Logos, Banner by KaitlinB and Tom45.

Outline:

Old History, narrated by DaveTheRook and chesskix

Evolution of the various league formats, by rgadoury

Old History

From: Dave Blumberg

Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:49 PM

To: BosqueVerde ; Chesskix ; fledermaus ; InvictaKnight ; James Cooper ; John Brady ; Kingofknights ; Rgadoury ; Victor Red

Subject: Old History

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STC BUNCH  -- 5/15/2000

     Six years old this month, that's right, we've been active since May
of 1994, the dark ages of the internet.  Here's our history as related
by Tom Klem (thewiz):

     "In the beginning, when the Internet was young, and Chess Servers
were all text, and browsers were only a gleam in Netscape's (eye) ...,  one man
had an idea that maybe speed chess had it's place but there ought to be
somewhere for guys and gals who like to play leisurely chess. That man
was William Smithers, StarCapt (as he was known on ICC ),
got his handle from the fact that as a Hollywood actor he had played
the part of Merick (Merrick) (a marooned Starship Captain) on the original Star
Trek series. Captain R.M. Merik was the commanding officer of the Federation Merchant Marines survey vessel SS Beagle. Yahoo search (or google).

     StarCapt thought that playing Blitz and Lightning were ok, but that
Standard Chess ought to be played at game in 30 or longer in order to be
considered a Standard game. So, he started putting together a club of
names and email addresses of players who would promise in advance to
play 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120 games under certain circumstances (time
allowing, weekend & evenings, etc.) and so the STC BUNCH was born."

    StarCapt ran and nurtured the club for two years. At that point he
gave the club to thewiz who ran things for three years, and now Russ is
running the show. STC has grown into a club of over 700 members and is
now seeking to grow even bigger.  We have regular weekly tournaments.
Twice a year we have a cross server tournament.

     To think this thing started when only 25 or so players liked the
Slow Time Control chess (on the Internet).... and today, there are still no fees or dues to join STC Bunch or Team 45 45 League

TheWiz passed away on July 7^th, 2006 and he is dearly missed!

 STC Bunch, around July 2002 Rookmaster took over, until June of 2003 he resigned. Thewiz was interim leader, last ICC message from him was August 26, 2006 and he passed July 7, 2006. Today Camembert is Chief TD of the STC Bunch. Kingofknights served for a year and a half as STC TD on Sundays.

Slow time control on ICC, traditional time controls and increments too…

STtourny (chesskix) oldest 60 min

ICC Correspondence Chess

STC Bunch 45 5 Sunday Swiss

STC Nights - old

Lechessclub – Invicta-Knight president – mentor program – Kumara 15 5 U1500 knockouts

Old May Mania, STC Open, STC World Championships

 WizQuads are named in honor of thewiz (Tom Klem) who was my
predecessor as Leader of the STC Bunch.  His hard work in developing
many of the programs we now have cannot be understated and I hope that

this will be remembered while all the electrons of the universe exist.
He developed the Game Hebdomadal format (one game per week, contact by
e-mail) which seems to be the best way to run internet chess
tournaments.

 Forward: Please consider that the following is all from memory and if mine was better my play would reflect that ;-)   Marv

Team 45 45 League

  Long ago (1999) an enterprising ICC player (KnightRunner) conceived the Standard League.  With help from some fellow Slow Times Club (STC) members (MissB, Moondog, Russ, and STC Leader TheWiz) this league offered us team chess at “REAL” standard time controls.  Later that year TheWiz retired as STC leader, (although you can’t keep a good man down) and Russ became the STC Leader.  Since Russ was already the League TD, Webmaster, and now STC Leader, the Standard League was basically adopted under the STC organization.  (This was not official but understood by most)

  Initially, all the teams met on ICC at 3 pm on Saturday afternoon and played 60:60 games. Time zone differences, extra long games, and other set time liabilities prompted change … so the league quickly evolved.  Russ (with too many volunteers to mention) created new sections (to allow playing someone close to your rating) and later changed the Time Control to 45/45.  He also brought FICS into the fold and later organized cross server Championship matches.

The league grew quickly but so did the tourney management work so more volunteers joined the league (DavetheRook and Rgadoury were prominent), and eventually we became our own organization (much like a grown child leaves home).  Although many wonderful changes took place with the hard work of these volunteers we were still doing most of the work manually, scribes, excel spreadsheets, contact by e-mail, etc.

Russ was TD from T-0, 1999 – 2001, around October of 2001 chesskix became TD, and I (DaveTheRook) became TD around September of 2002. We went from having a Tournament Director to the present where we now have about 23 Divisional TD’s, and 5 Sectional TD’s. There are about 100 Team Captains, 100 Assistant Captains, Steering Committee of 11, Oversight Committee of 9, Coppa Committee, Technical Development Subcommittee of about 10 members, Entry Clerk, Webmaster, Web Editor, Website Graphic Artists, League Translators, etc.

It is truly amazing what can be accomplished by a group who share vision, goals, and objectives!

Transition to Star Trek theme ;-)

Following are assorted memos and data summations by various league workers.

