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timjensen 20-Nov-20, 17:41	The 3 chess etiquette questions 1. I've never understood why people don't like the conditional moves feature. I LOVE IT! I don't use it unless I see a line of thought that I may forget on a different day (because I have ADD and tend to be forgetful), especially if it is a forced mate or a forced capture. 2 and 3. I will offer a draw if I can tell that we are headed in that direction and I want to save us both some time. However, I am not offended if they decline my offer. Then I just play it out. Continually offering draws that are routinely declined is rude, but in chess, there are no points lost for being rude. The only thing that matters is checkmate. One of my teammates never offers a draw, and almost never accepts a draw. He also never resigns. He sees this as an opportunity for him to practice his endgame. He also is forcing his opponent to mate him, which is good practice for his opponent. Having said that, I do make mental notes (and sometimes even put them on my opponent's profile) if they are continually rude or unreasonable. I, myself, once was very rude to an opponent who I knew was going to eventually checkmate me, because he kept asking me to make my moves faster. That doesn't make my behavior right! I was just annoyed by his constant requests for me to make my moves faster. I doubt he will ever play me again!
orkneylad 20-Nov-20, 18:12	Uses of team captains and co-captains. I do not know how many teams make efficient use of co-captains. On our team, I make the large majority of challenges. Our captain and other co-captain often respond to challenges, but they seldom make them. That is fine with me, because I have a "system." Our captain makes final decisions on whom to accept to, or remove from, the team. He has the final say on all matters if controversy arises, which thankfully seldom happens. With a team of only 45 active players, that strategy works for us. With larger teams, I suppose it is necessary to have more than one person involved in active pairing. It is particularly useful if co-captains live in areas geographically remote with widely divergent time zones. In principal, with someone in the US, Canada, or Central or South America, with someone in Europe, and with someone in the western pacific (Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines, East Asia, etc.), it is possible to have nearly 24-hour coverage. It might be useful to have one co-captain in charge of team morale and discipline, congratulating team members on accomplishments, sending reminders to players who timeout to either postpone or move, and such like. I spend a lot of time on line since my retirement, so I try to do that for our team. If multiple people are involved in making matches, I think it is important that they operate with basically the same criteria for pairing. Obviously, it is good to leave room for individual initiative based on special knowledge or even hunches rather than sticking mindlessly to one set of guidelines. However, consistency is important for making other teams confident that they will be treated the same way regardless of who is involved in a particular challenge.
joveyboy1 17-Dec-20, 17:52	Yeah I do try to point our my team's achievements, like being #1 or hitting a milestone on games completed, whether it be the team as a whole or an individual member. I've gotten plenty of positive responses   With me, my current co-captain is busy and not able to handle other matches. He even told me I can demote him, though I see no point in doing that as long as I have other spots open. I do have someone who is very interested in trying it out, as well as 3 others who have shown interest, though whether they will be able to get the needed membership is to be seen. I look forward to seeing how this one member will do though, I certainly need help with matches right now. Even if they only accept matches, I can use any kind of good help I can find. I don't know how I've done so well on my own lately honestly, but I look at teams like 'The Knights of the Crystal Castle' and they have a really good system going with all their captains. I did have a co-captain a while ago who was in a different timezone than me, by 8 hours I think. That worked real nicely. I'll have to keep an eye out on that as well. Interesting what you said about team morale. You could, if you wanted, have someone do that who doesn't even have the required membership. The same goes with perhaps a team chess mentor, or someone who keeps track of team statistics. Perhaps that would be best for larger teams. You could technically have more than 3 co-captains, those outside of being an officially listed co-captain would just handle things outside of team matches. It's a thought I've had for a while that I plan to present to my team soon. I imagine even non premium members could be involved. And yeah I would hope that a team would like to have similar matching preferences among the captain and co-captains. For me, I would suggest to my co-captain to start with trying to keep the current and top 90 day ratings close, and then as they become comfortable with that, I would add looking at the average 90 day ratings, and other things I look at too. I wouldn't put everything at once on a new co-captain learning the ropes, I've messed up with that in the past...
