the BGA page for the tournament and scroll to the bottom, you will see the correct time control listed there.

This is an automated tournament. I cannot guarantee that anyone who shows up late will be allowed to play, although some players who arrived late for the 11x11 tournament were allowed to play. knightleap a.k.a Etan Ilfeld from the MSO will be running the show. My handle there is Peyrol. Yes the tournament will start 10:30 am East Coast time, 3:30 pm London time.

Lazy, I'm sure the programmers at BGA are telepathically aware of your needs. So they will jump right on that and make everything wonderful for you on Saturday. That's a personal guarantee.

There are three medals for the top three finishers, but if any of those did not also register at the MSO site before the tournament starts, they will be Simply Out of Luck.

Hi, is it possible to spectate the games while they are being played.

@Boguslaw, I think so, yes.

you broke my dreams :-(

Will it be possible to get records of the games after?

Yes, BGA stores replays of all played games AFAIK.

It stores them, but BGA is not set up with easy game analysis in mind (IMO).  Here is an example of what copy/paste from the game log will get you:

Move 1 :8/23/2020 4:19:58 PM

Rematch with exact same players detected: player order has been swapped.

Move 3 :4:20:34 PM

PlayerX placed a piece on (1;10)

Move 4 :9:54:17 PM

PlayerX is now playing as Blue

OtherPlayer is now playing as Red

Move 5 :10:04:43 PM

PlayerX placed a piece on (11;3)

[…]

Move 26 :4:46:21 PM

OtherPlayer placed a piece on (2;5)

Move 27 :5:10:58 PM

PlayerX concedes the game.

The end of the game: OtherPlayer wins!

You can review the game on the boardarena page (although it's painful).

Yeah it's quite painful

Nevertheless, here are the 11x11 games if anyone would like to review them. I reused the script I had for my book, and wrote a second script to parse the BGA “format.” This is just a dry run, I'm more interested in the 14x14 games.

Oh, and two of the games wouldn't load, for some reason

Damn, I finally forgot about the tournament. Good luck to all participants :)

Congratulations to Daniel! And to Bill leBoeuf for taking the silver, and Brzytwa for the bronze.

Sorry for misleading anyone about Maciej. He told me it was likely he would attend. But maybe he got a job opportunity or something.

Thank you so much Happy Hippo for providing the games on an analysis board! BGA analysis does not allow variations.

BTW I just thought I'd mention, games on Boardspace.net have a real postmortem feature where variations can be explored. But they don't accept BGA or LG games.

Yeah, Congratulations for winners.

Great tournament and great people/matches.

I need to once again analyse my matches with Force and Bill leBoeuf (especially the second one) to find out my mistakes ;)

Congratulations for Daniel. For me the frustrating aspect of this swiss format is having (again) no opponent in the first round, and then beating players who later withdrew from the competition, therefore despite beating everyone but Daniel I and up 4th due to the underestimated tie breaker :/

Your match with Daniel should count as a final, giving you two first places.

I think it would be unfair for people who lost to Daniel earlier. But anyway, when people quit during it makes final results very random if equal on wins.

There was no other player with 5-1 who lost only with Daniel.

Anyway, you were just very unlucky to draw such players. Statistically it should be balanced in some way. Taken into account, that, you were unbeaten in 5 first rounds, the `Opponent's points` should be statistically higher than other players.

It was pity, that there was a bit more players than 32. There was 35 players. During each round there was always one unbeaten guy who drew somebody who lost earlier his game.

After first round there was 17 winners.

After second round there was 9 winners.

After third round there was 5 winners.

After fourth round there was 3 winners.

And so on.

Probably it could introduce some instability. To eliminate it probably such qualification earlier may be played.

However some of there 35 players were absent. I think that next time a good idea would be to wait 10-15 minutes for latercomers and remove from tournament the ones who do not appear. In that way it was done during TwixT tournament.

I also have free game at first round, so in that way we were equal. I agree it's more or less random, but bga can't even pair properly in the swiss tournament.

I'm happy that I have at least one medal in hex.

I dont mean people above me dont deserve that, its just a pity that it is decided by who beat very weak player in first round and who beat just average one. And my 2nd round oponent withdrew after 3 rounds.

I agree. I have a similar problem in 11x11 tournament.

Sum of opponents points usually works in chess tournaments. But for this, I guess, you should have relatively correct ranking, and correct pairing. And some solution for the absent.

I was very lucky to get Silver, both due to the above pairing discussion and also due to some very lucky close games.  So I will be happy to share Silver with Force.  Do we get a sliver medal?

Really surprised they went with a bracket format and didn't cap the tournament at 32. I run an annual tournament with 32 teams and I'm constantly looking for ways to expand this without inordinate disadvantages…it's hard, I still haven't come up with a way to do it (it gets us more revenue). I wouldn't want to do it by the seat of my pants.

I wonder why they didn't do pool play, or even better 4 games + bracket.

My few conclusions

1. Too many paricipants, too few rounds -> if we have 30+ players, 8 rounds is the minimum, otherwise results may be unfair and depend on your luck.