Technical Development subcommittee members: BMW2002, fledermaus, BosqueVerde, Rgadoury, chesskix, DaveTheRook, AlPearson, Ulrika, MFunk, Conjurer, Gomer (translator), Tom45

"The Steering Committee has adopted the STC Bunch system of Game
Hebdomadal Heb-dom-a dal (one game per week, contact by e-mail) system and so far most of the way through the first round we have had a much better time of
things." Russ C. from STC Bunch Newsletter - 5/15/2000

With almost 500 players now, we have to make sure our rules are fair to everyone, and applied even handedly.

Our worst enemy is the no-show forfeit…

Our current international status: 51 countries represented

T0  3  60 60 games, 1999.09.12

T01 62 games, 1999.09.22-1999.10:21

T02 84 games

T03 70 games 60 60

T04 98 games 45 45 2000.03.11 start

T33 1300 games. 1200 regulation play, 100 in three rounds of playoffs.

ICC Rating graph helps us!

Executive Branch, Legislative Branch and Judicial Branch

Steerage Committee – Steering Committee

ICC's continued support, the League channel on ICC 345, the League Mission Statement, Constitution, Statutes, website, slow time control chess on the Internet,

LeagueTournament 34 dates - Team 45 45 League Tournament 34: team entries and individual sign-ups June  26th - July 10th, 2007. Play July 17th - September 25th, 2007.

tell everyone to sign up now, even if its t33, so we can let them know what is happening

they can fill out a profile, and I can start getting a daily standard rating to help get them a realistic rating for the tourney.

The main advantage for new players is just that, we now have them in the system for daily collection of ratings.

StarCapt (William Smithers), Thewiz (Tom Klem), Russ (Russ Crawford), chesskix, Rookmaster, Rgadoury, BosqueVerde, SandiaCaveMan, BillScotty, fledermaus, BMW2002, Gomer, Kingofknights, A-Ru, Nursey, SeniorCitizen, Camembert

From ICC we thank Freebird, LateKnight, fpawn

rgadoury tells you: okay. I can live with that. State that we have had quite a long line of volunteer programmers to get us where we are today.

Sandiacaveman (Rich Churcher, Burt Vilagi, Prince-Xizor, jmoffitt, ElAnRa) - under our guidance - we asked, he did, we massaged, it kept getting better, with many helpers. Goals & Objectives Group and Technical Group: fledermaus, bmw2002

Programming criteria: All the programming derives from our rules, not vice versa.

Leaders first tourney: chesskix T02, DaveTheRook T05, Kingofknights T07, Rgadoury T09, BosqueVerde T14

I brought Rgadoury to Russ as a Volunteer to be… and the rest is history.

Volunteers, scribes (excel spreadsheets), entry clerk, CD, aCD, webmaster, COPPA committee, website committee, technical development  subcommittee, steering committee, oversight committee, sectional td’s, divisional td’s, team captains, team assistant captains, rules subcommittee.

One good quote about our many rules, by a new TD "Too many rules, until you need one!"

We have about 100 Volunteers during tournaments who contribute countless hours of their time, and we have no revenues. A controversial topic could be the pros and cons of revenues in the future.

Many people wear many hats here.

Constitution, Mission Statement, Players Handbook, FAQ, Captains Handbook, TD Handbook, Statutes, Bylaws, Fixed Ratings and RR Ratings, Quick Guide, SC Agenda, Pairings, Standings, Players Records, Countries and avg. ratings, etc.

End of narrative history

Evolution of the league formats

Team 45 45 League began in 1999 when members of the STC Bunch (Slow Time Control) decided to form a league around the idea of team competition. The first records available show a draw in a game played on September 11, 1999, between Laracroft of Brooklyn-London Connection and vorapsak of HyperTomatos in the “First Puppy of the Litter Round”. Three games played on Sept. 12 are also available from this first competition; they can be found in the PGN files under T0.

The first structured tournament, T1, was played from Sept. 20 to Oct. 22, 1999; a four-round Swiss contended by 12 teams. “Europa” became the first championship team. Different formats were tried in the next few tourneys; they will be summarized later.

Two characteristics of the league have remained unchanged from those early days: 4-board matches and limits on team strength as defined by the section numbers, U(under)2200 in T1, U2200 and U1800 in T2, and so on.

The league began with a time control of 60 60. After three  tourneys Team 60 60 League decided to reduce the time control and the name of the league. T4 saw the start of Team 45 45 League as we know it now.

Who plays?--Players from around the world compete in Team 45 45 League. At least one player has claimed Antarctica as his home country! For the first 22 tourneys teams were drawn from the two chess servers, Internet Chess Club (ICC) and Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). In T1-8, teams from the two servers were intermingled in the various sections. In T9-T22, there were two conferences, ICC and FICS, with playoffs between the two conferences at the end of regulation play. In T23 the FICS conference members decided to leave Team 45 45 League; the league has required ICC membership ever since.

 Longevity—As of this writing, four players, fileman, JustinSane, Kueh, and Tjet, who played in T1 are still playing, in T51!.