orkneylad 17-Dec-20, 23:09	A message relay system We are trying a new way to get information out to team members. This works with a team of our size. I chose five people: our captain, our other co-captain, my wife (queenforaknight), a good friend (jpz1) who moved with me to this team, and myself. I divided up the remaining 40 players into five group of 8 and assigned one group to each of those five people. Now, when our captain, the other co-captain, I, or anyone else, for that matter, has a message to go out to the team, that message gets sent to each of the five of us and we then forward it to our group of 8. We also post the message in an appropriate team forum. A few people were confused originally with the barrages of PMs they were getting, because they thought they were being targeted, but we straightened that out. Everyone who has responded is appreciative, and if they don't like it, they can simply delete the PMs.
orkneylad 17-Dec-20, 23:27	Game database and analyze features I freely admit that I use both the game database and analyze features. I few people I have played do not like that, but unlike conditional moves, which I will not use if my opponent objects, I will use game database and the analyze feature, and I recommend to my teammates that they do so. I simply avoid playing people who object in the future. Some people do not object to my using it but say they do not themselves, which is fine. A question arises as to which game database to use. The world base, which includes move only by players with a 2000 Elo rating, is considerably more rigorous, but it also runs out faster than the gameknot database, which carries all games of players down to a 1600 rating. On many occasions when the world game database runs out of options, the gameknot database still has quite a few. These must be scrutinized very carefully, because there are some bad moves in there. I am wondering whether I should pass this advice on to my team members.
orkneylad 23-Dec-20, 00:16	How to manage players with long-term disabilities. I am asking for counsel here. We have a player on our team who has suffered a stroke. He is not totally disabled and wants to keep playing. However, not surprisingly, his rating has fallen. To pair him based on his longer-term rating is a disservice to him, as it sets him up for failure. However, other teams may be reluctant to pair him at his current rating. I do not feel comfortable sharing an individual's health issues with other captains, but I also do not want to discourage him or have him resign from the team, as I can well imagine that playing on gameknot is therapeutic. With a number of elderly players on many teams, I cannot believe this is a unique situation. I am therefore asking for insight as to how to deal with this situation.
mikemate 23-Dec-20, 03:03	We have a very similar situation with a long time player on our team. One way to help that individual is to seek a lower rated player for the player in question and balance the challenge with a teammate playing a higher rated player. I occasionally do this with myself taking a match that I will most likely lose.
orkneylad 23-Dec-20, 04:36	Question for mikemate Do you make that compensation explicit in your challenge?
mikemate 23-Dec-20, 07:34	Here is a "makeup match" that I accepted a much stronger opponent. I do not remember why the makeup but I did converse with Shane before sending the challenge, gameknot.com
orkneylad 25-Dec-20, 19:44	Use of the Game Database feature For those who use game database (Game DB tab), be aware that there are multiple options. When you get to the game database page, note that at the top there is a menu of options. These include the GameKnot option (all games played on gameknot with players rated 1600 and above, with a total of 3,844,334 games) and a World option (games between players worldwide rated above 2000, with a total of 1, 673,750 games.) The latter is much more restrictive. You will often find no moves in the World database when there are still dozens or hundreds in the GameKnot database. There are also options for your personalized database, one for black (B) and one for white (W). It may be wise to consult both databases, but be aware that the GameKnot database, which includes players with up to 400 points lower Elo ratings of the inflated GameKnot type, may have many more questionable moves. As always, consider the advice carefully before adopting it as a course of action.
orkneylad 04-Jan-21, 16:45	Strategy When playing against a strong opponent, I assume that it is normally best to choose a move expecting your opponent to make the strongest response that you can think of. In playing an opponent who is less strong, is that same assumption valid, or is it a good tactic to make a move that will induce your opponent to make a move that is disadvantageous and clearly not the best response? I suppose that is sort of like making a sacrifice, but it would not necessarily mean losing a piece. I ask this largely in the context of advising mid-rating players, like myself, on my team.
pmcmurphy 10-Jan-21, 04:01	Re: Strategy Occasionally I play a move that I know is not going to work if my opponent finds the best response that I have found. I do this when I'm already losing the game! Maybe I can't find anything better; maybe I do see a move for me that I think will "last longer" but will still lead to a loss. In any case, if I'm already losing, I figure I'm free to play whatever move I think gives me the best practical chances. However, purposely playing inferior moves strikes me as a bad general strategy. I ACCIDENTALLY play inferior moves all the time, and I hope that my opponent will as well, because otherwise I'm going to lose the game. But if I can see a refutation to a move that I'm considering, then I figure there's a good chance that my opponent of approximately equal playing ability will find that refutation too. I worry enough already that my opponent will find a refutation that I have overlooked; I don't want to have to worry also that he'll find a refutation that I myself have also spotted! If I'm stronger than my opponent, then the chances increase that I could "get away" with purposely playing inferior moves. But if I'm stronger than my opponent, then I think usually it would be simpler to try to play well and win that way. Having said all of that, I'll add that there are plenty of moves that I make without really knowing how good or bad that move is. To me, that's different than making a move that I know is bad if my opponent finds the response that I fear.
