Post by Ozymandias on Jun 11, 2019 8:34:20 GMT
This is a re-posting of an old thread of mine, from the Rybka forum.
Prehistoric Years
The Golden Age
Latter Days
In the last decade, only three tournaments worth mentioning have been sponsored:
* A total of eight Centaur Weekend Tourneys, played between 2016 and 2017.
Prehistoric Years
It all started back in June 1998, when a new tournament director, took the reins of an event, that had been running for ten years, in León. He wanted something different, and saw fit to achieve that, by materializing Kasparov's idea about Advanced Chess, so he brought him to play against the previous year's winner (Topalov), both of them having access to a 333 MHz Pentium II. It wasn't exactly what we'd consider "Centaur Chess" nowadays (help from a chess DB or an engine, not both), but it was a start. Over the course of five years, other players would add their names to this short-lived experiment: Anand, Karpov, Polgar, Leko, Shirov and Kramnik, who won the last one in 2002.
During this early years, there was a rift between the chess elite and amateurs. While the former had a place in León, the latter had to seek solace in online play. It was the Advanced Chess Organization (CCO), the one responsible to hold the Advanced Chess Tournaments, on the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). There was a total of fifteen events, with the las one taking place on June 18, 2005. This was a time, when Anand was still considered to be the best player in the field, basically because groups of players were isolated, and there was no money incentive, for amateurs to really show their potential. This was about to change.
The Golden Age
Approximately at the same time, that the CCO stopped its activity, a new entity would enter the scene, to change everything with the PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournaments. With aggregated prize funds, totaling $132,000, distributed between May 28, 2005 and April 27, 2008, eight tournaments would set the stage, for the transition in Centaur Chess, from Advanced to Freestyle Chess. Overnight, not only standalone supercomputers were made obsolete, but the established conception about the supremacy of a GM, with competitive HW, was shattered. Being offered an appropriate reward, the amateur chess player, rose to the challenge.
The change was so sudden, that when the 1st Advanced Chess Tournament (Benidorm, 2007) offered 7.500€ in prizes, they did it without actually realizing they were hosting a Freestyle Chess tournament. Both the name of the event, as well as the rules the arbiters were trying (hopelessly) to enforce, already represented an outdated anomaly.
Latter Days
In the last decade, only three tournaments worth mentioning have been sponsored:
- The 1st International Online Advanced Chess Tournament, organized by MundialChess in early 2010, with a total of nearly 48.000€ being offered.
- The InfinityChess Freestyle Battle, early 2014, with a prize fund of $20,000.
- The InfinityChess Ultimate Challenge 2017, with a prize fund of $20,000.
None has been able to recapture the feel of the PAL/CSS times. Not only were they different in nature, but they also lacked continuity. One wasn't really a Freestyle Chess tournament, as the short time control made it impossible, for a team to finish a game. The second one was a League Competition, which span for several months, opposed to the Swiss format of old, which would be over in a couple of weekends. The last one adhered to the Swiss format, but was (again) a very long tour and what's worse, it didn't fulfil the promise made earlier by Arno Nickel:
The best 8 centaurs according to the final Grand Prix (*) table will be nominated for the next official Freestyle event by InfinityChess in 2016/2017.
* A total of eight Centaur Weekend Tourneys, played between 2016 and 2017.