2. Timer, on 14x14 10 minutes per player it is enough surely. We have 3 rounds in 1 hour. 6 rounds in 2 hours.  8 rounds in 2h40minutes. More playing, less watching. Yesterday I can drink coffee, having a shower and do a few other things when I finished game and some games continues. I didn't even use 5 minutes until the last game of the tournament. It was taking way too long and I had to spend over 4 hours to play 6 games.

3. Functionality BGA - shame that there are no resign button and everyone must play to the last move. The board is in reverse position - red color should be in vertical, blue in horizontal.

And the last it is a pity that so few people play online, not only in tournaments. I really enjoy playing on real-time games.

“Timer, on 14x14 10 minutes”

I think it really depends on the player. You like playing fast, but some players need more time. For me, 22,5 was definitely to fast.

Hex is not so popular and just for making an enjoyment for other players like amateurs I think that 10 minutes is definitely too short. If you do not have strategy or you do not know some automatic moves you need to think more just to be satisfied about your moves.

Twixt seems to have a bit more complicated rules. During MSO in Twixt tournament there was 15 minutes per player and for me to play strategically with stronger players it was too short.

From some experience in logical, but also sport tournaments It is difficult to find a golden rule for how the tournament should be organized. However it is always nice to have some seeding before tournament and it is always nice to have some easily divided number of players like 2^n.

And probably when it comes to tournaments they should not last to long just to make them extremely fair. (This condition stand for long-lasting league not tournament.)

That's why i wrote “my conclusions”

I'm afraid to ask what is the right time for you since 22.5 minutes isn't enough. And as I mentioned we should play more rounds than 6 if we want fair results (more participants -> more randomness). Maybe in single game i could agree, but not in tournament with several rounds.

Main assumption of playing real-time hex for me is that you don't have enough time to analyse almost every move.  Turn-based mode, like here, is something else and you can spend as much time as you want.

30-40 minutes it's still real-time. I can play one tournament the whole day, which is standard in most popular games (chess, go, shogi, bridge, etc). Even a few days tournaments. Imagine, that in chess standard time is about 5h for a game. And hex is more complex (but little shorter) game.

I think there are two main causes:

1) Some player prefer faster games, some slower (maybe suprisingly for you - in most games I prefer something in the middle, maybe a little faster - but still I like to have some time to think)

2) Better players easier deal with shorter time. I can play 3 minutes in chess (very quick, but I can), but most of my friends, who are much weaker - can't play even in 10-15 minutes per player.

You have played hex for more than 10 years, I have played for less than 1 year. Many obvious things for you I have to find and check they are correct.

I can imagine that I can spend 4-5 hours playing one hex game :-) I agree it will be slow, but still possible. It's still real-time and different from 1 day per move time control, where you can analyse on the board or think about game in another day with other ideas.

In the end, I would like to say that any time control is playable, but our preferences are different (maybe after many tournaments we would get used to a short time control). And even for people with similar preferences - the game could be different - for a longer time control will be fewer mistakes.

I think we can create some shorter and some longer tournaments on bga and each will can find the best time for him.

If you want to persuade the BGA admins to change their “no resignation” policy for 2-player tournament games, I recommend you vote for my bug report.

I just voted.

So the question is if there will be more online tournaments on any website? In Europe atumn and winter is coming, so I'd love to play :)

Maybe I will contact the playok administrator and ask to organize one or two tournaments a week?

David could you also bug report for the need to 1.} Automatic win when opponents time runs out (otherwise what is the point of time control) and 2.) ability to resign so as to end the game.

One it will be enough, but it should have a good timing so as many will be able to join.

I agree with kspttw that 22:30 is too fast, I can live with it, but I would prefer 30.  It is wonderful to see how fast and well Daniel can play.  But Daniel I think you are a one of a kind :)

Also you are 28 years old to my 78 years old :)

Hey 22:30 is enough ;) There are something about 3 influential moves during game. Let's give for them 5 minutes. You still have 7.5 min.

@Daniel playing in playok is a good idea if we can create a tournament. Owner is a fan of hex, so maybe we can talk about it.

@BillGreat respect that you can play at that level at that age and after 6 years break.

Thanks kspttw.

David how would I obtain my medal?

Everyone who wants their medal, email mindsportsolympiad@gmail.com  with your mailing address and what medal or medals you won. They will respond with the shipping costs.

Oh, and tell them what your handle is on BGA

Bill, regarding time control, when a player's time goes negative the opponent has the option to force that player to move within 20 seconds or be kicked out of the game. This is true whether you are playing a tournament game, a simple game, or an arena game. If a player gets kicked out this way, then the remaining player still has to make the remaining moves to complete a win. It's bizarre, but they are unlikely to change.

David, in a simple game you can resign, but not in a tournament…Why?

Here are the 14x14 games: http://www.mseymour.ca/hex_book/mso_games_14x140.html

Good work. Which game seems to be the most interesting?

Bill, I don't know. I filed a bug report and I hope you will vote for it.

Pguz: I haven't looked at them all yet (that's a lot of games), but wleboeuf vs Peyrol and brzytwa vs Peyrol were both pretty interesting.

If it can interest, I've created another real time tournament.

Of course no medals for this one :-D

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=60030