Rule changes, and introducing myself as the new Tournament Director
Following the retirement of Chronatog as the AWC Tournament Director, I am glad to announce that I will be in charge of organizing the AWC from now on. I would like to thank Chronatog for all the time and effort he invested in organizing the AWC throughout several decades, and I invite you to read the post he made about AWC 2024 and his retirement, where he explains a lot about his decisions, in answer to several concerns by the community.
It is now my responsibility to address those concerns, and I would like to write this forum post to communicate openly about the changes made to the AWC rules, and as a chance to introduce myself.
Here is the list of changes made to the rules, addressing several issues that have occurred in the last AWC:
The jasos12 incident made clear that decisions taken by the AWC 2024 anti-cheat panel were not entirely trusted by the community.
- To address these issues, this year, there will be no AWC anti-cheating panel. Cheating accusations will be done through a lichess report, and the decision to mark a player for cheating will be taken by the lichess administrators, which will result in the player getting forfeited from the AWC.
- This solution will not bring any more transparency in case of a forfeit, because lichess or chess.com do not release public evidence about marked or banned players either. Despite popular demand from the community for concrete evidence to be provided, it is important to consider this carefully: giving too much information on the methods used to catch a cheater mostly benefits cheaters themselves. If you point out precisely to someone the reason why they got caught, what is now preventing them (or anybody else) from cheating again, but this time without repeating the mistakes that caused them to get caught?
- An anti-cheating panel might be recreated in the future, depending on if enough players who are skilled at cheat detection offer their help.
The AWC is an online tournament, which makes it very vulnerable to cheating. As mentioned in Chronatog’s TD statement – it has become increasingly hard to tell the difference between a strong human and an engine in certain lines, above a certain level. This is especially true for new or alternate accounts, for whom it would be difficult to know if they cheat or not due to the limited data available on their accounts. Additionally, registering to the AWC with an alternate account provides an unfair advantage in a match against someone using their main account, as those accounts with few games cannot be “prepared” against.
- To address those issues, the eligibility rules to register to the AWC will be more strict: players will only be able to register with their main account, and players registering with a relatively new account will have to disclose one of their past main accounts (lichess, chess.com, or others) to justify their level of play.
- Additionally, the minimum required number of rated games played on the account is also increased to 500, and players with multiple “Cheat detected” rated games will not be able to join the tournament.
- There is no need to disclose all past accounts in an exhaustive manner, but simply to provide enough context so that you can be trusted. If a player tries to register to the AWC with an account with few games, but a high rating, without disclosing any additional information, they may not be allowed to register.
- With this solution, the risk of incidents during the tournament is decreased, and players using new or alternate accounts won’t have an advantage anymore against players using their main accounts.
The 3+0 time control brought some excitement, and gave us some memorable games. However, for most spectators, a game ending in a quick shuffling contest isn’t considered a proper way to figure out which player is the better atomic player. On the other hand, the 3+2 time control is often considered too long, giving White too much time to maintain its starting advantage.
- As a compromise and alternative, AWC 2025 time control will be 3+1.
- Hopefully, this will allow both “fast players” and “slow players” to participate and have a winning chance, while ensuring a good viewing experience and removing any need for shuffling, giving us higher quality games and more interesting endgames.
- Depending on how things go, the time control might return to being 3+2 in the future, but won’t return to being 3+0.
A lot of the matches in the early stages of the tournament end up being cancelled due to one player not showing up, and wasting their opponent’s time, and the organiser’s time.
- To address this, a minimum required rating of 1800 will be necessary to register. This will filter out players who would often not bother showing up to their matches, while remaining a very accessible rating threshold to reach, rewarding players for their commitment, and setting a goal for new atomic players.
While this wasn’t a notable issue, some players would get a seeding which does not accurately reflect their skill in atomic blitz.
- To address this, the seeding formula has been changed, and will not only consider tournament performance, but also the time control and the number of games played in the tournament.
- 1+0 and 2+0 tournaments will award less performance rating, and playing only 10 to 14 games will award less performance rating, but playing more games will award more performance rating.
- This will prevent a lucky win streak in a bullet arena to earn a player a top seed in the AWC, and reward players maintaining a high level throughout a long tournament. The exact seeding formula will be posted in the 2025 rules.
While exchanging a couple ideas and discussing strategy with a friendly player is fine, systematically picking a side in a match and helping multiple other participants across the duration of the tournament, as an active AWC participant too, is forbidden, and can distort the final results in a way that is unfair and damaging.
- If a player helps too many other participants prepare their match to a serious extent, thus influencing the results, they may be issued a 1 year AWC ban.
The AWC remains very unknown outside of the Lichess atomic community, and it could be made easier for players mainly playing on other websites to learn about it, and to participate.
- To address this, an effort will be made to facilitate the participation of Chess.com players in the next AWC, and some communication will be made in the Chess.com clubs dedicated to Atomic.
- All AWC games would still be played on Lichess. This change only simplifies the registration of Chess.com players, they would still have to create a Lichess account for the purpose of playing in the AWC.
In addition to those rule changes, here are my general goals and guidelines regarding the AWC:
- Preserving the AWC’s legacy as the most important annual atomic chess tournament, and its legitimacy at crowning a champion who can be considered the best active atomic player.
- Increasing the AWC’s popularity, ensuring that most competitive top atomic players from all platforms are aware of it and have a chance to register, and that the atomic community gets an easier access to all the information and where to spectate the matches. The AWC could generally benefit from more exposure, through streams, videos, blog posts, match summaries and analysis…I wouldn’t be able to do all that by myself, and would welcome contributions.
- Ensuring the continuity of this tournament in a way that is fair, and inclusive. The AWC is open to all players, and all will be treated equally and respectfully (no matter whatever past exchanges I may have had with them, or they may have had with previous organizers).
You now have a good idea of what the changes will be for AWC 2025. The full rules will be posted soon, registration will start in July, and the first round of the tournament will start around September as usual. I welcome you all to discuss the changes made, and tell me what you think in the comments, or in direct messages, or through the new email address of the AWC: AWCtournament@gmail.com.
See you soon!
HowlinD
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