On March 2nd to 4th Freestyle Fans will meet on playchess.com for the 5th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament. They will be fighting for a prize fund of US $16,000. The main tournament is an eight-round Swiss. The final, three weeks later from March 23rd to 25th, is a nine-round round robin tournament. The time control is 60 minutes + 15 seconds per move. Anybody can take part in this online event, whether you are a rank amateur or a grandmaster. What is special: you can use any help available computers, friends, books, just as you like. Freestyle is without limits.
The latest achievement for Freestyle Chess is to create its own ranking list, which has been worked out by initiative of the author and kind technical support of Timo Klaustermeyer from CSS-online. In the following we present the first provisional list (up to no. 50) with all players or teams that have already played at least 15 regular games (not counting wins by default or blitz tie-break games). This number is still very small. The ICCF requires 30 evaluated games for a fixed rating. Only 12 players in our list already have a fixed rating in this sense. They are marked in boldface. The evaluation is based on 1489 regular games of 258 players. Further information (download included) will be published after a test run on CSS-Online.
TOP 50 of Freestyle Chess, March 2007
| Name (handle) |
Elo |
Games |
Score |
Av.Op. |
Draws |
| 1 Xakru |
2792 |
17 |
67.6% |
2664 |
41.2% |
| 2 Rajlich |
2770 |
37 |
70.3% |
2621 |
54.1% |
| 3 Nebula |
2770 |
16 |
68.8% |
2633 |
37.5% |
| 4 Vvarkey |
2763 |
15 |
70.0% |
2616 |
33.3% |
| 5 Frigderi |
2734 |
16 |
59.4% |
2668 |
56.2% |
| 6 Jazzled |
2721 |
38 |
63.2% |
2627 |
68.4% |
| 7 Zor_champ |
2713 |
46 |
63.0% |
2620 |
39.1% |
| 8 EmilV |
2697 |
25 |
62.0% |
2612 |
68.0% |
| 9 Icy45 |
2684 |
23 |
56.5% |
2639 |
43.5% |
| 10 Ibermax |
2680 |
17 |
52.9% |
2660 |
58.8% |
| 11 Intagrand |
2680 |
22 |
59.1% |
2616 |
45.5% |
| 12 Flying Saucers |
2679 |
25 |
58.0% |
2623 |
52.0% |
| 13 Hedgehog |
2674 |
22 |
61.4% |
2594 |
68.2% |
| 14 Eve.est |
2664 |
23 |
58.7% |
2603 |
65.2% |
| 15 Poweronoff |
2663 |
33 |
60.6% |
2588 |
54.5% |
| 16 Elissa |
2662 |
20 |
52.5% |
2644 |
55.0% |
| 17 Tatar |
2654 |
24 |
62.5% |
2566 |
41.7% |
| 18 King Crusher |
2636 |
30 |
56.7% |
2589 |
60.0% |
| 19 Spaghetti Chess |
2632 |
23 |
60.9% |
2555 |
60.9% |
| 20 Rentner2 |
2630 |
42 |
52.4% |
2614 |
61.9% |
| 21 EL-SHADDAI |
2630 |
18 |
61.1% |
2551 |
44.4% |
| 22 Klosterfrau |
2630 |
38 |
57.9% |
2574 |
52.6% |
| 23 Alansacount |
2628 |
34 |
58.8% |
2566 |
58.8% |
| 24 Sergey_M |
2626 |
15 |
56.7% |
2580 |
46.7% |
| 25 Dieb Fritz |
2616 |
21 |
54.8% |
2583 |
61.9% |
| 26 ZackS |
2613 |
41 |
59.8% |
2544 |
36.6% |
| 27 Relic |
2607 |
29 |
56.9% |
2559 |
58.6% |
| 28 Campolungo |
2605 |
15 |
53.3% |
2581 |
40.0% |
| 29 Equidistance |
2603 |
30 |
51.7% |
2591 |
36.7% |
| 30 PAKman |
2602 |
17 |
58.8% |
2541 |
11.8% |
| 31 Noritano |
2599 |
16 |
59.4% |
2534 |
43.8% |
| 32 Ciron |
2596 |
31 |
51.6% |
2584 |
51.6% |
| 33 Tony Kosten |
2590 |
17 |
52.9% |
2570 |
47.1% |
| 34 Bychamp_II |
2588 |
25 |
58.0% |
2532 |
52.0% |
| 35 Engineer |
2586 |
17 |
55.9% |
2545 |
52.9% |
| 36 Abeljusto |
2582 |
23 |
58.7% |
2521 |
47.8% |
| 37 Knilch hi |
2581 |
15 |
60.0% |
2511 |
53.3% |
| 38 Walden |
2567 |
15 |
53.3% |
2544 |
40.0% |
| 39 Alexisco |
2563 |
15 |
56.7% |
2516 |
46.7% |
| 40 Katzenmaier |
2562 |
16 |
56.2% |
2518 |
50.0% |
| 41 Goldbar |
2545 |
27 |
55.6% |
2507 |
51.9% |
| 42 Sebi-chess |
2544 |
15 |
56.7% |
2498 |
33.3% |
| 43 Heffalump |
2539 |
16 |
56.2% |
2496 |
62.5% |
| 44 Auryn |
2536 |
17 |
47.1% |
2556 |
47.1% |
| 45 Rainer Zufall |
2535 |
30 |
48.3% |
2546 |
56.7% |
| 46 Fredi_z |
2533 |
24 |
50.0% |
2533 |
66.7% |
| 47 Petr Haba |
2519 |
20 |
60.0% |
2449 |
50.0% |
| 48 Souk |
2512 |
15 |
46.7% |
2535 |
80.0% |
| 49 Hoshad |
2511 |
24 |
50.0% |
2511 |
50.0% |
| 50 WoDra |
2510 |
21 |
54.8% |
2477 |
61.9% |
The 5th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament will be the first of at least three tournaments to be held in 2007. The exact dates in summer and autumn are still to be fixed. The time control is 60 min + 15 sec for the entire game, but we are also thinking about staging one tournament with longer time controls, i.e. two hours per player. This would be used to demonstrate the high quality of Freestyle games, and many players will be pleased by the fact that they have more time and less stress. In effect we will play only one classical game per day instead of two or three rapid games. The only disadvantage is that you will have to reserve more than a week, probably 9-10 days, if you want to participate. The games will take place in the afternoon (CET = Central European Time) and last until the early evening. The idea is to gain first experience with this new type of tournament in August 2007 and provide an attractive prize fund.
Over the months and years the Freestyle tournaments also mirrored the development of modern hard and software. In 2007, after completing the transition to dual-core systems, there might be an increasing number of quad systems involved. I personally suppose about 15 to 30 over the year. Also the use of a bigger number of six-men tablebases may play a role.
The favourite engines in the 5th Freestyle Tournament will probably be the latest multi-processor versions of Rybka (2.3), Fritz (10), Shredder (10), Junior (10.1) and Hiarcs 11. But there are sure to be players who will also use programs like Zap!, Chess Tiger, List, Gandalf, Loop, Fruit, Toga, Naum, Spike, Glaurung, Ktulu, and a bunch of others for consultation or for automatic play.
As we learned from previous events there is no universal solution for Freestyle play. It all depends on your personal possibilities and preferences, how you try to manage the various factors like opening choice, plan, engine use, hardware, time and teamwork, just to mention the six most important criteria. You will only know afterwards what leads to success or to misfortune, and even that may be unclear, as it is a matter of subjective interpretation. One thing is certain: there will be much room for experiments. And Freestyle chess is one of the most exciting applications of computer chess. Just give it a try and join the fun.
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