The 2005 Atomic World Championships

The 2005 Atomic World Championships were held on FICS from October 1st, 2005 to December 1st, 2005.  It was run as an open knockout match-format tournament – all of the games and rules have been preserved below – I ran this tournament and sometime, I’ll add some funny anecdotes about this tournament.  But this was also the debut of a rating system that I designed to be specifically used for rating atomic chess games.  No further tournaments have been run since 2005 to take advantage of either this Championship or the rating system.  Hopefully, that’ll change someday.

siggemannen is the 2005 Atomic World Champion!

The Players of the 2005 Atomic World Championship (FICS rating and best rating at time of joining the tournament):

SeedNameRatingBestTitles Earned
1tipau24752502(AGM)
2siggemannen24382469(AGM)(AWC)
3TCK22952333(AM)
4WildKiller22752310(AM)
5MillzesChess22152388 
6maciejg21832297 
7seberg21832276 
8BKildahl21762227 
9Rekursiv21522249 
10Chronatog21282372 
11chessdown21182195 
12Sygate21132113 
13wanderertom19492158 
14FoxyFiddler20082049 
15grogers18602034 
16luckybbad17411823 

The rules utilized for this World Championship were:

2005 Atomic World Championships
===============================

The World Championships will be open to ALL players that meet the following criteria:

(1) Have had an established atomic rating
(2) Played at least 100 atomic games on FICS
(3) Emailed zeitzeno@yahoo.com with intent to join
(4) First come, first served. 64 players maximum.
(5) Final round (Championship) will have its week begin December 10 if 64 slots are filled.
    This is 6 rounds and 5 weeks of breaks.

*** THE CHAMPIONSHIPS BEGIN OCTOBER 1st ***

"Knockout Sweet Sixteen" format:

You will be paired with a player for a round.  There will be a week for you to play your 
round in, with a week in between rounds as breaks.  Please note the following stipulations:

(1) ALL games are by default, unrated.  If BOTH players agree, the games may be rated.

(2) You WILL need to email zeitzeno@yahoo.com with ALL games you played in the round along
with the result.  Failure to do so will lead to an unhappy TD and mocking by other players.

(3) The games will be played as follows:
(a) FOUR games of 3 0
(b) FOUR games of 1 0
(c) TWO games of 5 12

(3.1) If the score stands at 5-5 after 10 games, then the tiebreak consists of this:
(a) TWO games of 3 0
(b) TWO games of 1 0
(c) TWO games of 5 12

(3.2) If the tiebreakers stand at 3-3, then the final tiebreak game will be a time-odds game.
(a) White will get 2 minutes to Black's 3 minutes.  White receives draw odds.  
(b) If Black flags White, or wins, Black moves on.  White has to win or draw to move on.  
(c) Higher rated player in the pair picks the color they want in this game.  
(d) If both players are rated the same, then a coin will be flipped somehow.

(4) If you have won your round (and emailed the TD your games), then you have a week to relax
 until the next round begins.  By the nature of how this tournament is set up, you will KNOW
 who your opponent is.

Losers drop out of the tournament.

(5) Assuming a full field of 64, after the first round, there will be 32 players left.
 And so on until there are 2 players left.  There will be a maximum of 6 rounds

(6) If somebody is unable to complete a series, or has to withdraw, their opponent is 
considered the victor.  Byes may be issued in the case of an odd number of players.  

(7)The original tournament setup is at the discretion of the TD.

(8) The TD is Chronatog.  I will NOT be playing in this tournament, so you may be sure that I
will be unbiased.  If adjudication is required for the purposes of the tournament,
I will perform said adjudications. 

(9) No computers allowed. If somebody is (C)heating, they will be humilated and tossed.

(10) *** NEW ADDITION *** The Championship Round will ***NOT*** UTILIZE the tiebreaker system
as described above.  Instead, the final two players, if tied 5-5 after the original 10 games 
will then play ANOTHER 10 game series. Repeat if tied 10-10.  If the score is tied 15-15 at 
the end of 30 games, then there will be a SINGLE playoff game:  

The highest rated player picks a color.  This will be different in the following form:

White gets 5 minutes.  Black gets 3 minutes.  Black has draw odds.  Winner is the Champion.

(11) This tournament will serve as the inital "seed" tournament for a new Atomic Chess rating
system.  This rating system will be maintained on a webpage and in the beginning will only
utilize major tournaments within its data set.

=============================
[Last updated -- August 14, 2005 -- Chronatog]

ENTERED PLAYERS THUS FAR (9.20.2005)
========================
(1) siggemannen
(2) tipau
(3) seberg
(4) grogers
(5) maciejg
(6) Sygate
(7) Wildkiller
(8) luckybbad
(9) TCK
(10)chessdown
(11) BKildahl
(12) Rekursiv
(13) wanderertom
(14) MillzesChess
(15) FoxyFiddler
(16) Chronatog


SAMPLE SETUP (Based on 4)
=========================
Round 1:
(1) tipau vs (4) grogers
(2) siggemannen vs (3) seberg

SAMPLE RESULTS (Based on 8)
===========================
Round 1:
(1) soandso 8 - (8) soandso 2
(2) soandso 9 - (7) soandso 1
(3) soandso 4 - (6) soandso 6
(4) soandso 5 - (5) soandso 5, (4-2 TBs)

A rating system was developed for atomic chess as a result of this tournament. I’m not entirely sure it’s completely sound, but will test it someday. In any case – the first rating list was published.

The 2005 Atomic World Championship

Click on the results to get the PGN file for that specific match.

Round 1

  • (1) tipau v (16) luckybbad: 10-0
  • (2) siggemannen v (15) grogers: 10-0
  • (3) TCK v (14) FoxyFiddler: 8-2
  • (4) WildKiller v (13) wanderertom: 8-2
  • (5) MillzesChess v (12) Sygate: 10F-0F
  • (6) maciejg v (11) chessdown: 6-4
  • (7) seberg v (10) Chronatog: 9.5-.5
  • (8) BKildahl v (9) Rekursiv: 5.5-4.5

Round 2

  • (1) tipau v (8) BKildahl: 7-3
  • (2) siggemannen v (7) seberg: 8-2
  • (3) TCK v (6) maciejg: 6.5-3.5
  • (4) WildKiller v (5) MillzesChess: 10F-0F

Round 3

  • (1) tipau v (4) WildKiller: 6.5-3.5
  • (2) siggemannen v (3) TCK: 10F-0F

Round 4

  • (1) tipau v (2) siggemannen: 1-9

[Last Modified : 1 December 2005 — Nick Long]
© 2005 Nick Long

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