PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournament

Final instructions before the start of the tournament

The tournament begins on Friday, March 02, 2007 at 17:00h CET, the time in Berlin, Paris, Rome and Madrid. That translates to 16:00h London, 11 a.m. New York, 19:00h Moscow and 20:00h Dubai. If you are uncertain about the time in your location you can check this by clicking on the times of each round on the schedule below.

The event will be staged in a special tournament room (“Hydra Chess – CSS Freestyle Tournament”) of the Playchess server. Note that you should set your playing mode to “Centaur” when you are in the Freestyle room (this is done in the menu "Edit – Playing mode" or by pressing Ctrl-M). If you leave “Human” mode switched on you will not be able to start an analysis engine. “Computer” mode is for people who want their engines to play automatically, without human intervention.

Special rules

Due to the large number of participants it is necessary to enforce some additional rules for this event. In summary: all participants are responsible for understanding and being able to adequately operate the Playchess client software; they are responsible for establishing an adequate and stable Internet connection to the server; for finding the tournament room; for their punctual appearance on the server in time for the start of each round; for not attempting to use unfair methods to gain advantage over the opponent.

In particular we will be implementing the following rules:

1. All participants must be present in the tournament room of the server 30 minutes before the start of round one (Friday, March 02, 2007, 17:00h CET, i.e. they must appear in the room at 16:30h CET). Participants must stay connected until the tournament director has included them in the list of players ("invited" them). After a player has seen that he is on the participants' list he can leave the room or log out, but must be present in the room at least five minutes before the start of the game.

2. Each round starts on the hour. Players are required to be in the tournament room and ready to start their games at least five minutes before the hour (i.e. at 13:55h, 16:55h, 19:55h, etc.). The games will start punctually, and any player who is not present in the tournament room at the time of the start will automatically lose that game. It is not possible to start individual games at a later time and include them in the tournament results.

Caution: do not use this button!

4. All players must be accessible for the tournament director during the games. Otherwise there is no chance for the tournament director to get in contact with the player if something exceptional happens (e.g. loss of connection --> re-establish the game) and the game may be adjusted as a loss for the non-reachable player.

5. It is important that you use the latest version of the playchess client. All versions since the Fritz 9/10 GUI are capable to upgrade to the latest version: Log-on to the playchess server, then click "Help" --> "Query Update". You can also use the latest free playchess client (http://www.playchess.com/), but it's not possible to play in centaur mode while using it.

Please remember that due to the very large number of participants we have to rely on your cooperation to successfully stage this event. If you feel you have been unfairly treated you can write to the organisers, who may offer you a free place in the next Freestyle tournament to compensate for the injustice. As a rule it will be difficult to find satisfactory solutions while the event is under way. Remember: the decision of the tournament director is final.

One more request: please play the entire tournament, even if after some rounds you feel that you do not have a chance to win the main money prizes.

Tiebreaks

The large number of participants makes it necessary to keep the exact tiebreak mode open and flexible. Depending on the number of players who have equal scores within the qualification slot the tournament director will choose a tiebreak modus that is practical and fair. In any event the players will be required to play tiebreak games, but the date, time controls and exact rules will be announced by the tournament director after the number of players that need to play in the tiebreak is known.

Reports

At the end of the main tournament there will be an extensive report on the official web site. We would like you to contribute to this report by sending us some information on yourself and the course of the tournament as seen by you. Please give us an exact description of the hardware and software you had, and how you used them in the event.

If you have played an interesting or important game, please consider sending it to us with light annotations. A short text description of your general impressions would also be appreciated. Please do not forget to include your name and place of residence. We will invite all players who send us interesting material to the next PAL/CSS Freestyle tournament.

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With best wishes
Dieter Steinwender

Schedule of the Fifth PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament

All times given in the following schedule are in Central European Time (CET), which is used in most European countries. Click on the times given in the schedule below to convert to your local time.