orkneylad 24-Jan-21, 06:45	Inspirational message from South Africa Riaan Nieman is captain of S.W.A.T. and a police officer in South Africa. He sent me this note to explain why he was late in responding to a challenge I sent his team. Although it is not strictly about gameknot team play, it exemplifies the kinds of international communication that gameknot fosters. Riann is someone who clearly understands that policing is more than arresting people and writing tickets. Hello, orkneylad The vegetable garden is a community project that I started about 4 or 5 years ago. I got the idea from the Peace Gardens, or Victory Gardens, by Eleanor Roosevelt. She had all the lawns of the White House converted into vegetable gardens with WWII, because there were very little food. It was fortuitous- with the lockdown last year some of our neighbors lost jobs, other had huge pay cuts. I have been able to feed 11 households permanently with fresh, organic and free vegetables, and many other individuals upon occasion. Looking at my own budget, I have been able to save the people at least ZAR 350-00 per week. (For us that is a lot of money, about US$ 22-00.) I can't supply them with all the vegetables they need, but there were a lot of variety so far: tomatoes, radishes, beans, spinach and Swiss chard, beetroot, carrots, butternut, aubergines, kale, cucumbers, lettuce, both green- and red cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, egg plant, sweet potatoes, passion fruit, strawberries, oranges and lemons, sweet bell peppers, red peppers, chilies, peppadews and green peppers. Our potatoes will come along in about 3 months, another crop of sweet potatoes, and paw-paws soon. We also put in garlic, ginger and turmeric. I am going to harvest some okra in the morning- right now it is too hot and the whole plant is drooping. If we have space we shall also try onions next month, when we should plant them. The nice thing is, we don't just farm. The whole patch have companion flowers, carefully chosen to attract pests away from the vegetables, or force them away from the garden. It is a lovely collection of all sorts of colors. Many of the flowers are edible too, and some have medicinal qualities. We don't use fertilizer or pesticides, it is all truly natural and organic. You should see the birds, bees and ladybugs! Plenty of them. Our only problem is the presence of slugs, but we are looking at solutions to protect our food without using poison. This project is a source of great pride- I took a bare, unproductive, almost sterile piece of land and turned it into a wonderful garden. It was clay soil, and I dug it out about 5 feet deep, and filled it with a mix of clean sand, topsoil and cow- and horse manure. At the moment we just add horse manure on top whenever we clear a patch and before we plant again. We put in an automatic sprinkler system which helps a lot, and saves me a fair amount of attention daily. My wife just reminded me that we also have watermelon that are flowering now. I forgot about those. One of the benefits of this project is that it brings everybody in our community closer. We are a mix of African and European people, and some of the older (white) people still struggle to adapt after Apartheid. This project involves everybody here and allows us all time to socialize, chat and laugh, meet at the garden and enjoy it. The decision to plant some drop or the other is made by all of us, and everybody contributes to the whole effort. We live in almost perfect harmony. So, there is the story of our vegetable patch. I hope it inspires you a little. Have a nice day! Stay safe. Riaan Nieman
orkneylad 19-Feb-21, 18:04	90 day averages. Many captains seem to set a premium on 90 day highs and averages while making matches. I have always wondered about that. 90 days is an arbitrary time. If one looks back at players' records, many of them fluctuate quite widely. I someone happened to be on a winning streak three months previously, both their 90-day average and their 90-day high will be elevated from the way they are playing currently. Conversely, if they are recovering from a losing streak, their 90-day average and high will be unrealistically low. All one needs to know about streaks is to look at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season, or the Baltimore Ravens. Their records at mid-season were miserable. I think trends are more reliable indicators of a person's current strength. If someone's rating is headed down, it is likely to continue on that trajectory for a bit. If it is headed up, they are going to now be playing at well above their 90-day average or high. For myself, I know that I have periods when I am playing poorly due to travel, work, or unrest in my personal life. Other times, I am on top of my game for a bit. I always try to make matches that I think are fair based on yearlong - or longer - ratings, where that is possible, and taking trends into consideration. A slavish adherence to 90-day ratings seems unwise. I also think that Knights of the Crystal Castle has a good point when they take not only a potential opponent's rating into account but also the ratings of their opponent - although I think they do this based on the 90day calendar. Anyway, I throw this out for rational discussion.
