lichess.org
Donate

Should the Marathon Blitz event ideally be 3 minute chess instead of 5 minute?!

On the one hand I totally agree that cheaters are a problem. The top 50 player list in Summer Marathon 2015 (including the 1st player) has changed a lot when a few cheaters were detected.

On the other hand: These cheaters were still detected and 3+0 blitz games wouldn't stop dishonest players from cheating.
Actually I saw a twitch video of chessbrahs with two cheat attempts in bullet games. That's why I guess cheaters don't even need to see the chess board. They seem to connect the engine with the chess server in a direct way. 3+0 games wouldn't stop this issue.

But 3+0 blitz games would definitely leave most of honest beginners and intermediate players (below 1500) behind.

I have tried some bullet games in FICS and I was totally lost. And even worse: Even if had found good move I wouldn't be able to enter them fast enough.

I think a strong cheat detection is the better way.

In conclusion I voted for 5+0 games, but I would consider the 3+2 games as an interesting alternative.
3 minutes will be better
i had a queen up ending: Q+pawns vs pawns. my opponent make me wait two minutes, didn t resign, didn t move

also i d like to see 1 or 2 seconds increment to finish the games properly and increase the game quality

also i have an other suggestion
(#wins + #draws) / total games ratio should affect to deciding the winner of the marathon
for example player A quickly resigns to stronger opponents 100 win 200 total games = 100 points
player B fights and gets 80 win 100 total games = 80 points
so B looks like more of a winner than A to me
ofc 1 win 1 total game like cases are discarded, there should be a minimum number of games requirement to enter the calculation or the real tournament winner can be decided among top 15 guys...
Kingscrusher, respect, but I think 5 min is better. Because games are more beautiful. And it is closing more than what is chess generallly. 3 min becomes another time battle in my opinion althouit is bettter than 1 minute. I vote for 5 min/
The marathon was a lot of fun, thanks Lichess team! Reading this thread, here are some ideas I had about future marathons.

24 hour Triathlon: Time controls start out Blitz, then SuperBlitz, and finish with an intense session of Bullet. Probably you want to do something like first 12 hours of 5+0 Blitz, then 8 hours of 3+0 SuperBlitz, finishing with 4 hours of 1+0 Bullet so that the number of Bullet games isn't vastly higher than the others. It also wouldn't be totally fair given players in different time zones might miss different portions of it. In that case you could also do something like 3 hours Blitz, 2 hours SuperBlitz, 1 hour Bullet, then repeat the cycle four times (every 6 hours).

24 hour Octathlon: Chess960, King of the Hill, 3 Check, Antichess, Atomic, Horde, Blitz, Bullet, or something like that. Again you could do 3 hours of each, or 1 hour of each repeating the cycle three times (every 8 hours).

Increment tournaments: Okay, this is not really related to Marathons at all, but since a few others have mentioned increment here I just wanted to promote the idea of an official increment tournament. Even though increment chess games take a similar amount of time, they reward different types of play because you can't simply make quick moves and flag your opponent from a lost position that is easy for them to play. SuperBlitz appears to be the least popular of the scheduled hourly tournaments. What if, instead of Hourly SuperBlitz, you had an "Hourly Increment Arena" with time controls like 0+1, 2+1, and 3+2 (3 of the more popular ones off the top of my head) repeating in a cycle each day. Either these tournaments would have no Berserk (which I don't think is THAT big a dealbreaker) or the Berserk would halve the clock and halve the increment.
@Usolando (#14):

Thanks for bringing additional thoughts beside anti cheat topics into the discussion. These points are definitely worth considering.

Increment games would solve your first problem (non resigning quitters).

The second problem could be solved with some kind of auxiliary scoring method: Buchholz system or Sonneborn-Berger score are common methods in Swiss system tournaments to deemphasize results from players with "most wins".
To be honest I'm not familiar with these methods. I'm not sure whether these methods work in large online tournaments with lots of players, who enter the tournament after the beginning. Maybe for online games something else is necessary.
I'd like the next one to be 3 minute just for variety. There will still be cheats, but a change would be good.

Also, with everyone so desperate to win points fast in this 5 minute event, I found that most people were playing the games like they were 3 minutes long anyway...
I think 3+2 is by far the best. But variety is indeed nice. Maybe rotate between 5+5, 5+0, 3+2, and 1+0 for the 4 seasons. for a mix of increment, no increment, and rapid, blitz, bullet.

Anyone can cheat in any time control, and faster games just means more games for the server to analyze.

I kind of like the idea of rewarding win ratio, but that does somewhat take away from the marathon/endurance bit. Quick resigners could be penalized 1 point if they resign before move 5 or something similar.

This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.