| 2023-11-25 09:10:38 Alexey Lebedev (wkstealth) | |
New rules | # 7330 |
| The announcement of new EL season was quite a surprise this time, because along with the announcement came serious changes in EL rules:
1) EL format: 7 rounds + 2 playoff rounds instead of 9 rounds 2) time control: 7+3 instead of 10+3 (not including playoffs) 3) number of players in team (both maximum and playing in the match): 3+2 instead of 4+3 These changes are very sensitive and affect all teams - for example, all 12 teams that played in the previous EL season had more than 5 players, 9 of 12 - 7 players. That means all existing teams have to kick out 1 or 2 players to participate in the upcoming season - for a long-living teams it's not an easy task, as many of them had to carefully assemble players for several years. The idea of these changes is quite clear - Committee wants to increase the number of teams, to make EL games shorter and thus more interesting for newbies. However, the changes don't seem to be very well-thought: 1) reducing the number of players is called to increase the number of teams. however, it's much more likely lead to players leaving the EL - only some of them may be able to organize new teams, but most won't. 2) reducing the number of players in the match to 3 makes the impact of each player to the final result way higher, so EL becomes less team competition. For example, if a player wins all his 8 games in a 4x4 match, the rest of this team needs 8 points out of 24 to get a tie. If a player wins all his 6 games in a 3x3 match, the rest of his team needs only 3 points out of 12. 3) having many teams made of experienced players and many teams made of newbies leads to many matches with an overwhelming difference in game level - this type of matches is demotivating for both teams (the stronger one has no interest in playing, the weaker one is demotivated by having no chances to win) Most importantly, the decision about these changes has been made without any discussions with a significant part of active EL players - at least 4 of 12 teams that played in the previous season (Wake, MIND INFINITY, Thunderstorm, Humans-2015 - btw, 4 teams of top-7 in the previous season) were completely unaware of the changes. Discussions among these 4 teams showed, that all of them don't support the changes, in varying degrees. The idea of the Committee is clear and good, but the realization definitely needs to be discussed. At least, there are many other ways to achieve the same goals - for example, reducing the games played between each pair of players from 2 to 1 (like it's done in live team tournaments), letting teams to choose one of predefined time controls (so that newbies can play 3+2 and experienced teams - 10+3), creating 2 groups based on team strength, etc. The Commitee has a nice experience of reviewing already announced decisions (namely, the decision to allow Sandra play in the EL). If such small decision was reviewed after discussion wth the teams, the decision to change the rules in such a sensitive way definitely needs to be made only after the discussion with EL players. So I kindly ask to start a discussion, and make the final decision based on its results. | |