Playoffs—T9 marked a significant change in league play. Prior to T9 teams from ICC and FICS intermingled within each section. Whichever team won the section was the champion. T9 saw the start of playoffs between division champions to determine Section champions.

Divisions—T9 also marked the beginning of named divisions, Puppy and Kitten in U1900 and Sahara and Gobi in U1600, to make distinctions among multiple divisions in a section. Willow and Redwood soon followed in U2000. Each Section was assigned a theme, “Arbor” (trees) in U2000, “Erg” (deserts) in U1600, for example; division names are chosen consistent with the section theme. Section names first appeared in T22.

HTML versus Programming—T21 marked a huge change in league management, Prior to T21, all tournament and website work was done on home computers, and whoever was TD or webmaster displayed all the league records, usually on his own website. There was no systematic way of storing and massaging the data for continuity. In T21 the league was presented a program to handle the records.  At the click of a button one could enter a tournament with all pertinent personal information (handle, time zone, email address). No more data being stored on the backs of business cards! Another button allows a captain to enter a team, a third button allows the Entry Clerk to assign those teams to divisions, another to create forums, and so on. Whereas one individual could “reasonably” handle a tourney of 20-30 teams manually, one can only imagine the work needed for 120+ teams!

There was a break in the programming after T31. When reconstituted, the decision was made that no one person should be able to claim sole authorship of the programming or the output; each officer of the league must agree that he or she invests their time freely and voluntarily; the output is the property of the league.

Historical records—Because of the lack of programming prior to T21 there was no way to combined the old records with the new; a player’s “history”, even of those who were here at the beginning, were being shown no earlier than T21. Furthermore, under the old records a player’s PGN score could not be attached to his result. Therefore, the old records have been recreated in the current programmed format. As many old PGN scores as could be found or were not corrupted while being handled by humans, have been attached to the results. Many more games that could not be attached can be found elsewhere on the website, in the PGN files for each tourney.

While updating the historical records, the terms (ICC) and (FICS) were dropped from the team names. In the earliest tourneys it was almost impossible to tell which teams represented which server. For the curious, Redwood and Cypress divisions in the U2000 section, Gobi and Atacama divisions in the U1600 section, and Neutrinos in the U1300 section were FICS divisions. All other named divisions have been composed of ICC teams.

A synopsis of the formats of the earlier tourneys:

• T1. A 12-team four round Swiss, all teams in U2200. 60 60 games. Europa champion
• T2. U2200 and U1800, 4-6 matches in round robin schedule. Tigran’s Tigers and Noodle Crew were section champions.
• T3. U2200 and U1800, five teams in each. Round robin, but bye teams played in other section. The Untouchables and Noodle Crew champions.
• T4. 11 teams (6 and 5) in U2200 and U1800. Six rounds. First 45 45 games and new league name.
• T5, T6. U2200, U1800, 5 rounds.
• T7. U2200 (9 teams), U1900 (7), U1600 (4). 14 rounds!
• T8. U2200, U1900, U1600. 10 rounds!
• T9. U2200, U1900, U1600. First named divisions. First knockout style playoffs, in U1900 and U1600 sections.
• T10. Changed to U2000 and U1600 sections. Knockout playoffs in both sections.
• T11, T12. A grand experiment in the top section. Instead of knockout style playoffs, playoffs in U2000 were run as a complete double round robin between the three division champions and a wild card (Best Second Place) team. The matches were played concurrently with the next regular tourneys (T12, T13). As part of the project, those playoff matches are now shown with the tourney (T11 or T12) they belong to. Unfortunately, the pgn scores are no longer attached to the game scores, but are available in the historical PGN files.
• T13. Knockout style playoffs became the rule in all sections having more than one division.
• SC12-13.The By-Laws as we know them now were adopted by convention of the Steering Committee (SC).  Notable additions since then are a revised RR (forfeit) convention (no excuses, expanded grace period), League Ratings based on league games only, and Computer Usage Detection Subcommittee (CUDS).
• T14. Most records were lost during an administrative changeover. Partial records of ICC teams and pairings have been re-created from Entry Clerk records. Also appearing in the T14 records are the results of an invitational tourney that was run between T31 and T32, while lost programming was being recreated.
• T15-22. Cross server “Conference” playoffs.
• T23. League play on ICC server only.
• T24. 70 teams. U2200 and U1800 added.
• T31-32-Invitational. An informal tourney was run “the old way” between T31 and T32, to maintain player interest while a new programming team was recreating the programming. Three “doubles teams” in U2200, plus traditional 4-board matches in U1800, U1600, and U1300. Those records can be found in the T14 team/standings/pairings files, identified as U1600-INV, for example.
• T33. 101 teams! Over 100 teams ever since. High of 139 teams in T38. “No excuses” RR convention adopted.
• T37. U1300 split into U1400 and U1200 sections.
• T39.  Computer Usage Detection Subcommittee (CUDS) began examining every league game.
• T ?. Somewhere in the T30’s ICC began sponsorship of Team 45 45 League with account extension prizes to the Championship teams in each Section.
• T49.  ICC doubled Championship prizes and added Runner-up prizes.

Section/ Number of teams