The Big Game

The Big Game? What is it?

The Big Game (Il Partitone) is a two-team chess game. Each player chooses which side of the board he would like to play (white or black color), and so the team to join. It is not necessary to start partecipating from the very first move, however once the player has chosen his color, it will never change through the game.

How partecipate?
The user looks at the board position and, if he decides to join the team which has the turn, he just plays his move. The move gets registered as a suggestion but it won't be played yet.

What does it mean being a team member?
A player, before suggesting the move he believes to be the best, doesn't know which moves the other members have suggested so far. Those move will be unveiled just after the player's suggestion and, after that, it will be possible for the player to chat with the other members of the team.
So, each player suggests a move and he is unaware about what other members have suggested so far. After the player's suggestion, all other suggestions will be visible and the team members start communicating by chatting, discussing, analysing moves and strategies.
Obviously the two team are not supposed to communicating each other, neither seeing the suggestions of the opponent team.

How does the game step forward?
Every day, at 00:00 AM UTC, the most suggested move gets picked up and played. If two or more suggestions are eligible to be chosen, it will be picked  a move up at random among them.
If no proposal is available at 00:00 AM UTC, the decision is postponed of one day. The postponement can be grant for at most 6 times in a row.  

How does the game stop?

If no proposal is available after 7 days, the game will be time forfaited.
If most of the member resigns, the game will be terminated by resignation.
If the chosen move contains a draw proposal and the opponent team accepted it, the game will be draw.

If the chosen move leads to draw by stallmate, by material, by repetition or by the rule of 50 moves, the game will be draw.
If the chosen move is a checkmate, the game will be over.

MindTheCheck and its Big Games

Each MindTheCheck's  Big Game starts at 00:00 AM UTC after the termination of the previous Big Game, and all the Big Games are saved.
The access to the Big Game is free but requires a registration to MindTheCheck, which is free as well.

On-line Chess - Part 1.8 - Other play possibilities

Usually you are not allowed to play more than one game at a time mainly for security as we will see later. That’s not true for all the gaming sites.

But let’s go back to the rating concept. You can play against anyone and increase your rating, very easy. Too easy maybe: in the real world to increase your rating you should participate to official tournaments. For this reason it is very common to find tournaments on-line. Tournaments start when a certain number of people join the tournament which is scheduled at a fixed time and publicized on the site.

Tournaments could be of various types:

• In round-robin tournaments each player plays against every other player in two games (once as white, once as black). The winner is determined by the score but when two players have the same score a tie-break method can be used. The tie-break method widely used for this kind of tournament is the Neustadtl score. A player's Neustadtl score is calculated by adding the sum of the conventional scores of the players they have defeated to half the sum of the conventional scores of those they have drawn against. Round-robin tournaments are simple but they are effective only when the number of players is limited to few users.
• Knock-out tournaments are used when there are a lot of players in order to reduce the time taken by the competition. Players are put into smaller groups and then the winner(s) of that group are combined with winners of other groups to form a new group. The winner(s) of the final group are the winner(s) of the entire tournament. One or more players could advance from each group. If one only has to advance, a tie-break method is used.
• A Swiss tournament goes for a predetermined number of rounds, with all of the players taking part in each round. In each round two players compete head-to-head. All players participate in the entire tournament – none are eliminated. The winner (and top places) of the tournament is based on the final scores of the players. The final score is based on the number of points they accumulated for each round. The tournament lasts for a number of rounds announced before the tournament. After the last round, players are ranked by their score. If this is tied then a tie break score, such as the sum of all their opponents' scores (Buchholz chess rating), can be used. The Buchholz System is in fact the sum of the score of each of the opponents of a player. 

 

When the users of a web site are quite a number, it is common to find teams of players playing against. Not a one-to-one challenge but a many-to-many challenge. The team wins if the score of its members is higher than other teams after the fight. Team members become friends, they exchange information trough dedicated chat.

Also teams can compete in tournaments. In this case the rating is different.

Some game providers allow users to play different chess variants and gain rating also for those games. The most popular chess variants you can find are

• Chess 960
• Reverse (suicide chess)
• Checkers
• Bughouse

On-line Chess - Part 1.5 - Social meetings

Usually when you play chess you don’t speak with your opponent…or you don’t speak at all. But on-line it is different, people like chatting, like knows something more about the opponent person rather then its name and nationality (and optionally an avatar). A chat feature is always provided by every on-line gaming web site. You can find different kinds of chat:

• during the game: it is a private chat only between the two players; 
• public or general chat: every user can post a message and usually is for wave a challenge; 
• in rooms or thematic chat rooms: nothing to do with playing chess, it is just chatting; 
• among team members: a team is a group of player that competes against other teams; 
• in clubs: a club is the place where you can meet new friends, discuss things and play games. It can be found by anybody and club founder and club moderators are responsible for everything that happens in the club.

Chats are usually controlled in order to filter offensive words. The abuse of the chat service is mentioned into the terms and conditions of the service and it is punished by banning the bad user. In some cases the chat is forbidden for users under 13.

Figure 4 – www.instantchess.com private chat

Figure 5 – www.chesshere.com private chat and chat room

Almost all web sites allow their users to have a list of their friends in order to connect with them easily by chat or for playing. When you meet a new player in a game and find out he/she is a good player or simply it is nice to chat with, having him/her in your list help you looking for him/her when you connect next time.

So, on-line chess gaming web sites are, as a matter of facts, a sort of social networks and in most case is possible to find connections with popular social networks websites like facebook.