ACL Swiss: Round 4

The start of round 4 has to be delayed by (at least) another week. Sorry! Setting up my development system takes more time than expected.

ACL Swiss
HCL Swiss

The good news is: an experienced arbiter offered his help. This could mean better and faster pairings - you would no longer have to wait for your slow webmaster to do his job...

HCL Swiss

The HCL Swiss tournament is now available on the normal Games page. Currently, 75 players are already enrolled in this tournament.

http://www.playchess.de/tournaments/HCL-S002

If you are interested, you should hurry up: the number of participants is limited to 200 players.

Swiss tournaments

Did you notice the plural 's'? Yes, we now have two Swiss tournaments!
The new Swiss is played under HCL rules: NO chess engines.

HCL Swiss
Many, many members have asked for this tournament.
You can enroll in this tournament immediately:

http://www.playchess.de/tournaments/HCL-S002

There are still a lot of players who don't have chess engines - or who do not like to use them in our tournaments. I can understand that. And I must ask all participants to strictly follow the HCL rules: NO CHESS ENGINES, please!

On the other hand, I must warn you: I will not prosecute any suspicions in this direction. Should you suspect that your opponent is cheating with his chess program - simply try your best or resign that game.

This tournament introduces a modified chess clock: you cannot accumulate more than 20 days on your clock (would be difficult in a Greyhound tournament, anyway). This type of clock will soon be used in normal league tournaments, too.

Round 4 of the ACL Swiss
Due to my computer problems the start of the next round has to be shifted (again) - sorry! With a little luck, the fourth round will start on Monday, April 26th.

Computer crash

Don't worry, I am not talking about the PlayChess server. But my development computer crashed some days ago.

Of course, I have backups of all relevant files. Nothing is lost forever. But I must set up a new development computer: not difficult, but time-consuming.

Consequences:
- Round 4 of ACL-S001 is delayed
- Conditional moves will come a little later
- Several smaller improvements cannot be published now
- Some older emails are temporarily lost
- I am very, very busy...

By the way, the conditional moves will be phantastic! Most of the programming work is already done. During my tests, I fell in love with this feature - how could PlayChess exist for such a long time without it?
You can simply "click in" your conditional move sequences (these are hidden from your opponent). As long as your opponent makes one of the moves forseen by you, he automatically gets an immediate reply - until he finally deviates from your move sequence. These automatic moves are a great tool so speed up games, especially in the opening phase.
Got curious? Good! But this feature is for members only... ;-)

A side product of this development is that you will be able to see your moves immediately: you enter g1-f3 (with mouse or keyboard) and the Knight jumps from g1 to f3.
These new features rely heavily on Javascript. If you are still using a browser from the stone ages (say Internet Explorer below 5.5 or Netscape 4.x), you should consider upgrading to a current version. And please activate Javacript (for the PlayChess site, at least).

I hope to resolve my computer problems within the following two weeks. My priorities are as follows:
- set up development computer
- round 4 of ACL Swiss
- conditional moves
- league tournaments
- forum

And now: back to work!
Thomas :-)