joveyboy1 20-Feb-21, 19:34	I was thinking about The Knights of the Crystal Castle as well, factoring in an opponent's average rating can really make a difference. I've been looking at that more lately, and I can see how it can be possible to gain or lose an advantage with that rating considered. It is hard to truly know though how fair a match can be no matter how hard you try. I just use the average 90 day ratings because many others do. I'm really content with just using the current and top 90 day ratings, partially because I don't want anyone on my team thinking I'm giving them unfair matches, based on only those ratings (I should remind them I look at other ratings. I've stated this in the team forum before but it's been a while now), but more so because looking beyond those ratings does take more effort, something that I admit is difficult for me to put in plenty of times   I do notice when my members are on big trends. I can name a few who are on the way up, as well as a couple who are on the way down right now. I try to see if I can find similar players using the Advanced Player Search, though even then it can be hard still to find the right match.
orkneylad 20-Feb-21, 20:51	Open challenges One thing I sometimes do for players who are hard to pair because of big changes in their ratings, or sometimes other reasons, is to put them out for open challenges. That way, another captain who has players with similar difficulties can try to match up. I always look closely at responses to open challenges to see whether they take such factors into account. Admittedly, pairing is not, and cannot be, an exact science. At least a few captains use past head-to-head results as a way of deciding whether to accept or decline challenges. I tend not to do that, because my own feeling for myself is that I want to be paired against players with similar ratings to mine who have dominated me in past matches. Either it is just chance that they have repeatedly beaten me, in which case equal ratings should eventually produce equal results, or there is something about their style of play to which I am vulnerable, and I should learn to cope with it. If we are not improving our play, then we are not getting the most out of the team chess experience.
pmcmurphy 20-Feb-21, 21:24	Some thoughts on opponents' average rating... My understanding of the Elo rating system is that it is designed to be a predictive system. For instance, in a 1,000-game match between a player who is playing at a static 1800 strength and a player who is playing at a static 1400 strength, the expectation is that the player with the 1800 strength will score 909 points out of 1,000 possible and will gain 0 Elo points. In a match between two players with a static 1800 playing strength, the expectation is that each player will score 500 points out of 1,000 possible and will gain 0 Elo points. In reality some players "play to the level of their competition" while others "win the ones they're supposed to," to varying degrees. But I think that in theory the level of a players' competition usually should not have a very big impact on the player's own rating. Another observation: To a significant extent, especially for team games, a player's current rating will tend to dictate the opponents' rating. For example, a player with an average rating of 1650 who only plays team games is not going to have an average opponents' rating of 1250 unless the player is improving very rapidly and the average opponents' rating is based on games that were started months before and have only recently been completed.
orkneylad 20-Feb-21, 23:08	Playing unrated games I have started the policy of playing only unrated games in all of my "friendly" matches - that is, all those that do not involve team, league or ladder play. I do not think team, league or ladder games can be played unrated. I do not know about tournament or mini-tournament games, as I no longer play those, but I suspect they must be played as rated games as well. But, by playing unrated "friendly" games, I feel that I can be more inventive and "risky" without having to worry about effects on my rating.
orkneylad 25-Feb-21, 16:04	A thought for a new option for team captains. We have all experienced times when one of our team members starts timing out of games, leading to a long string of losses in team matches. Many times, the timeouts are beyond the control of the team member. It seems to me that it might be possible, if a team member is non-responsive due to health or other serious issues, that a team captain could initiate a provisional timeout for a team member who seemed to be in difficult circumstances. This would be like the emergency timeouts that gameknot allows for premium members, but at the discretion of the team captain. Obviously a time limit would have to be set for the postponement, and measures would have to be introduced to eliminate, or at least minimize, abuse. Eventually, if the person were permanently out of commission, their games would have to be resolved. Calling them a draw would seem to be fair, but I am not sure that captains of the opposing teams, or gameknot, would agree to that. They might insist on calling them losses after a certain amount of time had expired. gameknot has a lot of elderly members, some of whom may be in precarious health. I introduce this topic for general comment and discussion. I also know that gameknot is notoriously bad at making user-friendly rulings that come out of the rank and file of team captains.
