Tour de Little Golem Oski - Shogi

Please correct me, if I am wrong, but I think it is not yet clear, if the new games Oski and Shogi should be part of the Tour. We should discuss this in this seperate thread.

I think it would be nice if they are included :)

In which case we either set February to Line of Action and there would be a poll in February for March Oski vs Shogi

Or we set up the poll now for February.

Adding two more games would make a total of 24 games and exactly a cycle of 2 years for the tour ;)

Which is of course under the assumption that no games will be add in the next two years...

well, yes the tour would get longer and longer, but on the other hand, we wouldn't want to leave all new games out? (forever?)

Remember, it's called 'Tour de LG', not 'Tour de LG as it once was in MMVIII'.

one idea that comes to my mind is to split it into the 'core tour' with the twelve oldest and most 'classical' games, and an 'extended tour' for the next twelve. Or in any other way.

another idea is to increase the beat. start one game on every 1st, and one on every 15th.

or just let it go as is and the cycle will get longer.

One issue with that is that during the next two-year-cycle, there might be like ten new games, which would not be added for the full two years. That is a long time...

Personally, I'd like both ideas mentioned above combined (core on 1st, extended on 15th).

Though I'm sure we will have more opinions than participants.

Please dont increase the beat. The main difference to the monster tournament is that the game load is not quite so high. If you increase the beat you are back to the monster. Especially given those big groups.

I wouldnt worry now about 10 more games added. Lets add those 2 and discuss the 10 next games as soon as they exist.

I also do not like the idea with the split. I guess it will be difficult enough to keep track of all the different standings as it is. Remember that the idea was: It is a cycle. So if somebody joins in at month 5 there is also a cycle starting that very month! Or stated otherwise: As soon as Go 9x9 ended the second time, we get a new version of the tournament were the old Go 9x9 results are replaced by the new ones. (That is if Go 9x9 will still be part of it).

How about if each cycle includes just one variant of each game? E.g., do we really need three sizes of Go in every cycle? Three successive cycles could each include one size of Go.

Each Tour de France follows a different route. Each includes a mountain section, but it's not the same mountain section every year.

We could define a player's score to include only the variants played in the most recent cycle. Or we could also include the most recent times the other two sizes of Go in a player's score, even though the other two sizes were not technically in the most recent cycle.

Of course, this doesn't just apply to Go. A Small Cycle might be defined to include

One size of Go.

Two of Hex19, Hex13, Havannah & Twixt.

One size of Reversi.

Two of Four-in-a-row, Gomoku, Connect 6

Two of Shogi, mini-Shogi, standard Chess & some other Chess variant.

One of GWG, Oski, & English WYPS.

One of WYPS ascending & WYPS ascending linear.

Three of Einstein, StreetSoccer, Dvonn, Lines-of-Action, Breakthrough, Dots-and-boxes, Amazons.

That's enough for 13 consecutive months.

A Grand Cycle would be three consecutive Small Cycles. A Grand Cycle would include each of the variants that are ever in the Tour at least once.

Originally the idea has been that we have many cycles anyway:

We have a (final) standing after the results from Go9x9 (first time),

Einstein (first time), Dvonn(ft) ... , Oski (ft), Shogi (ft).

Then a (final) standing after Einstein (ft), Dvonn(ft),..., Oski(ft), Shogi(ft), Go9x9 (second time). And so on.

Do you think this is to much? To many standings?

I like MarleysGhost's proposal.

Short of time, so just a quick one: I'm not going to fundamentally change the structure. I am open to the following suggestions though:

- add shogi

- add oski

- throw out size variants for go, hex, reversi

I'll set up polls for shogi and oski as soon as I get around to it.

About size variants I'd like to hear more opinions.

Meanwhile let me try to trigger a related discussion: Personally I think we should leave out language dependent games in the future. That would mean not adding oski and throwing out gwg. I'd like to hear opinions about this too.

Throwing out size variants (or having them cycle through different cycles of the tour) seems good to me, although it's not going to have a huge effect. Obviously, as a non-native English speaker, I'd like to have the language dependent games left out, but this idea may not be shared by everybody...

For Wyps it was done by taking Ascending. I don't think GWG-ascending and OSKI-ascending would be interesting games :-)

I agree about throwing out language based games!

Well the 'not native speaker' is not really an excuse - you can learn a foreign language pretty good if you put your heart into it, and you can surpass average native speakers in vocabulary (but who has ten years to spare for that...)

But I agree, the specificity of being language-based makes the game asymmetric, and just doesn't go well with an abstract game. So I am for 'out' too.

Also, that saves the Tour from having to include fifteen languages for each of them - or do we want to discriminate or even harass non-english speakers? ;-)

For different sizes or version (black-hole and such) of other games:

I think Go9, Go13, and Go19 are quite different games (and should have separate ratings), but for the Tour we should 'use the lawnmower on a low setting', and only allow one of each. I don't play Reversi and LOA well enough to make a statement that the variants are too similar or not, but I would cut them out too.

So - one WYPS (with numbers), one Go, one Chess, one Reversi, one LOA. And so on, the pattern should be clear.

"not native speaker" is an excuse, indeed!

I have written an PhD in English but I hate GWG English, while i love Oski Dutch, the only problem is that I sometimes make valid words that are not counted. (I am still unbeaten in Oski dutch, but that is only because Michael never played me I guess)

I mean I just don't enjoy playing language games in English.

My impression is that there will be Shogi on the tour. So to be prepared I started a "try out" tournament, for all those players who want to get in form.

I agree on leaving language based games out.

On variants I would like to keep the different Go sizes (9, 13, 19), Reversi and Hex I don't have an opinion, but since they where part of the first tour I would not mind keeping them. Other variants could be decided by voting them in. To throw specific variants out of the tour could also be decided by voting.

I would vote for adding Shogi but against adding oski.

@Hjallti, I would take you up on that, but unfortunately the only dutch words I remember are 'niet fietsen' and 'verkoopt u cookies?'...

:) You even only had 4 out of 5 right... It might be cookies is correct dutch, but than only in the sense of computer cookies (like left on the computer when you login on this website) i don't think they are for sale. You meant 'Verkoopt u koekjes?' I guess (pronounced only slightly different from cookies.