Posts:
260
Registered:
Dec 16, 2001
From:
Maryland
Age:
53 Home page
Live tournaments
Posted:
Aug 2, 2000, 1:30 AM
What would be great to have is a live tournament somewhere& The last one (I think) was the anniversary tournament that Decipher held 2 yrs ago. I don't know if they plan on having another in the future (probably not). So it would be hard to get any sponsorship, even if we beg Decipher/Parker Bros. But even without them I would like to see:
a) USA vs Russia tournament: This would be a fun event, but I don't think anyone has the money to fly from one country to the other. I don't mean to exclude people from other countries either.
b) Another tournament in Oklahoma. But if no prize money, and its not official, few people would travel to it.
c) The easiest and most inclusive tournament would be a live tournament on Dweebo's server. OK, its not really the same thing but there is no travel or expense involved. Peter is interested in doing it, but it has to be organized in some way. I would think it would not be convenient to have everyone log in at the same time to play games, but instead set up matches to be played and the two players for each game work out a time to meet within a certain timeframe.
The Mind Sports Olympiad is being held at the end of this month in England. It includes competitions in Chess, Go, checkers, Othello, twixt, etc, but no five in a row games.
Anyone with any ideas or info on live tourneys??
Mark
This message was originally posted at Yahoo's pente group.
The problem we have when it comes to sponsorship is that the people who have a financial interest in the game don't seem to believe in its profitability. To me, both Hasbro and Decipher have shown a complete lack of interest in seeing the game get any more prominent than it is. Hideaway Pizza might back the tourney, just because Pente is Gabrel's baby and all, but that would probably land the thing back in Oklahoma. Moreover, one wonders how much a small chain like Hideaway would/could put up, even with Gary at the head. Probably not enough to bring international interest. We could have entry fees to supplement the prize fund, but if you make them too large you risk driving people away.
I like the idea of a live tournament at Dweebo's, but I like it less than an actually live tournament. Besides, there are problems with that too. Let's say that the tournament says that I'm supposed to play, for example, Virag or Stepanov. Due to radical time zone differences, the times that either of them would be able to hook up with me on the server would be very limited. Also, real-time is not always real in these situations. If I'm playing Stepanov at 4 PM my time, it's probably midnight or later where he is. Is that fair to him? It seems that things like sleep deprivation would make a big difference between closely matched competitors.
And yet without a grass-roots resurgence in the game, this is where we are. I don't think anyone will back a big Pente championship unless they see the profitability in it, and the only way to do that is for someone to go to Hasbro or Decipher and say, Look how many people are playing, look how many boards you could sell, etc...
Short of that or some miracle windfall from heaven, I don't see much hope for the sponsorship route for now. This brings us back to the grassroots. What if we each just started to try to organize tournaments in our communities? How many different areas, how many regions of the country, for that matter, how many different countries are represented in this club already? If enough of us were to organize local tournaments, maybe that would get the ball rolling.
I don't know--it's an idea. What do others think?
Aaron
This message was originally posted at Yahoo's pente group.
Posts:
260
Registered:
Dec 16, 2001
From:
Maryland
Age:
53 Home page
Re: Live tournaments
Posted:
Aug 3, 2000, 10:47 AM
Stepanov and Nosovsky will be at the Mind Sports Olympiad in England. Oleg says the organizers at MSO want to have a world championship in all sports there. It is something to think about having a Pente championship there next year. Anyone want to go
MM
This message was originally posted at Yahoo's pente group.