orkneylad 01-Mar-21, 08:31	Perhaps not knowing the postponement feature is widespread The guy with the stroke was in the hospital. He just sent me this message. I don't know if he never knew or if he forgot. Anyway, I told him, or reminded him. If this is a general phenomenon, we obviously have a problem that is bigger, or at least different, than the one I thought we had. Hello, orkneylad, i don't khow how to postpone my games
joveyboy1 08-Mar-21, 12:43	I think that would be an excellent option, it just depends on how willing Gameknot would be. They could be more willing than many of us think, but I wonder if they're too limited by their software. And yeah I had a player who thought their games were automatically postponed if they got close to timing out. They found out otherwise when it hadn't been 4 months since their last emergency postponement and now know what they need to do in the future, but it does make me think how many don't actually know how to postpone their games.
orkneylad 08-Mar-21, 15:09	The three postponement rules I would change. 1) Allow automatic postponements to occur more often that one every four months for premium members and more often than once a year for non-premium members. Say, every two months and twice a year. 2) Allow an ongoing postponement to be extended if circumstances require. 3) Allow postponements to be initiated without a two-week (14-day) large between postponements. Intermittent travel or unexpected personal circumstances could require this flexibility.
joveyboy1 15-Mar-21, 23:56	What about total vacation flag days given in a year, is 120 enough? For me it's more than enough, but how about those who need a lot of vacation flag days, especially with the above mentioned? Would 120 be enough, or would more be needed? 120 is about a third of the year, so maybe 180 for about half the year if needed?
orkneylad 16-Mar-21, 00:21	I do not think the total number of vacations days is the issue. 120 days is a lot. If someone is going to need more than that, they probably should take a hiatus from gameknot play and rejoin if and when their situation normalizes. I think what we need is more flexibility in using those 120 days in the ways that I suggested in my last post. There may be other adjustments that would be useful.
joveyboy1 05-Apr-21, 11:02	Perhaps Gameknot could split them? I don't know, but I figure a set amount of vacation days for the player, and then if they are on a team, then up to a certain amount is available to the captain, where perhaps the player can decide the amount they can use out of the total.
orkneylad 05-Apr-21, 16:11	Teams would have to pay for captains to have more clout. I think the problem would be that gameknot would be unwilling to allow captains any access to their team members settings. We cannot, for example, see directly what team game limit a player has set. We have to either ask them or figure it out from the number of team games they have when they become unavailable. For a team the size of ours, with about 40 active players, that is not so difficult, but for large teams it becomes unwieldy. Nonetheless, I suspect that gameknot does not allow that access because they have no easy way of letting a captain look at something without being able to change it. If captains could set the team game limit for their players, there could well be complaints from the players, which gameknot wants to avoid. After all, they rely on membership fees for their existence. I guarantee that if gameknot charged teams for registering that captains would have far more influence.
orkneylad 10-Apr-21, 20:27	Deleted by orkneylad on 11-Apr-21, 14:43.
orkneylad 11-Apr-21, 14:45	My last post deleted I learned that the person(s) with whom I had been having the discussion about pairing team members for team matches wanted our discussion to remain private. To honor that request, I have deleted my last message.
joveyboy1 20-Apr-21, 18:47	I have that a few times, I don't I discuss private messages with others unless it's clear they want it to be known to others, which is rare, for me at least. I'm sure there are cases where it would not have been a problem, but I guess I just stay cautious on that, I don't want to upset anyone unintentionally. I don't think I saw that message you had to delete, I don't know if anyone else did, but no harm done hopefully.
orkneylad 20-Apr-21, 18:53	Privacy is a sliding scale I am far at one end. I believe that everything I say or write becomes public knowledge once it leaves my lips or fingertips. Others, including my wife (queenforaknight), feel very differently. I could be the world's worst person for keeping a secret unless someone specifically tells me not to share what they have communicated to me. However, I have often found that things that were supposedly communicated to me in confidence turn out to be common knowledge because the "secret sharer" has told everyone.
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